Saxon Shore 7

 

The wheel of life is come full circle, for the paddle steamer Medway Queen. Built, between the wars, to entertain London holidaymakers, with river trips. When hostilities broke out, she found herself pressed into service. First as a mine sweeper. Then, in the flotilla of Little Ships, rescuing embattled soldiers from the Normandy beaches.

After the armistice, she returned, like the troops, to an uncertain civilian future. Demobbed, with a full refit, she resumed her former trade. Shuttling tourists between the Medway, Herne Bay and Southend-on-Sea. Inexorably trade dwindled. Customers lured away, by affordable package holidays on the Spanish Costa's. No longer able to pay her way, the Medway Queen found herself ignominiously relegated to the role of floating night club, on the Isle of Wight's Medina river.

Worse was to follow. An eventual  return to the Medway ended calamitously. Derelict, the Medway Queen sank, at her mooring on Chatham's Sun Pier, awaiting renovation.

Refloated, her bilges filled with concrete, in order to waterproof the rust perforated hull plating, she languished on a mud berth, in Damhead Creek, on the Isle of Grain. Volunteers, from the Medway Queen Preservation society, devoted their weekends to staunching her wounds. But the sheer scale of the task overwhelmed their enthusiastic endeavours.

A  Heritage Lottery Fund grant saved the day. Funding a full, five year, hull rebuild, in Bristol.

 Following which, the Medway Queen returned to her home river and, supported by a European Union (EU) grant, opened to the public from a berth on Gillingham Pier. The ticket proceeds funding further works, completed over the past year, by the specialist steel boat shipwrights of Ramsgate harbour.

In the second week of January, the Medway Queen is relaunched. Leaving Ramsgate under tow by tugs Christine and Nipashore. One ahead. One astern. The seas are calm. The tide fair. A shaft of symbolic winter sun breaks through the grey cloud, lending her fresh paintwork an ethereal lustre.

The three ship convoy winds its way, around North Foreland, and into the lower reaches of the Medway.

Up past the church spire at Hoo, to Gillingham Pier. Full circle. Almost. Back home, sound in wind and limb, but unable to carry sightseers on river excursions.

The extent of her Bristol hull rebuild means that the Medway Queen is classed, by the Department of Transport (DoT), as a new vessel. A high bar on which her Passenger Licence application has foundered. The single skin, riveted plate, construction cannot meet modern safety regulations. As her sinking at Sun Pier demonstrated, a failed rivet, or sprung plate, may lead to the loss of the ship. Her maximum legal compliment is therefore capped at twelve, passengers and crew.

 Denied a DoT Passenger Licence. Cut off from EU financing. The Medway Queen must find a new role in life. The indefatigable volunteers of the Preservation Society battle on with her restoration. Their most pressing task, to replace interior and deck fittings taken ashore, for renovation, last summer.

What does the future hold for the Medway Queen, if she may no longer treat trippers to the delights of a day on the water? 

Rumours abound, of a more prominent, higher footfall, berth. Perhaps as the floating centre piece for a housing development, proposed once Gillingham Docks close in 2025. Or in Dockyard Basin Number 2, at the heart of the existing St Mary's Island residential area, alongside the Watersports Academy. Or as an exhibit within Chatham’s Historic Naval Dockyard.

Link

Medway Queen Preservation Society

Picture Credits

5. Aerial photograph of Medway Queen on Ramsgate slip.     Andy Gutsell

6. Painting of Medway Queen leaving Ramsgate harbour.      David Stearne

1,2,3,4,7,8,9, 8, 9, 10, 11                                                          Me

 

Saxon Shore 10

 

From China, across the squall strewn Indian Ocean . Through the steep, ship-breaking seas, of the Mozambique Channel . To round the Cape of Good Hope, where the meeting of three oceans mounds the waves high . Then the long haul north, the length of the Atlantic, to England . Crowding on canvas for every hour of that fifteen thousand mile passage. 

Taeping and Aeriel vie for the title of first clipper home . Cradling the precious new season's crop, of China tea, in their holds . For the glory . For the fame . For the wealth that it will bring .

Cutty Sark floats serenely on a sea of mullioned glass . The gingerbread work, on her shapely stern, aflame in the winter sun . Framing her famous name.

Her cut-water hull . Built for sea-kindly fast passage-making - and for cargo carrying capacity . Toned and taut.

She reclines resplendent in a Greenwich dry dock berth . Her mighty rig dwarfing skeletal trees and waterfront buildings alike . Standing ready to harness the wind's energy . And transform it, once more, into a silent rush of globe circling speed.

Cutty Sark was launched, on the twenty second of November 1869, into a mercantile world on the cusp of a paradigm shift . 

For the day of the steamship had dawned . And the shortcut Suez canal had opened .  Cementing the economic advantage, of piston power over sail, on the China sea-trade route . She fought to be home first, from Fuzhou, for just eight short years . Before the era of the China tea clippers ended forever.

 Undaunted, Cutty Sark carved a new niche, on the merino wool run, from Australia . Through the Southern Ocean . Riding the icy unfettered winds, of the Furious Fifties and the Roaring Forties, with the wandering albatross . Rounding the tempestuous tumult of Cape Horn ; where steamships feared to swim.

 Storming past the stoic penguins of Patagonia and the Falkland Isles . Slowing in the heat soaked, wind starved, Doldrums ; with the lazily soaring tropic bird circling her mastheads . Leaving Recife, on the bulge of Brazil, to port . Seeking out the north east trades . Swooping home, over the swells of the western approaches.

 Tired and travel worn . Bought and sold . Changing owners, renamed, multiple times . Her fortunes slowly declined, along with her cargoes, over ensuing decades. 

Until, stormbound and disheveled, she sought shelter in Falmouth’s Carrick Roads . Where the seafaring eye, of captain Wilfred Dowman, piercing her crusting of salt rime, perceived her true pedigree . Recognised her as the last of a noble line .  He vowed to preserve her for national posterity.

Cutty Sark's return to the London River has proved her salvation . Likewise, my return today, to the streets of London, has borne fruit. A Visa de Long Sejour is proudly pasted into my passport. Granting, Stargazer and I, the freedom to roam French waters at will, for a full six months this summer.

Picture Credits:

1. 'The Mighty Clippers' by Montague Dawson    Bonhams Auction House

2. Cutty Sark cargo hold                                       Roamingrequired.com

3. Cutty sark stern view                                         CNN

4. Cutty Sark bow view                                          Roamingrequired.com

5. Cutty Sark                                                          Krzystof Belczynski

6. 'Cutty Sark' by Louis Papaluca                         Getty Images

7. Felixstowe container port                                 Me 

8. 'Wandering Albatross in Flight'                        Mike Double

9. Cutty Sark                                                         Lloyd's Register archive

10. Cutty Sark, renamed Ferreira                        National Maritime Museum

11. Stargazer, Carrick Roads, Falmouth              Me

12. 'Sailing into the Sunset,' Falmouth                Me