World of Ships – May 2018

92 I World of Ships I Paddle Steamers

and Fort William, taking four days in either

direction. This continued until December

1820, when Comet was wrecked after going

ashore at Craiginish Point near Crinnan. A

replica was built by apprentices from the

Lithgow Shipyard and launched in 1962,

with the Glasgow-Greenock trip recreated

COMET

Britain’s first commercially operated paddle

steamer made a Clyde debut in 1812 on the

initiative of Henry Bell, a hotel owner from

Helensburgh, and had been built with a

wooden hull by John Wood of Port Glasgow

with power from a single-cylinder side-lever

engine by John Robertson of Glasgow. There

was a pair of paddle wheels in either beam, but

the arrangement was inefficient and a single

pair of wheels was later used as the vessel ran

between Glasgow and Greenock on a public

service which proved financially unsuccessful.

Bell tried the steamer on the Forth and

then started sailings from the Clyde to Oban

ABOVE Following a lengthy Elbe career, boiler failure brought the demise of Riesa in 1976, the vessel being

taken to Oderberg, close to the Polish border, to become a museum.

ABOVE Comet was Britain’s first commercially

operated paddle steamer from 1812. This replica,

on display in Port Glasgow, was built in 1962

and operated Clyde sailings to mark the 150th

anniversary of the original ship.

for special 150th anniversary sailings. The

replica was then located on a platform in the

centre of a pond at Port Glasgow, but fell into

disrepair. It was restored at the Newark Yard

of Ferguson Shipbuilders and moved to its

present Port Glasgow town centre location

following an adjoining new retail development.

CONTRASTING FORTUNES

No matter how well preserved vessels are

looked after, there is no substitute for the real

thing, a fact emphasised in Malcolm Oliver’s

superb shot from the heights of Saxony

Switzerland as Elbe veterans Kurort Rathen,

dating from 1896, and the 1898-built Pirna

pass during scheduled sailings.

But not all the Elbe veterans were as lucky.

Schmilka, introduced in 1897 and seen out of

the water at the Laubegast Shipyard (below),

last sailed in 1977 when her boiler failed.

After she had a long spell laid up at the

Neustadt Harbour in Dresden, together

with Junger Pioneer (1898), withdrawn

in 1988, both vessels were scrapped.

The single-funnel veterans were built

at Werft Blasewitz in Dresden with

compound oscillating engines provided

by Kette Deutsche Elbschiffahrts from a

base at Ubigau.

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