PICTURES OF THE MONTH - May 2009
The Autobiography of a Paddle Steamer Engine
Browsing through some old 1930s editions of Ships and Ship Models, I found this fascinating article written by a Captain Gregory Ward telling the tale of a paddle steamer engine as written from its own perspective. It all sounds a bit fanciful but the basic facts turn out to be absolutely true. I will give you an update at the end.
But now, in the words of the engine as told to Capt Ward:
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"I was born at Port Glasgow in 1872 and was what may be described as a single, direct action, diagonal paddle steamer engine with a cylinder 49" in diameter and a stroke of 54" (picture above is of a similar single cylinder engine from the paddle steamer Red Gauntlet).
My first ship was the Lady Gertrude (pictured above), and although engines, unlike shipmasters, remain in the same ship, usually for a lifetime, I did not, for reasons which will emerge in due course.
We, and by we, I allude to Lady Gertrude and myself as a unit, were built for the Wemyss Bay to Rothesay service, and all went well until that fatal day, 13th January 1876. It was blowing a gale of wind and we were running full ahead for Toward Pier about noon, when the master gave the order "half speed" and then in quick succession "stop; half speed astern and full astern", this being the best way of handling us in the circumstances. Why my reversing gear failed, or whether I was stopped on dead-centre I do not know but I do know that "stop" was the last order of the series I was able to carry out in spite of the frantic efforts of my chief to bring me over astern.
We were as helpless as a man seized by a cramp in the water and, with the headway on us, we hit the pier, slewed round, made straight for the rocks at Toward pier and piled up. It was nearly at the top of the tide at the time and, albeit everyone aboard was landed safely, the poor Lady Gertude could not be refloated and, breaking her back two days later, went to pieces.
My friend the boiler with which I had been so closely connected since we left the shipyard and which had supplied me with steam so faithfully, remained an object of interest on Toward Point for several years after the Lady Gertrude had disappeared and, when I heard that the owners had decided to salve me, and that I was to be installed in a new ship, I regarded it as a complete vindication of myself in respect to the disaster.
In the year following, having been removed to Greenock, I was fitted into the new steamer Adela (pictured above), which was under completion there, and in the same year found myself back again on the Wemyss Bay Rothesay run. The Adela was a nice little ship, over 200ft long with a beam of 19ft and we got on very well together in the old service for many years, until in 1890 we were sold to a company in the south of England. So, bidding goodbye to the Clyde, we steamed out of the Firth into the broad open sea, bound for Shoreham.
This was a somewhat exciting voyage for us but we accomplished it in three or four days and, entering the harbour were put on the mud by the lockgates at Southwick. We gathered we were to ply from Brighton Pier to the Isle of Wight and to Eastbourne and Hastings, and one morning, with a second mast stepped, our fresh paint shining in the sun and re-registered as the Sea Breeze, we put out between the two black piers of the harbour and took up our new duties at Brighton.
We found the English Channel very different from the waters we had been accustomed to, but the Sea Breeze, ex Adela, was of heavier build than some of my old friends on the Clyde and, for a time, we were quite comfortable.
One day, however, we got a very bad dusting off Beachy Head and our sponsons and paddle boxes seemed to be doing their best to detach themselves from our hull altogether. I wondered if our builders ever realised fully how much she was capable of withstanding if put to it.
To make an open pier in such weather conditions was out of the question so it was decided to land our passengers at Newhaven. We took one great roll whilst turning for the harbour with the starboard wheel completely submerged and the port one performing helicopter like gyrations in the air, which was an indication to us of what we could expect in the future.
It was a few weeks after this that we experiened the thrill of our lives, for which, I regret to say, I felt in the main responsible. We had left Brighton with about 100 passengers for a day trip to Eastbourne, Hastings and round the Royal Sovereign lightship, and the wind, which was blowing from the southwest when we started in the morning, had increased to half a gale on our return to Brighton in the evening and there was a nasty sea running.
At this period a new iron landing-stage was in the course of construction at the head of the West Pier and had been partially completed on the east side only, with an arm of the new stage projecting a couple of hundred feet or so beyond the pierhead itself, forming a sort of bight, open to the south and west. Approaching the west and windward side of the pier very cautiously, we were carried a little too far inshore and the master rang down "full speed astern" which was an order, with the assistance of the chief engineer, I obeyed immediately, and, having manoeuvred into the required position, he rang down "stop", followed by "half speed ahead" to take the way off us as we were still running astern. Then the awful thing happened again. I stopped but could not go ahead. There was no doubt about it this time, I was on a dead-centre and my thoughts flashed back sixteen years to the Lady Gertrude and Toward point and I was obsessed with a feeling of absolute helplessness.
In a few seconds we had run beyond the pierhead and the wind and sea had swept us swiftly into the bight. Heaving and rolling heavily in the big seas, we drifted nearer and nearer to the projecting arm of the unfinished landing stage to leeward and then came the inevitable crash as we struck the iron piling of the stage on the starboard quarter, carrying away 50ft of our bulwarks and staving in the side of the deck saloon. With another lurch alongside the stage we dislodged a section of cast-iron chequered-plate which hurtled end-on through our saloon, as if the deck had been stretched parchment. Again rolling violently to starboard , the standing rigging of our mainmast fouled an iron standard above and, as we fell back to port, the mast broke with a loud crack a foot above the deck and, amid shouts of "stand clear", crashed down over the rail.
Meantime my chief had succeeded in bringing me back to life again and had turned me over dead slow, a revolution ahead and one astern, by way of a test and the captain had got bow lines to the west corner of the pier-head and had started to haul us, by degrees, out of the bight with the forward steam capstan. It was a ticklish business working round that pier-head corner on the knuckle of our sponson but it was done and making fast alongside at the berth we had intended to take orginally, a brow was put out and our passengers landed.
From first to last nobody was injured which was a miracle and we backed out from the pier to make for the sanctuary of Shoreham Harbour with the mainmast down and with the aft deck a jumble of rigging and wreckage.
I have no intention of repeating what the chief told the "old man" and the managing director about me after this adventure but I formed the opinion that the owners had the wind up about the Sea Breeze, for on the completion of our somehwat extensive repairs, it was rumoured that we had been sold to France and were to cross the Bay of Biscay. Rumour had not lied for there came a day when our salon windows were boarded up, our main deck alleyways and gangways turned into temporary bunkers and, taking in final stores, we steamed down Channel bound for Marseilles.
We were fortunate on that run for the Bay looked upon us with a kindly eye and the Gulf of Lyons was not unfriendly but it cut me to the quick when, later on, the red ensign under which I had sailed for twenty two years was hauled down at our stern and the French tricolour hoisted in its place.
Once more our name was changed and henceforward we were to be known as La Course which was the fourth name I had sailed under. But I always retained a soft spot in my heart for Lady Gertrude and Adela.
We had a number of short rips in the Mediterranean and then I have to confess that my memory is becoming a little hazy but I have a vague idea of being sold again and of going to a shipbreaker's yard where I was taken down and melted.
So perhaps today my molecular remains are fullfilling their destiny in the propelling shafts of a crack Atlantic liner running out of Le Havre, or existing in peaceful obscurity in the armour plating of a French battleship. Who knows ?"
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Capt Ward certainly had a novel way of looking at things! But, as I said at the start, the facts he recounts are absolutely true. The Lady Gertrude was built in 1872. She was wrecked at Toward in 1876. Her boiler remained on the beach for many years. Her engine was taken out and put into the Adela in 1877. She was sold to become the Sea Breeze on the Sussex Coast in 1891. The Sea Breeze did have an accident at Brighton after her engine got stuck on dead-centre and she was sold to France to become La Course. The only thing missing is that, after her Brighton accident, E C B Thornton and G Farr recall that she was chartered out to P & A Campbell for a season on the Bristol Channel before taking off for sunnier climes.
Is Captain Ward still alive? Does anyone out there know anything else about him?
If you do, let us know at: info@kingswearcastle.co.uk
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