PICTURES OF THE MONTH - April 2009
Paddle Steamers Juno and Jupiter
I tend to think of paddle steamers as generally having enjoyed long and sometimes very long lives. It therefore always comes as a surprise to me to be reminded that some had short, and sometimes very short operational careers.
The Juno, for example (pictured above), was built in 1937 and enjoyed only three seasons on the Clyde routes for which she was intended from Gourock and Wemyss Bay to Dunoon and Rothesay plus intermediate piers before being called up for war service. Then she was destroyed by German bombing in 1941, a pitifully short career of just five years. Her end was not particularly heroic either. She was not at sea sweeping mines or safeguarding the approaches to UK ports but sitting quietly in the Surrey Commercial Docks in London minding her own business when a bomb in the London blitz scored a direct hit on her.
Her sister the Jupiter had a longer career of twenty four years which is still short by many paddle steamer standards. But, of these, six were spent minesweeping and patrolling as HMS Scawfell during the Second World War and four laid up from 1957 to 1961. That leaves only fifteen years busying herself around the Clyde piers. Fifteen years! That is nothing. That is just 1994 to the present.
The Jupiter's first master was Capt McGlashan pictured above on her bridge. I love these old shots with polished brass engine and docking telegraphs, wooden gratings on the deck to keep the captain's feet dry and the amused and quizzical faces of the old boys themselves, and they seem mostly to have been old boys or at least looked like old boys, who commanded the steamers. As you can see Capt MacGlashan is wearing two stripes with the naval curl on top on his sleeves which was the most common gold braid for UK paddle steamers masters until the mid 1930s when the newer Merchant Navy four stripes with the distinctive diamond started to replace them.
Jupiter returned to her Clyde duties after the war and, along with the Jeanie Deans and the Waverley, was converted to oil firing during the winter of 1956/57. This may have seemed like a good idea at the time with oil prices having been very competitive compared with coal for much of the early 1950s but this all changed shortly after the new kit had been installed as the Suez war pushed the price of oil sky high.
After the 1957 season the Jupiter was laid up and languished in the Albert Harbour for three and a half years. There were occasional hopes that she might have a future elsewhere perhaps being transferred to run on another railway outpost between Portsmouth and Ryde on the the Isle of Wight but nothing ever came of that.
Most exciting of all was an interest from Cosens of Weymouth who looked at her with a view to buying her as a replacement for their Monarch but sadly nothing ever came of that either. And what a shame that was. Wouldn't it have been wonderful if the Scottish Jupiter had become the last Cosens paddle steamer?
Eventually, in 1960, the Jupiter was sold to Ulster Agencies Ltd for a proposed service from Belfast but this fell through and the ship was towed away to be scrapped in Dublin in April 1961 to be reunited in paddle steamer heaven with her sister Juno.