On Easter Sunday 16th April 2006 Kingswear Castle was running half hour trips from the Historic Dockyard Chatham on the hour every hour from 11am to 4pm in connection with a large steam event within the dockyard with all manner of visiting steam and other exhibits including steam traction engines, old fashioned fairground rides, vintage cars, lorries, buses and much else.
The dockyard’s own steam railway also played an active part. There was a lot there there for people to do. Hence these short, rather than longer, trips for which visitors had to pay an add on price to the general admission ticket.
KC averaged around 100 passengers on each trip on this day and collected £2,342 in ticket revenue plus £185 in drinks, £92 in book sales, £1.90 in other souvenirs and £29 in snacks. The following day, Easter Monday, we carried slightly fewer passengers, took £1,805 in ticket sales, £166 in drinks, £50 in book sales, 90p in other souvenirs and £45 in snacks.
Overall the revenue for these two days totalled £4,718 which scales up to almost £7K in today’s money taking inflation into account. So when the going was good, as it was this weekend, when the weather was fine and when visitors turned up in these numbers these were two days that were very well worth doing. Set against that there were some Easters over the years when the wind blew, the rain fell and on one occasion I remember we even had some snow. Brrrrr! But for 2006, as for many of these events, they were a real success and a financial money spinner for KC
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 16th April 2021.
