17th July 1900:
Balmoral

On Tuesday 17th July 1900 Balmoral ran her inaugural cruise for directors, shareholders and other invited guests from Southampton having arrived from her Clyde builders fresh and sparkling three days earlier.

Two years before, in 1898, P & A Campbell had decided to take on the paddle steamers of the Southampton Company (later Red Funnel) and Cosens and give them a run for their money. They opened an office in Southampton and stationed their Cambria in the area to compete directly. Cambria was larger, faster, more modern and altogether more luxuriously fitted out than anything else then operating in the area.

This put the wind up both the Southampton Company and Cosens. Yet Cambria’s size was a mixed blessing: she was harder to fill, more expensive to operate and not ideally suited to the short, local excursion trades that were reliable money‑spinners. Even so, she represented a real threat, and both companies rose to the challenge.

The Southampton Company responded by ordering Balmoral in 1899. She was designed to be 11ft longer than Cambria and to have a service speed of no less than 20 knots. E. C. B. Thornton, who sailed on her often, described her in his excellent book South Coast Pleasure Steamers (Stevenson & Sons, 1962):

“The thrust of her big two‑cylinder engine caused her passengers to sway to and fro. A trip on her was an exhilarating experience and designed to blow the cobwebs away. She had a full‑length and full‑width promenade deck with a spacious saloon aft and a dining saloon below that. She had one funnel whose white paint was apt to get rather brown with the heat and very smoke‑stained at the top.”

The Southampton Company put Balmoral on long day trips eastwards to Brighton, and westwards to Bournemouth, Swanage, Weymouth and sometimes Torquay, as well as across the Channel to Cherbourg. She was at least the equal of Cambria and some said she bettered her.

Cosens replied by building their Majestic in 1901. She was slightly smaller but still fast and capable of crossing the Channel.

Fierce competition continued until the end of the 1902 season, after which P & A Campbell upped sticks and moved away to muscle in on the paddle steamer business along the Sussex coast instead.

On the one hand this was clearly a relief for both the Southampton Company and Cosens. On the other, it left them lumbered with two steamers that were really too big and too expensive for the long‑distance excursion market that remained.

Balmoral was always a difficult ship to fill except in peak weeks or when the sun shone, and her operating costs were higher than any other paddle steamer in the fleet. As a result, she invariably had the shortest season.

Her cross‑Channel days were long and demanding. Sometimes she ran directly from Southampton to Cherbourg, calling at Southsea, Sandown and Shanklin on the way; sometimes she went via Bournemouth. Either way, departures were early — occasionally as early as 7am — and returns were late, with Balmoral not back until after 10pm. Eastbound trips to Brighton, and later to Eastbourne, were generally away by 9am and again not home until around 10pm.

The Channel crossing was always hostage to the weather. On borderline days she sometimes sailed when perhaps she shouldn’t have, and damage was occasionally the result — extra stresses on her hull, machinery and, most critically, her boiler.

Boilers dislike being pushed. They prefer steady firing and a constant water level, neither of which is possible when a ship is tossing about in a lively seaway with the water slurping around inside. On a long excursion the water level inevitably drops a little; if the feed pump is not performing perfectly, it can drop more than a little. Combine that with stokers who may be slow to keep an eye on the gauge glasses, plus the ship pitching and rolling, when the water level gets lower you risk momentarily uncovering the tubes or furnace crown — never a good thing.

Balmoral seems to have got through her boilers at a remarkable rate, needing renewals just seven years after being built and again in 1920. Compare that with Consul, which ever ran a gentler schedule and took her original boiler with her to the scrapyard 72 years later.

All excursion steamers were lightly built to keep weight — and therefore draught — down so they could reach piers in shallow water. The downside was that their hulls worked in a seaway, putting stresses on the whole structure and on the machinery. Paddle steamers had flexible couplings in their crankshafts or paddle shafts to absorb some of this movement, but even that was not always enough. On 3rd September 1929 Balmoral’s main paddle shaft snapped off Old Harry Rocks while she was running between Bournemouth and Swanage.

What Happened to Them in the End?

Majestic foundered in the Mediterranean on war service in July 1916.

Cambria spent most of her later career on the Bristol Channel and, after service as a minesweeper in the Second World War, caught fire in August 1946 and was subsequently scrapped.

Balmoral continued on her familiar routes until the Second World War. She was not returned to service afterwards and was scrapped in 1949.

Tiny Point of Detail 1: From 1907 to the end of her peace‑time career in 1939 Balmoral had only two peace-time masters: Capt A. Goldsmith, who retired in 1938, and his former mate Capt C. J. Lintott, who took command for the 1939 season.

Tiny Point of Detail 2: After sailing with an open bridge for almost her entire career, Balmoral finally received a small wheelhouse before the 1939 season. Did Capt Lintott have a hand in that decision?

Tiny Point of Detail 3: Wind was not the only weather that caused trouble. Fog could be just as difficult. In the days before radar and satellite navigation, getting about in thick fog meant setting a course, steaming for however long the captain had calculated to the next waypoint, and hoping to pick up a mark or hear the ringing of a buoy or bell on a pier. If the captain was not confident of the ship’s position, the sensible thing was to anchor and wait for the fog to lift.

During her forty‑year career, Balmoral did this many times. More than once she dropped anchor as dusk fell, leaving passengers to make the best of it until first light—some of them using lifejackets as makeshift pillows as they tried to catch a bit of sleep on the deck.

This article was first published on 17th July 2020.