13th February 1978:
Lincoln Castle

On Monday 13th February 1978 Lincoln Castle made her last voyage under her own steam. She had been in use on the Hull/New Holland ferry service during the previous weekend starting her day on Saturday 11th with the 06.30 from Hull and making six round trips ending with the 21.50 from New Holland arriving at Corporation Pier Hull about half an hour later.

On the Sunday she made three more round trips in heavy snow starting with the 13.30 from Hull and ended her day at New Holland. She made one run across to Hull with passengers first thing on the morning of Monday 13th before setting off from Corporation Pier around 9am for the Alexandra Dock. She entered the wet dock about twenty minutes later and then the drydock at around 10.30am finally settling down on the dock blocks by the middle of the afternoon.

The original plan of campaign was for Lincoln Castle to be there for a couple of weeks at most for a quick wash and brush up and BOT survey at a low budget cost but unfortunately an issue was discovered with her thirty eight year old coal-fired boiler. With the opening of the new Humber Bridge, which would make the ferry service redundant, then thought to be only a couple or so years away, the management decided that further capital expenditure on any major works on the ship could not be justified. So that was that. Lincoln Castle sailed no more.

After some years as a café in the shadow of the new Humber Bridge she was towed to Grimsby in 1987 for use as a pub and was finally scrapped just a decade ago in 2010.

Her going left the former Lymington/Yarmouth Diesel electric paddler, Farringford, with her independent paddle wheels, to soldier on alone on the Humber until the Hull/New Holland ferry service finally closed for good in June 1981.

This article was first published on 13th February 2021.