PADDLE STEAMERS
Paddle Steamers I World of Ships I 7
the Humber as far back as Roman times,
and two of the final steam trio survive in
different preservation guises, with a now
barely recognisable Tattershall Castle in a
central London location, while a well-restored
Wingfield Castle is back in Hartlepool at the
highly acclaimed Maritime Experience area.
It was left to diesel-powered paddle ferry
Farringford, built in 1948 for the Lymington-
Yarmouth, Isle of Wight connection to
maintain the final days of the Humber ferry
before the bridge eventually came into use.
English railway companies used paddle vessels
to develop international connections from the
1850s, the Great Eastern Railway running to
Rotterdam from Harwich, where a dispute with
the local authority resulted in the creation of
a new pier and railway station further up the
River Stour in 1883 which was named Parkeston
Quay after the company’s then chairman,
John Parkes. The last GER paddle steamer,
Claud Hamilton, given the name of an earlier
GER chairman, left the fleet in 1897. Services
from Folkestone to Boulogne were provided by
the South Eastern Railway, whose last paddle
steamer, the 20-knot Mable Grace, built in
1899, was withdrawn in 1909, while the final
paddle vessels left the London, Chatham and
Dover Railway’s Dover-Calais service in 1920.
The switch from paddle to screw power
followed a similar pattern on London,
Brighton and South Coast Railway connections
between Newhaven and Dieppe, and the
London and South Western Railway’s services
from Southampton to the Channel Islands and
Le Havre. The Great Western Railway did not
begin services from Weymouth to the Channel
Islands and Cherbourg until 1871, and were
the last to operate a paddle steamer, with final
sailings by the 1880-built Pembroke in 1925.
Co-operation between the British railway
companies and their continental counterparts
became common and Belgian State Railways
built an impressive fleet to link Ostend with
Dover, with a first screw vessel appearing in
1905, although it was not until 1923 and 1928
that the last paddlers, Rapide (1894) and
Princesse Clementine (1896), were withdrawn.ABOVE Royal Eagle (1932) was the largest steamer
built for General Steam Navigation Company’s
Eagle Steamers operation on the Thames, but sailed
only until 1950 and was scrapped three years later.Campbell’s larger Bristol
Queen approaching Weston-
super-Mare en route to
Penzance and the Scillly Isles
in May 1967. Sadly, her career
ended just three months later
after severe paddle wheel
damage. (Russell Plummer)01 Paddlers_Britain_NL.indd 7 17/04/2018 09: