Megoran’s Musings

On the evening of Saturday 19th January 1963 the Humber ferry Tattershall Castle broke free from her moorings in a storm. The two watchmen, Deck Hand Alan Harrod and Leading

Sunday 18th January 1970 was Eppleton Hall’s first day out in the Pacific having cleared Balbao at the western end of the Panama Canal the previous day. After two days

In their edition for Tuesday 17th January 1961 the Dorset Evening Echo reported that Cosens’s paddle steamer Monarch would not sail again for the company and was now up for

Around midday on Monday 16th January 1950 P & A Campbell’s paddle steamers Britannia and Ravenswood left Charles Hill’s drydock at Bristol, which they had shared, dead ship and under tow

At the turn of the year in 1941 HMS Aristocrat, the ex Clyde paddler Talisman, was posted from Rosyth to Sheerness as an anti-aircraft ship. By 15th January she was

On Sunday 14th January 1968 whilst lying alongside and up for sale P & A Campbell’s Bristol Queen was rammed by the Liberian oil tanker Geodor which was manoeuvring for

On Wednesday 13th January 1937 the paddle steamer Sawbwa was in the process of being deconstructed in the Denny yard at Dumbarton on the Clyde. She had been ordered on

On Thursday 12th January 1989 Pat Bushell and I took a Kingswear Castle stand at the South East England Tourist Board (SEETB) Excursions Fair at Wembley. From the outset of

The German bombing raid on Portsmouth which had started shortly after tea time on the previous day continued on until gone 2am on the following morning of Saturday 11th January

On the evening of Friday 10th January 1941 Portsmouth was the subject of a series of devastating air raids during which one hundred and fifty three German bombers unleashed their

On Friday 9th January 1970 Eppleton Hall was one day away from arriving in Cartagena in Columbia on the north coast of South America. On 15th December she had arrived

On Friday 8th January 1993 KC’s engineering trustee Alan Beavan OBE and I had a meeting with the management of Crescent Shipyard at Strood to sign the contract for them

Looking through the old KC diaries I have here, I see that on Tuesday 7th January 1986 I had a meeting with Lieutenant General Sir Steuart Pringle, then Chairman and

Medina was launched at the Woolston yard of John J Thornycroft & Co at Southampton on Tuesday 6th January 1931. She was to be a twin screw vessel powered by

Friday 5th January 1962 marked the end of the first week of retirement for Captain Noah Rothwell Larkin after a long career as master with Red Funnel. He was sixty-nine.

Talisman lost all power on her approach to Kilcreggan around 5pm on 3rd January 1948 and ran aground east of the pier. There she remained overnight and there she still

On Saturday 3rd January 1948 Talisman was rostered for one round trip on the ferry link between Craigendoran on the north shore of the Clyde and Rothesay. On the return leg

On Wednesday 2nd January 1884 Cosens & Co’s passenger carrying paddle tug Queen assisted by their slightly smaller Commodore led the attempt to salvage the paddle steamer South of Ireland

Sixty years ago on 1st January 1960 Weymouth experienced yet another example of its quite regular floods as the next picture of Consul berthed just upstream of the Town Bridge

On Wednesday 31st December 1958 Charles Henry James Kaile retired as Secretary and General Manager of paddle steamer operators Cosens & Co after a career spanning 56 years with the company

On Saturday 30th December 1967 Queen of the South, ex Jeanie Deans, was in the scrapyard on the River Scheldt in Antwerp. The failure of the business cost her owner Don

Before Christmas in 1993 I was chewing the fat with the nice lady who then ran the marketing department of the Historic Dockyard Chatham over a cup of coffee in

On Thursday 28th December 1967 Queen of the South, which started her career in 1931 as the Clyde paddle steamer Jeanie Deans, was off Vlissingen after her tow across the

On Wednesday 27th December 1967 Queen of the South left the Thames under tow for the breaker’s yard in Antwerp. She was built in 1931 as Jeanie Deans for the

On Boxing Day, Friday 26th December 1902, Cosens’s paddle steamer Victoria inaugurated a new winter service offering a couple of round trips daily between Bournemouth, Boscombe and Swanage, overnighting at Poole

On Christmas Day in 1953 Embassy started to sink at her berth in Weymouth Harbour. Since 1948 Weymouth has hosted a swim across the harbour every Christmas Day. In this current

On Monday 24th December 1883, Christmas Eve, the Great Western Railway paddle steamer South of Ireland left Cherbourg during the evening for the run across the Channel bound for Weymouth.

On Sunday 23rd December 1962 Bristol Queen was still outside Cosens’ workshops in the Weymouth Backwater with any prospect of her returning to the Bristol Channel before Christmas now gone.

On Tuesday 22nd December 1966 Westward Ho arrived back in Cardiff from Weymouth where she had spent the previous nine weeks with Cosens undergoing a major overhaul of both her main

On Sunday 21st December 1919 Britannia was on passage from the Clyde down the Irish Sea and on up channel to Bristol. Having left Troon at 6.20pm the previous evening she

On Saturday 20th December 1919 P & A Campbell’s Britannia left Troon bound for Bristol. The previous day she had left the shipyard of Harland and Wolff where she had undergone

On Monday 19th December 1949 Duchess of Cornwall arrived at Pollock Brown’s scrapyard at Northam, a suburb of Southampton, on the River Itchen. She was built in 1896 as the Duchess

On Wednesday 18th December 1957 Bournemouth Queen was towed away from Southampton for the scrapyard in Ghent. She was built in 1908 for what became Red Funnel as a replacement