I AM a historian, trying to gather information about any static floating restaurants, pubs, cafés, bars etc in and around the country.

This is a hobby and, over the last five years, I have gone back 40 years and have located 90 such vessels. About half of them are still trading.

There were two such vessels at York in the 1980s, but I have lost track of them.

The Barge Inn I saw on May 3, 1985, astern of the Flying Dutchman. She looked as if she had possibly sunk and had been pulled on to the bank of the river.

Could you help me in bringing my details up to date? The Barge Inn had possibly been converted from a barge and the Flying Dutchman was a canal barge, possibly a converted Dutch one. All letters will be answered.

Keith MacArthur, 19 St Albans Road, Claughton, Birkenhead, Wirral, CH43 8SB.