On Monday 12th March 1934 Brighton Belle was in the shipyard in Barrow-in-Furnace with work continuing to remove her old boiler and install a new one.
She had left Bristol at 08.00 on Monday 5th March under the command of Captain E R Smith and made a good passage on the 300 nautical mile journey northwards in favourable weather arriving at Barrow around 2.30pm the following day. She averaged a speed over the ground of 10 knots on the trip.
The work took about six weeks to complete and she returned to Bristol on Friday 20th April with some minor changes to her appearance. For example the bridge had been turned through 180 degrees with the sticky out bit from the bridge wings which had been at the aft end of it now at the forward end.
Brighton Belle then shared a drydock with P & A Campbell’s Waverley before setting off for another season funning on the Sussex Coast. After all the money spent on providing her with a new boiler it must have been irritating for the management to find that that her high pressure cylinder developed a crack which disabled the ship on Saturday 15th September after the chief engineer forgot to open the cylinder drains during manoeuvring. As a result of this unfortunate episode she had to be towed back to Bristol.
But all that lay ahead. On Monday 12th March 1934 Brighton Belle was in Barrow to have her new boiler fitted.
Kingswear Castle returned to service in 2023 after the first part of a major rebuild which is designed to set her up for the next 25 years running on the River Dart. The Paddle Steamer Kingswear Castle Trust is now fund raising for the second phase of the rebuild. You can read more about the rebuilds and how you can help if you can here.
John Megoran
This article was first published on 12th March 2021.
