April 2025:
Yarmouth Pier IOW

Before Yarmouth Pier was opened in 1876 paddle steamers called inside Yarmouth Harbour on various Solent connections from Lymington, Southampton, Cowes and Portsmouth with the Solent Steamship Company becoming the dominant player until taken over by the London and South Western Railway in 1884.

After the railway reached Lymington Pier they established their own ferry connection in 1884 across to the new Yarmouth Pier with the PS Mayflower with seasonal extensions on to Totland Bay until 1927 and Alum Bay until WW1. PS Lymington followed in 1893, PS Solent in 1902 and the last purpose built paddler for the route Freshwater in 1927. She was withdrawn in 1959 by which time the crossing was entirely in the hands of roll on roll off vehicle ferries.

Over the years very many paddle steamers and other excursion vessels called at Yarmouth Pier. These are a few of them:

After the 1937 season Cosens bought the forty one year old Duke of Devonshire for a knock down price because of her age and general structural condition and renamed her Consul. They then spent some money refitting and refurbishing her including giving her a new and more modern looking funnel. She was a useful addition to their fleet as she still had a Class III Passenger Certificate for longer coastal excursions from Weymouth, Swanage and Bournemouth. Here she is in 1938, her first season with Cosens, alongside the pier at Yarmouth.

Former Red Funnel paddle steamer Princess Elizabeth returned to Yarmouth running day trips in the peak weeks from Weymouth on Wednesdays and some Fridays in 1963, 1964 and 1965. Here she is pictured leaving Yarmouth Pier with on the left the railway diesel electric paddle driven Farringford departing from, and in the middle the Voith Schneider propelled Lymington approaching, the slipway out of view on the left side of this picture.

In the latter days of Cosens sailings from Bournemouth and Swanage in the late 1950s and 1960s and up to 1966, when she was withdrawn, it was Embassy which was the mainstay of their services to the Isle of Wight. She generally made calls at Yarmouth two days a week each summer, often Wednesdays and Fridays, with calls at Totland Bay on other days. Totland was the shorter distance from Bournemouth and therefore gave more time for the coach connection for a tour round the Isle of Wight. It also provided a saving in fuel avoiding having to steam through the very fierce tides in the narrow approaches to the Solent between Hurst Castle and Fort Albert. However there is nothing much at Totland Bay except the beach so Yarmouth was the more attractive destination for passengers wishing to potter about a charming little town.

The last paddle steamer to call in that long gone era was the Portsmouth based railway owned Ryde in 1969 on a special CCA charter from Southampton.

On the face of it Yarmouth looks a fairly straightforward sort of pier to approach stuck out into the Solent as it is but it has its difficulties. At certain stages in the tidal cycle the current does not run parallel to the pier and tears along at a ferocious rate setting an approaching ship either down onto the pier or off it. And the yacht moorings to the east necessitate quite a steep angle of approach from that direction which doesn’t help. Plus sometimes there are loads of yachts in the vicinity which can impede and mess up a straightforward approach. In the days of this pic there was another berth on the inside, south side, of the pier which could accommodate smaller passenger vessels of 60/80ft from Southampton, Boscombe and elsewhere. This could be really tricky to approach with the tide running from the east to the west at an angle setting the vessel sideways across and onto the berth with some force.

Totland Bay Pier closed in 1931 so after that all paddle steamer calls at the western end of the Isle of Wight had to be at Yarmouth until the pier re-opened in newly rebuilt form in 1951.

Of all the paddle steamers which in later years called at Yarmouth Pier the Railway owned Freshwater was the most regular bringing hundreds of passengers across the Solent from and to Lymington on a daily basis. Here she is seen alongside after she had been sold by the railway. In this pic, now in private ownership and renamed Swanage Queen, she spent a short season in 1961 trying to run between Bournemouth and Swanage with a “cheap day excursion” to Yarmouth offered on some Fridays. Of all her Bournemouth trips these seem to have been the most successful that summer. Rival Cosens noticed this and in subsequent years rostered their Embassy to the same timings for “cheap day excursions” from Bournemouth to Yarmouth on Fridays. So Swanage Queen left a little bit of a legacy behind her.

After Embassy was withdrawn in 1966 and scrapped the following year, Croson took over the service from Swanage and Bournemouth to the Isle of Wight in 1967 with Thornwick, from 1968 to 1973 with Bournemouth Queen ex Caronia and after that with their purpose built Dorset Belles and most particularly Poole Belle. Other smaller passenger vessels also continued to call at Yarmouth Pier including from Boscombe, Southampton, Gosport, Portsmouth, Southsea and Ryde.

Another paddle steamer not a million miles away from this parish has also called at Yarmouth Pier from time to time when in the vicinity over the last forty or so years.

Tiny Point of Detail 1:

For Princess Elizabeth’s visits to Yarmouth in 1965 Capt Woods had the Trinity House Pilotage Certificate for the Isle of Wight District. Mate Arthur Drage had the Trinity House Pilotage Certificate for Weymouth and Portland so they were covered at both ends and did not have to hire a pilot.

In those days and until 1987 Yarmouth was part of the old Trinity House Isle of Wight Pilotage District which included all the waters from west of the Needles through the Solent, Southampton Water and every harbour including Portsmouth and Cowes along the way on out to the Nab in the east. In 1987 Margaret Thatcher’s Government reorganised pilotage nationwide. They took it away from Trinity House and delegated its implementation to Competent Harbour Authorities. Both Southampton and Portsmouth Ports then inaugurated their own pilotage requirements including the approaches to them from the Nab but neither included the Western Solent or the approach through the Needles Channel. This has therefore not been subject to any pilotage requirements, and has has had no pilots available for it, since then.

Trinity House Pilotage Certificates were issued on parchment with a wax seal at the bottom, and were headed “To All to Whom these presents come, the Corporation of Trinity House of Deptford Strond send Greeting”. To obtain them candidates were examined orally by a panel including Trinity House Commissioners , Harbour Masters from different ports within the area, at least one licenced Pilot, and other interested parties on all the finer details of the whole district in the most minute detail.

It was therefore with some trepidation that I went up to the Southampton Harbour Master’s office to take the Trinity House Pilotage examination for the whole of the Isle of Wight District in one go in 1984. Before the panel I had to recite from memory all the courses and distances, plus all the light characteristics and sound signals, for and between all the buoys and other markings on both sides of the channels inwards and outwards from the Western Limits at the Needles, on up the Solent past Yarmouth to Southampton, in and out of Cowes and Portsmouth Harbours and then on to the Eastern Limits at the Nab plus all the depths, composition of the bottom, signals, tidal details, bylaws and other requirements throughout the District. The questions just kept coming from all sides. You answered one correctly. Another panel member shot a different one at you. And so on it went. It was such a huge relief when it was over and chairman of the panel Capt L’Estrange smiled and told me that I had passed. Phew!

Capt Woods would have undergone a similarly thorough examination when he obtained his Trinity House Pilotage Certificate for the Isle of Wight District two decades earlier.

After the changes in 1987 Competent Harbour Authorities started to issue their Pilotage Exemption Certificates, as they were then called, on A4 sheets of paper run off on the office computer rather than on parchment. But the examinations themselves remained just as rigorous and searching as in the old Trinity House days. For this one for Waverley and Balmoral I was examined in 1997 by Portsmouth’s Commercial Harbour Master, the Queen’s Harbour Master, the Senior Pilot, a second pilot and the Port Manager. They took me through every conceivable detail of the district.

At that stage I believe that there were some issues with Waverley at Portsmouth and they were a little reluctant to issue any Pilotage Exemption Certificates to anyone for her. As the exam went on I felt that they were doing their best to try to avoid issuing a PEC to me. But I had done my homework. I knew the area well. As in all exams you either know the answers to the questions or you don’t. And in my view you shouldn’t go up for any exam until you are sure that you do know all the answers to all the questions which you will be asked. But on and on it went. In the end I was sent outside for them to discuss me. When summoned back the Commercial Harbour Master said that they had agreed that I had passed the exam but that they wanted me to have more experience of Waverley in and out of Portsmouth Harbour over and above the statutory requirements so we would still need to take a pilot. On the second day of this the pilot booked just happened to be same Senior Pilot who was on the panel examining me. I am pleased to say that I handled Waverley faultlessly with him watching in and out of the harbour, on and off the Harbour Station as well as turning her in the harbour using a traditional paddle steamer three point turn without the need for tugs. At the end of the day he smiled and said that he would recommend to the Harbourmaster that the requirement to take a pilot with me be dropped. After that I was on my own.

Tiny Point of Detail 2: The tides near the shore in Totland Bay are much gentler than at Yarmouth although there is a pronounced back eddy in which the tide runs in the opposite direction across the pier to what you might expect if you were thinking of it just coming in or going out.

Along the shore they are very gentle and it is a safe beach for swimming. On some days Embassy’s afternoon cruise away from Bournemouth at 2.30pm had a slot from 4pm to 5pm when she lay alongside Totland Bay Pier whilst the afternoon cruise passengers had an hour ashore. Sometimes, if the weather was fine and the sun shone, Embassy’s master from 1963 to 1966 Captain J C W Iliffe, who had the Trinity House Pilotage Certificates for the Weymouth, Poole and Isle of Wight Districts, would don his swimming trunks and take a dip.

Pictures courtesy of Roy Tait and the JHM and PSPS Collections.