March 2025:
Audrey

Capt Shippick’s Audrey has a significant place in Medway and Thames excursion steamer history in providing one of the earliest links in the chain of expansion which culminated in the building of one of the UK’s largest excursion passenger vessels Royal Daffodil for cross Channel work in 1939.

Let’s start at the beginning. With a strong entrepreneurial flair in his makeup former Cosens’ employee Capt Sidney Shippick set up in business on his own account in 1912 buying the wooden clinker built 73ft LOA paddle steamer Advance which had been built in 1904. He steamed her round to Poole from Dundee under his own command and, according to E C B Thornton, encountered bad weather along the way and had to take shelter in Ramsgate.

Renamed Studland Belle Capt Shippick put her on a service between Boscombe, Bournemouth and Studland where passengers were transferred onto a pontoon which was hauled to and from the shore. This did not compete directly with any other paddle steamer service from Bournemouth and provided an easy link to Studland in the days before the chain ferry started running across Poole Harbour entrance. E C B Thornton records that Studland Belle did not regularly run to Swanage although she was advertised for one sailing from Poole to Swanage on Sunday 3rd August 1913. This was a particular novelty in breaking the Sabbath as in those days Sunday was a day of rest not only for the paddle steamers at Bournemouth but also for the population at large.

Capt Shippick’s first experience of paddle steamers was sailing as Chief Officer, under Capt Rawle, of Cosens’ Majestic which was built in 1901 for longer coastal excursions and cross Channel work to Cherbourg.

E C B Thornton, in his excellent book South Coast Pleasure Steamers, records that a correspondent told him that after serving as mate of Majestic Capt Shippick became “seriatim captain of Empress and Victoria“. My parents gave me a copy of this wonderful and much treasured book as a Christmas present in 1962 when I was eleven. I did not then know what seriatim meant and fondly wondered if it might be some special designation of some sort of special captain: the “Seriatim Captain”. But no – a visit to the dictionary revealed that it simply means “consecutive”.

In a letter to the Bournemouth Echo dated 7th February 1957 about the then situation of paddle steamer excursions in the area Capt Shippick recounted that he had been the last master of Brodick Castle which was withdrawn in 1909.

Unfortunately Studland Belle caught fire during her 1913/14 winter layup and, being made of wood, was completely burnt out. Capt Shippick cast his eyes for a replacement and hit upon the 126ft LOA Audrey which he would have noticed in 1911 when briefly she was on charter to Cosens at Weymouth. She had been built in 1897 for service on the Tyne before being acquired by the Cork Steam Packet Company in 1909 and then by the Cork, Blackrock and Passenger Railway Company in 1913 for tendering work in and around the waters of Cork.

For 1914 Capt Shippick expanded his service with his new Audrey to include calls at Swanage and a trip up Poole Harbour in the afternoon which was dubbed as a handy marketing tool “The Dorset Lakes”. Billed as the “New Studland Belle” Audrey was programmed to start the day at Poole at 9am before steaming on to Boscombe 10.15am, Bournemouth 10.45am for Studland 11.15am and then on to Swanage 11.45am. She then returned via Studland to Boscombe for another departure at 2.15pm and Bournemouth 2.45pm once again for Studland 3.10pm and Swanage 3.45pm before setting off for Studland again and a trip round the “Dorset Lakes” around Brownsea Island and then back to Studland and Swanage 5.30pm for Bournemouth, Boscombe. The steamer notice says 6pm return but that must have been a tight fit as Cosens allowed a journey time between Swanage and Bournemouth of 45 minutes.

Note the New Studland Belle didn’t break the Sabbath in 1914 with no trips advertised for Sundays. The steamer notice also proclaims “25 Miles of Smooth Waters” which is perhaps a subtle dig at other paddle steamer operators in this arena whose vessels took to the high seas steaming off to more exotic destinations which if there was a little bit of wind blowing carried the possibility of an uncomfortable ride and worse the potential prospect of mal de mer amongst the less hardy ladies and gentlemen passengers aboard.

I love this shot of Audrey at Bournemouth in 1914 with the captain’s hand reaching out of the small wheelhouse window to ring the engine room telegraph sited on the deck below.

Unfortunately during the summer of 1914 war was declared and that was that for the excursion trade with Audrey serving Bournemouth for only that one summer. Paddle steamers would not return to the area to take people afloat for a trip on the briny until 1920 and those that returned did not include Audrey.

It sort of goes without saying that wars are terrible things to be avoided at all costs given their destructive power both in terms of human life and annihilating assets. But nonetheless it can’t be denied that there are those who do quite well out of them. For example If you run a shipyard you may reasonably expect repeat orders of every ship you build every twenty five to thirty years or so as they become life expired. In a war the ships you build may get sunk and so you may get repeat orders much quicker.

Excursion paddle steamer operators have ever had seasonal business models prone to interruption by weather and collecting revenue for less than half of any one year. In a war if you can charter your steamers out for year round Government work that may be a much more lucrative option. And one of the reasons why some UK excursion paddle steamers had such long careers well beyond their design lives was because they took part in wars after which the Government provided funding often of sufficient magnitude to strip them back to nothing and rebuild them up again with new decks and steelwork when returned to their owners.

And so it was with Audrey. She moved to the Medway for war time Government work carrying people about within the port year round and most particularly as a ferry to the new Royal Naval Air Station at Kingsnorth. She did not return to peacetime seasonal operations with Capt Shippick until 1922.

In a stronger financial position after the war Capt Shippick founded the New Medway Steam Packet Company, to which he brought his Audrey. He then built the Medway Queen, converted two WW1 paddle mine sweepers for excursion work as Queen of Thanet and Queen of Kent, added other second hand tonnage to the fleet and was the driving force behind building the large diesel excursion ships Queen of the Channel, Royal Sovereign and Royal Daffodil for service on the Thames and across the Channel to France.

Contrast Royal Daffodil at 299ft LOA and 2060 GRT built in 1939 with Capt Shippick’s first commercial enterprise using Studland Belle at 72ft LOA and 72GRT in 1912/13 and Audrey at 126ft LOA and 203 GRT in 1914.

Capt Shippick retired after the war to live between Bournemouth and St Helier in Jersey and continued to take a passing in interest in operations from Bournemouth Pier suggesting in letters to the press in the 1950s that perhaps it was time to revive cross Channel excursions. However he lived on to see the complete collapse of the large excursion steamer market around the UK he had done so much to promote with the smaller passenger vessels of not dissimilar size to his Studland Belle and Audrey from then on in the ascendant.

Born on 6th October 1878, Capt Sidney John Shippick died in Bournemouth early in 1975 aged 97, sixty four years after he first set up business in 1912 carrying passengers on a modest scale between Boscombe, Bournemouth and Studland.

With the addition of other second hand tonnage to the fleet for the last part of Audrey’s Medway and Thames career she was based at Ramsgate for local excursions. She was finally withdrawn and sold for scrap in September 1929 after an operating career of thirty two years.

Tiny Point of Detail: In his book British Pleasure Steamers 1920 – 1939 Geoffrey Grimshaw says rather dismissively of Audrey “She was a very ugly steamer: her appearance was ruined by an absurdly tall funnel situated abaft the paddle box.” Ouch! Of course the enthusiast community is filled with people of diverse opinions sometimes loudly expressed and that’s great. Long live diversity I say. But as someone who has spent so much of my life so closely associated with another paddle steamer with her funnel abaft her paddle box, I think that what Geoffrey said was a tiny tad harsh. In Audrey’s defence in my view she was “such a smart little craft, such a neat little, sweet little, bright little, tight little, slight little, light little, trim little, prim little craft”. (With apologies to W S Gilbert.) I also feel a little bit of a soft spot for her not only because she is more KC size than many paddle steamers built on an altogether grander scale but also because she followed a not dissimilar career trajectory to me running on the South Coast and then gravitating to work on the Medway and Thames. We share the same basic background scenery. We both sailed past Aunt Betty, Folly Point and Burntwick Island on a regular basis. And as an added bonus, with a funnel of that height I bet she had a thundering good draft up through her boiler.