Category Archives: Pictures of the Month

Many paddle steamer masters stayed with their ships for very many years. For example, the Medway Queen had only two peace time masters, Capt Bob Hayman before the Second World

Good news of sort from Lake Geneva. The Helvetie, which was withdrawn after the 2001 season and has since lain in a gradually deteriorating state in the harbour at Lausanne

Today the ferry from Southampton to the Isle of Wight takes us only to Cowes. In the 1930s, when these pictures were taken, and indeed right up to 1968, there

PS Emperor of India in September 1950 laid up in the Backwater. On the promenade deck the varnished seats have been piled up and packed away under a tarpaulin to

With no less than nine paddle steamers, the Saechsische Dampfschiffahrt Company at Dresden owns and operates the largest and oldest paddle steamer fleet anywhere in the world. Here are four

Alderney is the third largest of the Channel Islands although much smaller then either Guernsey or Jersey being only three miles long and about a mile wide. It has never

It is an autumn day and we are off in search of one of Switzerland’s rather less well know paddle steamers, the little Fribourg, which is tucked away in the

The paddle steamer Unterwalden returned to service on Lake Lucerne this summer after a major renovation which included a new boiler, new decks and much else. Pictured here at Fluelen

Brian Waters has had a life long love of paddle steamers fostered by childhood trips back in the 1930s aboard Cosens’s paddlers at Bournemouth, including their veteran twin funnelled Monarch.

The Bordein was one of five paddle steamers ordered from Samuda Brothers of London from 1862 by the Khedive for their Ottoman use to expand Egyptian rule in Sudan and,

The Paddle Tug United Service was built in 1872 by Wodehouse of North Shields with the hull constructed from a combination of elm and oak strakes ranging in thickness from

1960 was the last summer season in which Cosens based two paddle steamers at Bournemouth with a third coming up from Weymouth to augment the schedule one or two days

Lake Geneva Paddle Steamer Simplon has just emerged from a major re-build and refurbishment. Here she is seen arriving at Lausanne Ouchy on Saturday May 21 2011 ready to take

Apparently today’s newly married royal couple are not taking a honeymoon, well not yet anyway, with William heading back to work with his helicopters next week. How different from when

Browsing through a copy of the magazine “Ships and Ship Models” for April 1936 I came across an article on a paddle steamer I had never heard of before, the

Paddle steamer twins? Well they were not born on exactly the same day of exactly the same month in exactly the same place but these two paddle steamers were built

Built in 1932 by Cammell Laird of Birkenhead for the General Steam Navigation Company service from London to Margate and Ramsgate, the Royal Eagle was the zenith of UK excursion

It is more than forty years now since paddle steamers regularly wintered at Newhaven on the Sussex Coast. Here we have the Portsmouth paddlers Ryde and Sandown alongside, resplendent in

There is sad news from Lake Geneva. Vevey was withdrawn from service at the end of September and, as yet, finance for her proposed refurbishment and re-engining has not been

What is particularly surprising about this paddle steamer breakdown, which occurred off the Needles in 1935, is the ship. The Whippingham was not some old, clapped out and perhaps poorly