Category Archives: Megoran’s Musings

On Saturday 20th December 1919 P & A Campbell’s Britannia left Troon bound for Bristol. The previous day she had left the shipyard of Harland and Wolff where she had undergone

On Monday 19th December 1949 Duchess of Cornwall arrived at Pollock Brown’s scrapyard at Northam, a suburb of Southampton, on the River Itchen. She was built in 1896 as the Duchess

On Wednesday 18th December 1957 Bournemouth Queen was towed away from Southampton for the scrapyard in Ghent. She was built in 1908 for what became Red Funnel as a replacement

On Sunday 17th December 1989 Kingswear Castle ran a Santa Special leaving Strood Pier at 2pm back 4pm and Chatham Sun Pier 2.15pm back 4.15pm. Targeted at families with children we

On Saturday 16th December 1989 we put Kingswear Castle on for a Christmas Buffet Lunch cruise leaving Strood Pier at 12 noon due back at 4pm sailing down the Medway past

On Sunday 15h December 1940 Freshwater was alongside at Weymouth preparing to start a new career the following day. In the Second World War the Government set up an examination service

Having steamed across the Atlantic, with a little help from her makeshift sails, in generally fine weather and with loads of sunshine Eppleton Hall arrived at Georgetown, Guyana on Sunday

On Thursday 13th December 1928 Captain Alec Campbell, one of the two brothers who founded P & A Campbell, was buried at his home village of Kilmun on the north

Having arrived from her builders in Dundee in November, Cleethorpes made her debut on the Hull/New Holland ferry roster on Saturday 12th December 1903 taking the 2.20pm sailing out of

On Thursday 11th December 1941 the starboard sponson of Shanklin suffered considerable damage when the ship was thrown heavily alongside Ryde Pier by the excessive wash from a fast naval craft

On 10th December 1937 Cosens signed the Bill of Sale to buy the Duke of Devonshire from her then owner, Mr Alexander Taylor of Torquay. Built in 1896 the Duke, along

Cleethorpes had arrived on the Humber from her builders in Dundee on 21st November and had spent the next couple of weeks lying alongside at New Holland whilst receiving the

It was unusual for an excursion paddle steamer to be out and about in steam in December. There were exceptions of course and one of these was December 1949 when the

On Friday 7th December 1956 P & A Campbell’s Britannia was towed by two Cardiff tugs from Penarth Docks to the breaker’s yard in Newport. Built in 1896 she was

By Thursday 6th December 1956 discussions were well in hand in Gourock about converting Jeanie Deans, Jupiter and Waverley from coal to oil firing. After the War coal was still

On Friday 5th December 1969 Eppleton Hall reached the midway point in her crossing of the Atlantic. She had set off from the Tyne in September. After making calls at

By Thursday 4th December 1930 Cosens’s Alexandra was on the sales list. In November she had been hauled out of the water onto Cosens’s own slipway at Weymouth for survey. She

On Tuesday 3rd December 1968 Balmoral made her last voyage for Red Funnel from the Royal Pier Southampton round the corner to lay up on the River Itchen at Northam

On Monday 2nd December 1895 the paddle steamer Dover was launched from the yard of Denny of Dumbarton on the Clyde. She and her sister Calais, also on the stocks in the

On Saturday 1st December 1940 Red Funnel’s paddle steamer Her Majesty was sunk in a German bombing raid on Southampton. It was a devastating air attack which did much damage