John 'Jack' Skinner, who has died aged 88, worked on the canals for most of his life.

Mr Skinner, known by many as Jack, was born on August 19, 1919, into the close-knit community of boat people. Mr Skinner could trace his boating ancestry back more than 200 years.

He was taken on board his parents' boat at the age of three weeks and spent the rest of his life on or by the water.

In 1946, Mr Skinner met and married his wife Rose Hone, who herself was a member of a long-established canal family. In their early married life, the couple lived and worked on their boat delivering coal from Warwickshire to Oxford.

When in the mid-1950s the Oxford Canal faced the threat of closure, Mr Skinner and his wife embarked on a trip to prove it was still navigable.

In 1963, the couple moved to a cottage on the canal bank in Kidlington and Mr Skinner got a job with the British Waterways Board, maintaining locks.

In 1967, he helped to save the Oxford Canal from closure a second time.

He was asked to take Barbara Castle, then the Minister of Transport, on a fact-finding trip. He took the precaution of going out the night before and opening lock gate paddles to give the impression there was more water in the near-derelict canal than there actually was. The ploy worked, and the canal was saved.

Mr Skinner died on April 28. He is survived by his wife Rose and their four children.