August 2024:
A Bournemouth Idyll

August 2024:
A Bournemouth Idyll

A lovely shot of Monarch alongside Bournemouth Pier. We know that Cosens bought her in time for the 1951 season and by 1954 she had acquired a crane on the funnel to take the second steaming light after a change in the regulations for navigation lights so this pic must have been taken in 1951, 1952 or 1953. In her time at Bournemouth between 1951 and 1960 Monarch was mostly used to soak up the loads on the very popular Swanage service with departures from Bournemouth at 10.30am (later 10.45am), 12.15pm, 2.30pm, 4.15pm and 6pm and from Swanage at 11.15am, 1.15pm, 3.15pm, and 5pm.

Look through the pier in the first pic and you will see the funnel and paddle box of the Emperor of India. She was mostly used in this period for a double run across to either Totland Bay or Yarmouth with departures from Bournemouth at 10am and 2.30pm returning from the Isle of Wight at 11.30am and 5pm

The first pic was probably taken from Consul arriving to berth ahead of Monarch. You can just see the top of a bit of bulwark with a mooring rope over it. In 1951 and 1952 so busy was the Swanage service that it required Consul to provide additional capacity on the route in the peak weeks. At other times and in 1953 she visited Bournemouth on day trips once or twice a week leaving Weymouth at 10am calling at Swanage on the way where she is seen in this pic taken on 17th May 1952.

I say probably because that first pic just might have been taken from Victoria which up to her last season of 1952 also ran some day trips from Weymouth to Swanage and Bournemouth where she is seen arriving about 1pm on Thursday 14th August 1952. It is hard to tell from the tiny bit of bulwark visible. Just like in the first pic you can see that see she is coming in to berth ahead of Monarch whose ensign and the top of her counter stern can just be seen on the right. Whilst at Bournemouth she ran a short afternoon cruise along the coast towards Hengistbury Head at 2.30pm before setting off for Weymouth again at 4pm.

One paddle steamer missing from the first pic is Embassy seen here arriving at Bournemouth on 22nd July 1955. At this time she generally took the longer day trips away from Bournemouth at 10.15am calling at either Totland Bay or Yarmouth on her way mostly to view the liners in Southampton Docks but also sometimes running to Southsea, Ryde, Cowes, Shanklin, Ventnor or Weymouth or longer coasting cruises viewing Lulworth Cove. She was more economical on fuel than Emperor for these longer trips where the revenue per hour steamed was lower than on the shorter runs to Totland Bay, Yarmouth or the Swanage service.

Capt Haines on the starboard bridge wing of Monarch. We can see that he is leaning on the emergency steering/docking telegraph. The engine room telegraph is out of sight on his right. The face on the port side of the telegraph on which he is leaning had instructions to the steering position in the stern. Handle at the top: “Midships”. Handle fully down one way or the other; “Hard to port”. “Hard to starboard”. Handle in between “Starboard ten, port fifteen”. And so on. The face on the starboard side had instructions for the man handling the rope in the stern. “Heave Away, Slack Away, Hold On, Stop the Capstan, Let Go, Make Fast”. That sort of thing.

Capt Harry Defrates on Monarch’s bridge in June 1960 next to the same telegraph. On his cap he is wearing a Cosens’ company cap badge with an anchor on a black background surrounded by gold leaves surmounted by the Cosens’ house flag.

Cosens’ Officer Cap Badge.

I had some of these made for use on KC after we adopted the old Cosens’ flag as KC’s house flag in the Medway years. We felt it provided a nice link for KC back to the South Coast paddle steamers of yesteryear.

In this pic taken on a breezy summer afternoon about 2.30pm you can see Embassy backing out from the west side of Bournemouth Pier probably bound for the Isle of Wight with the funnel and bridge of Consul visible on the other side awaiting her own departure probably for a trip along the coast “Towards the Needles Lighthouse Isle of Wight” or to Swanage. In the background is Hengistbury Head with the Isle of Wight beyond with the Needles on the right. It is too hazy a day to see beyond that and along the IOW coast to St Catherine’s Point which makes its appearance above the horizon only on fine days.

Here is Monarch approaching Bournemouth Pier in 1960 with the then newly constructed theatre and cafe on the pier.
Embassy backing out from Bournemouth in 1966.

From the end of the war up to the early to mid 1950s was a golden era for paddle steamer rides from Bournemouth with four and occasionally five paddle steamers offering trips in the peak summer weeks. Heaven on a stick really. From then on it was decline all the way with one paddle steamer after another being withdrawn right up to September 1966 when Cosen’s last paddle steamer Embassy made her last trip from Bournemouth. And that was that.

Tiny Point of Detail: Sometime around 1960 when I was nine my Dad bought a new typewriter which he used for official letters in connection with his work as a marine artist and gave me the old one. It was a massive sit up and beg style machine in radiant black with its own distinctive smell of ink emanating from the old and rather worn out typewriter ribbon. When you banged the keys the result did not give a very uniform result of the letters on the page or at least in my inexpert hands it didn’t. So what to type on it? How to get fluent with it? I couldn’t use it for school work. So what else could I type to gain practice? Then I hit on the idea of typing out the contents of Cosens’ steamer notices for the sailings from Bournemouth, Swanage and Weymouth over and over again gradually getting a little bit faster with each practice attempt. And I remember feeling really pleased with myself when my expertise improved to such a level that I could bang out “Afternoon Tea Cruise Towards the Needles Lighthouse, Isle of Wight” at a fair old rate without looking at any of the individual keys on the keyboard. Such were the pleasures of my misspent youth.

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

John Megoran