Category Archives: Pictures of the Month

After dry-docking in Southampton, Consul returned to Weymouth on 14th May 1964 to start her new season of sailings with a completely new colour scheme from the rather eccentric shades

Sixty years ago, Cosens’s Monarch had her inner funnel, which protruded ever so slightly above her outer funnel, renewed. Inner funnels tend to corrode away as they are mounted in

It made a good story. Portsmouth greengrocer Alec Rose sails around the world single handed in his own boat. Ha Ha. The little man, the amateur, the greengrocer had Titfield

Now I live in Weymouth once again I walk around the harbour pretty much every day and it does look so empty. No ships at all and most particularly no

Emperor had ever been a difficult ship. Built in 1906 as Princess Royal for what became Red Funnel she did not meet her design criteria and so was lengthened in

Britannia was the third of a trio of sisters including Westward Ho! (1894-1946) and Cambria (1895-1946), built for P & A Campbell as their services expanded on the back of

Stadt Luzern alongside at Fluelen on Lake Lucerne at 2pm on Sunday 21st October, 2018 her last day in service before being withdrawn for a major rebuild which is expected

Wingfield Castle was built in 1934 off the same plans, and launched on the same day, as her identical sister Tattershall Castle by Hartlepool shipbuilder William Gray & Company on

Built in 1912 by Escher Wyss of Zurich, Neuchatel sailed on the three connected Swiss Lakes Neuchatel, Biel and Murten until 1972 when she was withdrawn and started a new

The paddler Diessen alongside at Stegen on the Ammersee about forty minutes from Munich.

Built as recently as 2002 the Herrsching on the Ammersee, close to Munich, represents the ultimate design of the passenger excursion paddle steamer and is the model for which, if

In 1947 Red Funnel were short of their best excursion steamers with both Balmoral and Lorna Doone (pictured above) having been returned from war service in such poor condition that

E C B Thornton recounts in his excellent book South Coast Pleasure Steamers (which has been my constant companion since it was given to me by my parents as a

In the aftermath of the Second World War, paddle steamers in Britain initially did rather well, with four new ones built between 1946 and 1953, including Bristol Queen, and about

As the 1950s wore on and cars for wide spread personal use were on the up, it became clear that the winds of change would blow the Clyde paddle steamers

Sixty years ago, 1958 was an absolutely terrible season for P & A Campbell’s Bristol Channel paddle steamer services. The company was already in deep financial trouble trying to continue

In the spring of 1967 a small group of PSPS Wessex Branch members visited the paddle steamer Embassy in the Backwater at Weymouth shortly before she was towed away to

Between 1922 and 1930 four coal-fired paddle steamers Squires, Gordon, Will Crooks and John Benn were built by J Samuel White of Cowes for the short Woolwich free ferry crossing

On the 18th June 1936 Bournemouth Corporation introduced a new set of byelaws, sanctioned by the Minister of Transport, to regulate the use of Bournemouth Pier to replace an earlier

The steaming time from Hastings to Shanklin was scheduled as five and a quarter hours each way, although adverse tides could extend this, so if you add that on to