October 2025:
Collecting

The conductor Richard Bonynge, who has just celebrated his 95th birthday, confesses that he sees his passion for collecting as a disease. His Chalet Monet in Les Avants above Montreux looking out on the paddle steamers on Lake Geneva is “crammed”, as he describes it, with 19th century paintings, ornaments and furniture which he and his wife collected over a lifetime. Much of it was bought for a song in the Portobello Road and its surrounds in London decades ago in their youth as well as from elsewhere around the world picked up on their travels.

Like many others I think that I also suffer just a little bit from this disease albeit on a much less grand scale and with my main focus on paddle steamers. This began when I was a child and I have never been able to shake it off. In those days we children were allowed out and about on our own much more freely than is usually permitted today. From the age of nine I was allowed to take the bus or cycle into town and meander around the harbour on my own. In those days Consul, Embassy, Monarch and later Princess Elizabeth were laid up in the winter with occasional visitors including Bristol Queen, Sandown, Balmoral, Medina and Vecta. In summer there was Consul and then Princess Elizabeth operating from the Pleasure Pier. It really was a paddle steamer wonderland.

Whilst on these regular tours gawping at the paddle steamers I noticed the Head Office of Cosens & Co at 10, Custom House Quay. I walked and sometimes cycled past it many times. I wondered what it was like inside. Then one day I plucked up enough courage to go in and try my luck asking for a copy of the steamer notice for Consul’s trips from Weymouth. I had seen them in display cases around the town. They were quite eye catching with day glow red headers above the steamer notices printed in black on bright yellow paper. They advertised trips to Lulworth Cove, around HM and Merchant Shipping in Portland Harbour, to the Bill of Portland, the Shambles Lightship and further afield to Swanage, Bournemouth and Totland Bay Isle of Wight which seemed so exotic and far away to my young eyes. I longed to put them up on my bedroom wall.

Although in those days the top of my head was barely higher than her counter, the nice lady behind the desk inside on the first floor was most welcoming. She asked me what I wanted. I replied that I was looking for copies of the steamer notices. She fished them out, gave them to me with a smile and I walked out feeling as though I was floating on a cloud. I took my treasured booty away with me to pore over the detail at home and was over the moon to discover that she had given me not only the one for Weymouth but also the ones for Bournemouth, Swanage and Totland Bay/Yarmouth as well. This started my collecting. After that I called again to ask for the latest editions of the steamer notices every week during each season right up to Embassy’s last summer in 1966.

Around that time Dad bought a new typewriter for his work and gave me his old one as a birthday present. I sat at that for hours on end in my bedroom tapping away woefully slowly at first trying to up my initially inadequate keyboard skills. To improve my technique I used to type out the steamer notices over and over again to get my fingers used to where they needed to go. “Afternoon tea cruise towards the Needles Lighthouse Isle of Wight”; “Combined steamer and motor coach tour of the Isle of Wight”. That sort of thing.

As I became better at it my childhood self started to wonder if I could use this new new toy to solicit steamer notices from further afield. So as an experiment I started banging off letters to paddle steamer operators elsewhere around the country asking them if they would be kind enough to send their steamer notices on to me. And, much to my initial surprise, they always did.

For example I wrote to P & A Campbell. They responded by return and even sent me first drafts of what was being planned before the final versions of their steamer notices were printed. I therefore have quite a lot of theses typed, rather than printed, first thoughts in my collection as well as the final products which they sent later. Here is one showing the 1967 season starting on Thursday 23rd March with proposed details for the Cardiff Weston ferry. There is a note at the bottom of each saying “These sailings are provisional and liable to alteration.”

The next one shows the proposed sailings towards of the end of the 1967 season from Cardiff with the last scheduled day trip to Ilfracombe to be on Sunday 8th October.

With Cardiff Queen withdrawn after the 1966 season, the first trips in March 1967 on the ferry service were rostered for Westward Ho which had joined the P & A Campbell fleet in September 1965.

Bristol Queen was scheduled to be out in time to run a three day excursion to the Scilly Isles starting on Saturday 13th May before taking over the longer trips on the Bristol Channel. However there were concerns about whether or not she would be ready for this as she got caught up in an industrial dispute by Cardiff dock workers in April. In the end, and after much nail biting, she did make it and was eventually ready in time.

Bristol Queen was also scheduled to run an unusual “Grand Long Day Trip” from Cardiff to Tenby on Sunday 10th September 1967 calling at Penarth, Weston, Barry, Porthcawl and Mumbles along the way.

However despite extensive work on her wheels the previous winter, Bristol Queen was plagued by paddle wheel problems in 1967. These came to a head with a major failure of her starboard paddle wheel on Saturday 26th August after which she was withdrawn. So she never got to run this special Tenby trip on 10th September and indeed never carried passengers again.

St Trillo was hastily brought south from North Wales to take over Westward Ho’s trips with Westward Ho taking over Bristol Queen’s roster.

Campbells chartered Queen of the Isles the following week to take over St Trillo’s North Wales services.

As another example, in December 1965 Red Funnel introduced the third of their new car and passenger ferries Cowes Castle. I rather liked them. They had bridges which you could stand behind and peer into and which were equipped with a traditional wheel, binnacle and telegraphs. I hadn’t managed to get a trip on Cowes Castle in 1966 but was looking forward to trying to do so at some stage in 1967 so I wrote to Red Funnel asking when she would be rostered. At the same time I also asked for the steamer notices for Balmoral’s excursions that summer. This is the helpful response my younger self received dated 25th April 1967:

My younger self also noticed that at the entrance to Bournemouth Pier in the 1960s there was a large glass fronted display case which contained enormous hand written versions of the usual steamer notices advertising Embassy’s trips. I looked at them with covetous eyes. I thought how nice these posters would look in my collection. But of course they weren’t available. They were in use. I thought about it and thought about it again and in the end plucked up courage to write to Cdr Johnson, Cosens’ Bournemouth manager, asking if I might have them when they were taken down. And sure enough when each in turn was taken down, Cdr Johnson folded it up, popped it into a huge envelope and posted it on to to me at 39, Old Castle Road Weymouth. As a result I have complete sets of them. So thank you Cdr Johnson.

And so it went on. I don’t say that my collecting disease is on the same scale as that of Richard Bonynge. Nor are my possessions anywhere near as valuable as the contents of his Chalet Monet in Les Avants. But my dear little paddle steamer treasures have given me so much pleasure over the decades. They continue to do so today. And over the last twenty five years they have provided such a wondrous source of fascinating paddle steamer material as a basis for these posts.