On Wednesday 16th July 1947 three paddle steamers, Embassy, Monarch, and Princess Elizabeth offered no less than eight departures from Bournemouth Pier during the day not counting the evening single runs back to their overnight berths at Poole.
They would be joined by Red Funnel’s newly rebuilt Bournemouth Queen the following Monday.
This week the pattern of sailings was for either Embassy or Princess Elizabeth to take the day trip to Yarmouth, Isle of Wight with extensions on to Cowes, Southampton, Ryde Southsea, Portsmouth, other island piers or around the Island with the other two rostered for the 45 minute trip each way on the ferry service between Bournemouth and Swanage.
On this day Wednesday 16th July it was Embassy which was rostered to leave Bournemouth Pier at 10.15am for Yarmouth with the option of continuing on to Southampton Docks for those who wanted to stay aboard to get a view of Cunard’s Atlantic liner Queen Mary. She was due back at Yarmouth around 4pm to give her Southampton passengers an hour or so ashore before setting off at 5pm back Bournemouth arriving at 6.30pm.
Meanwhile Monarch and Princess Elizabeth were scheduled to be on the Swanage service and goodness weren’t there a lot of people taking advantage of it as the picture above of Monarch shows.
There were departures from Bournemouth Pier at 10.15am, 10.45am, 12.15pm, 2.15pm, 2.45pm, 4pm, 5pm and 6pm and returns from Swanage at 11.10am, 11.45am, 1.30pm, 3pm, 4pm, 5pm and 6pm. That gives seven departures each way. That’s an overall daily potential capacity on the route of more than 3,000 passengers.
Contrast that with the day trip to Yarmouth with its extensions onwards to Southampton Docks which could have accommodated at best around 700 passengers with many of them getting off at Yarmouth. That’s a potential passenger journey ratio of 15% for the all day trip and 85% for the Swanage service. You can see why two paddle steamers were needed to take advantage of the latter.
Until 1951 when the landing stage on the west side of the pier and the half-way ladders were re-opened congestion ruled at Bournemouth Pier. One way to control the crowds on mid-week mornings like this was to close the pier to promenaders until after the morning boats had sailed. Queues were formed on the promenade separately for each sailing and passengers counted through the pier turnstiles as they paid their 3d pier toll. As soon as the first load was through the next queue was dealt with and so on until there was no-one waiting.
Dating from 1888, Monarch looked a relic from another age even in 1947. By then she was nearly sixty years old—well beyond her design life—but had been kept going by Cosens’ legendary ability to keep ships in service long after their sell‑by date, undertaking major structural work on and off during the winters through their own Weymouth shipyard workforce and at cost price. Even so, 1949 was to be her last season, after which she was scrapped at Milford Haven.
The weather this week also seems to have been in the paddle steamers’ favour with the press reporting “these hot days”. That’s what you want for solvent excursion paddle steamer operation: radiant sunshine, flat calms and plenty of them.
When Bournemouth Queen joined Embassy, Monarch and Princess Elizabeth the following week, the usual pattern was for two of the ships to work the Swanage service, one to run two round trips from Bournemouth to Yarmouth, Isle of Wight — one in the morning and one in the afternoon — and the fourth to take the longer day excursions to the more distant destinations. All four generally spent at least one day a week on the Swanage service.
The detailed rostering varied, but of the four the ships most often scheduled to run from Bournemouth to Southampton during the peak summer weeks was Princess Elizabeth.
Kingswear Castle returned to service in 2026 after the second part of a major rebuild which is designed to set her up for the next 25 years. The Paddle Steamer Kingswear Castle Trust is now fund raising for future rebuilds. You can read more and how you can possibly help here.
John Megoran
This article was first published on 16th July 2021.
