Megoran’s Musings

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

On Thursday 30th November 1933 the Southern Railway placed an order with Denny of Dumbarton to build a new paddle steamer for their Portsmouth to Ryde route and for summer

On Friday 29th November 1935 Talisman was, as usual that winter, scheduled to run the LNER ferry services connecting the north bank of the Clyde at Craigendoran to the Holy Loch,

On Wednesday 28th November 1951 Lorna Doone was slipped at Southampton for survey. She had been built as HMS Atherstone in 1916 as one of thirty-two paddle steamers specially commissioned during

Around the low water on Friday 27th November 1903 a diver was sent down alongside the railway pier at New Holland to try to retrieve the port gangway door which

On Thursday 26th November 1903 the Barry Railway Company sent out a press release announcing their intention to run passenger steamers on the Bristol Channel. This was taken up by

Former Clyde paddle steamer Jeanie Deans had been bought by Don Rose in the autumn of 1965. Renamed Queen of the South he had tried to run her on a programme of

On Monday 24th November 1969, Eppleton Hall was on her first day out after leaving Mindello in the Cape Verde Islands on her voyage across the Atlantic to Georgetown Guyana.

On 23rd November the Board of the Southampton, Isle of Wight and South of England Royal Mail Steam Packet Company (otherwise known as Red Funnel) met in Southampton and decided

Caledonia closed her operational Clyde career by filling in on the Gourock to Tarbet mail service between 1st and 8th October 1969. She was then laid up in Rothesay Dock

On Thursday 22nd November 1962 Mrs Cecile Becket, one of the most regular passengers on the Bournemouth paddle steamers after the Second World War, was ensconced as a lodger with

With the introduction of the paddle steamer Cleddau Queen in 1956 for the short Pembroke/Neyland ferry service, the paddle steamer Alumchine, of 1923, became second vessel on the route spending much of her subsequent

Around lunchtime on Wednesday 20th November 1903 the paddle steamer Cleethorpes left the yard of her builder, Gourlay Brothers, in Dundee for the 241 nautical mile run down the east coast in

On Wednesday 19th November 1969 Eppleton Hall was alongside at Mindello in the Cape verde islands. Her master Captain Scott Newhall recounted in his excellent book about the voyage from the Tyne

On Tuesday 18th November 1969 Eppleton Hall was alongside at Mindello in the Cape Verde Islands on her voyage from Newcastle, which she had left in September, to San Francisco. She had

Talisman’s last day in passenger carrying service was Thursday 17th November 1966 when she relieved the Maid of Skelmorlie on the Holy Loch run. By 1966 the large numbers of holiday making passengers

On Wednesday 16th November 1898 Captain William Cosens, brother of Captain Joseph Cosens who had founded Cosens & Co, was buried in Melcombe Regis cemetery having died three days earlier