Medway Queen heads to Ramsgate next week.

ashtead said:
Pleased to hear that -will the nightclub be returning though or what are the plans to restore? I guess a tad more work than needed for a Fulmar?
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The restoration has been a series of major hiccups. When she arrived in the Medway she was moored alongside Chatham Historic Dockyard and shortly afterwards she sank. This caused her to detoriate quickly. She was repaired with concrete and pumped out. Work was slow and she looked a mess and the Dockyard wanter her gone. She was then towed to Dam Head Creak near Kingsnorth Powerstation where over a long period she was "repaired". This was by basically unskilled volunteers at weekends. Eventually the Medway Queen was moved to Gillingham Pier for easier access and more prominet position. Eventually they applied for a Heritage Lottery grant to repair the hull. She was loaded on a barge and taken to Bristol. Here the hull was rebuilt but they did too good a job and the hull was now considered a new hull not a restoration. This means she is no longer technically a historic ship and subject to current regulations. As she cannot meet current design requirements and will never be able to do excursions like the Waverley as she is now restricted to 12 paying passengers. This does not really matter at present as she has no engines, so can hold functions at Gillingham Pier to raise funds without a limit on numbers. Not all this info is on their web site but told to me by some local experts.
Medway Queen Preservation Society
 
oldgit said:
Pix taken while sentenced to 7 days Hols on the IOW. Poss late 1970s ?

more Paddles on The Mudway.

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Good photos oldgit.

The second photo is of the Kingswear Castle. She used to run on the Medway (1985 to 2012) but insuficient bookings meant she move to a more tourist based area of Dartmouth. Interestingly she was chartered to the US Navy during WWII and worked from Dartmouth. I remember chatting with the chief engineer a number of times about the difficulty of running the Kingswear Castle.

The third photo is of the steam paddle tug John Amos, currently owned by the Medway Maritime Trust. Steam Paddle Tug John H Amos
 
Seem to recall stories , that two tugs were actually built, years after paddles were known to be rubbish compared to screw. The navy commissioned them anyway.
Both proved to be hopelessly under powered and both vessels were relegated to moving stores around.
Scuttlebutt. The other tug was taken to the USA, restored and is there still ?

My old Dad giving a PS a shove round off Sun Pier, pretty sure it was the PS Waverley.
Had to have tug in attendance to turn round.........
 
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Habebty said:
The RN paddletugs (at Pompey)were diesel with independently controlled paddle wheels, and I can remember seeing them as a child in the 70’s. They were very manoeuvrable.

Diesel paddle tugs.
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Thanks for the link - a good find. But the photo it took me to says the tugs are at Devonport not Pompey.

It was most unusual to have independent control of the paddles on any paddler bigger than a funfai pladdleboat driven by a child with a crank handle in each hand.

In my earliest years, I lived in Cardiff and about once per year we would take one of Campbell's White Funnel steamers to Weston-super-Mare departing from Cardiff docks or Penarth pier. As was standard, the engine was a double expansion with the crankshaft athwartships and a paddle wheel on each end, so berthing in the docks was cunningly planned in order to be feasible without tug assistance. Stll, immense skill from the master and the deckhands with line handling, particularly in a blow.

In the late 1990's, I was firtunate enough to get a day on the Kingswear Castle, departing London Bridge Pier, up under Tower Bridgd to the Pool, where the master accoplished what must have been getting on for a 30 point turn to head us back down under the bridge for a ride down almost to the barrage and back to London Bridge. The wider river made the second turn less impressive, but the master accoplished both with great finesse.

My most recent paddle steamer pasage was in 2017 from Halfpenny Pier aboard the Waverly. A neat spring off the pier then out of the harbour and up the Wallet to Clacton, where we turned with plenty of room and headed back to Harwich, we took on a pilot to head up the Orwell, where we had tug assistance to turn off Cliff Quay before heading back down to berth again at Halfpenny pier.

Seems that today folk are more cautious in handling thee cumbersome vessels than they were in the last century, and perhaps that's for the bes, bug my admiration for the masters and crew of the ones that managed without tug assistance remains.

Peter.
 
Anecdotes that PS were not allowed to operate paddles independantly... Urban Myth or some truth. ?

Restored funnel and paddlebox of MQ waiting to be refitted.
 
Most cannot do so independently by design as they have the paddles physically joined on a common crankshaft, it's unsafe and likely to cause a roll over. Paddle tugs with the ability to run paddles in opposite directions only ever did so at very low speed and otherwise the two crankshafts were locked together for safety.
 
penfold said:
Most cannot do so independently by design as they have the paddles physically joined on a common crankshaft, it's unsafe and likely to cause a roll over. Paddle tugs with the ability to run paddles in opposite directions only ever did so at very low speed and otherwise the two crankshafts were locked together for safety.
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Shame that she has no engines yet. Nevertheless , moving in the right directios.

How about connecting a nice big seagull outboard engine to each wheel via a belt from those classic flywheels ? .
 
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