Coastal Passenger Liners of the British Isles

PREFACE

At the beginning of the last century it was possible to sail from London to Glasgow via south coast ports and Belfast, returning along the east coast from either Dundee or Leith for as little as £5. Circumnavigation of the coast was provided seasonally by M Langlands’ steamers from Liverpool, and a passenger and cargo service from Belfast north-about to the Tees was also on offer at £6 return. The coastal passenger and cargo liner was then in its heyday and catered both for the first-class tourist as well as keenly priced second-class fares for the likes of football fans following away matches. The coastal liners competed, and remained competitive on some routes, with the railways, most notably the London to Newcastle service offered by the Tyne-Tees Steam Shipping Company. But the Depression of the 1930s coupled with competition from both railway and the motor coach spelled the end for most of the coastal liners. This, combined with losses incurred in the Second World War, left only a few ships each offering just a handful of passenger berths.

The days when 300 passengers were landed twice weekly at Grangemouth or Dundee from the London boat are long gone. Sadly, these wonderful steamer services are also largely forgotten and this book aims to stir the memory of readers. It is a nostalgic reminder of Hibernian Coast and Caledonian Coast sailing from Liverpool to London until the 1960s; it paints a picture of Bernicia and Hadrian disembarking passengers for the City at Southend Pier in the early 1930s; it describes the express east coast passenger routes and the more relaxed west coast services; and it recounts the evolution of the steamers from the days of the sloops and schooners running down the east coast, and the rantapikes of the west coast.

Various written works have been both an inspiration and an invaluable source of information that would not necessarily have been apparent from company records and other archive material. The work of the late James Layton recorded in Tees Packet (the Teesside Branch World Ship Society journal) on the Tyne-Tees Steam Shipping Company is invaluable and I am grateful to Harold Appleyard and Roy Fenton for finding this material. The history of the Carron Line by Ian Bowman is equally important. Others have helped in gathering information and in collecting suitable images for the book, including staff at a variety of libraries and maritime museums, and Tony Shields is thanked for preparing the images for publication. Unless otherwise credited, all the photographs are from the author’s collection, original sources unknown.

As always, the role of reader or editor of a draft manuscript is important. The author is indebted to Malcolm McRonald, recognised expert on Coast Lines, and to Iain Hope, expert on Scottish coastal shipping, both for critical review and provision of information, and to Donald Meek for ensuring that the finished text is meaningful.

The well-known maritime artist Derrick Smoothy offered to create a cover picture for this book after admiring the cover of my book An Illustrated History of Thames Pleasure Steamers, which is from a screen print by his friend Harry Hudson Rodmell. The painting of London reproduced on the cover of this book was one of the last works completed by Derrick Smoothy, who sadly died in 2009. This book, with its magnificent cover is, therefore, dedicated to the memory of Derrick, who has left us all a wonderful and plentiful legacy of maritime paintings.

Nick Robins

Crowmarsh, Oxfordshire

1  LONG, LONG AGO

… at the beginning of the nineteenth century the British short sea liner trade was in the hands of the sailing packets, usually cutter rigged, and cargo smacks. Packet routes were widespread, but sailing packets found the new stagecoaches hard to match, yet sea travel offered more comfort unless the weather was severe. It was steam which cured some of the uncertainty and ensured much improved schedules for mail and passenger.

From C V Waine, Coastal and Short Sea Liners

The coastal passenger liner, in its various forms, was born long, long ago in the twilight years of stagecoaches and the embryo era of railways. Once the marine steam engine was reliable enough to power a wooden paddle steamer beyond the confines of a river estuary with reasonable safety, passenger travel by coastal steamer was bound to become an acknowledged and attractive alternative to the rigours of an overland journey. Coastal travel by steamer focused chiefly on London as its main hub and soon became the preferred option, the more so with Irish passengers who were faced with a sea crossing come what may. Coastal liners, passenger and cargo steamers plying between mainland ports in the British Isles, developed their own culture and a dedicated following, and rapidly became a specialist niche vessel. But the railway network quickly spread, and the coastal liner turned more towards luxury travel with the prospect of a relaxed arrival at the chosen destination. It remained a viable travel option into the 1960s when the Coast Lines Group was forced by escalating costs to withdraw its Liverpool to London passenger service offered then by Pacific Coast and Hibernian Coast.

Just as the golden era of the British coastal passenger liner had passed by the 1930s, so the companies, the ships and the crews became largely forgotten. Paradoxically, it is perhaps easier today to visualise the crack ‘Princess’ coastal passenger liner fleet of Canadian Pacific and the ‘Prince’ liners of Canadian National Steamships on the Pacific coast routes of Canada based on Vancouver. It is also relatively easy to recall the competition between the Howard Smith coastal liners and those of the Australasian Steam Navigation Company in east Australian coastal waters. But who remembers the Scottish east coast passenger liners Highlander, Lochnagar and Fingal, or the younger generation of ships, such as London, Royal Fusilier and Avon? And what about the London-based steamers, such as Woodcock of 1906 and her successor of the same name built in 1927, which the Scots challenged head to head in competition for the trade to and from London and the east coast ports?

The London (1921) was a popular vessel with limited passenger accommodation on the Dundee to London route

A Carron Line advertising postcard showing the magnificent two funnelled Avon (1897)

…and the Carron (1909)

The most prestigious UK services were undoubtedly the east coast express Scotland–London services offered by Carron Line, London & Edinburgh Shipping Company, Aberdeen Steam Navigation Company and the London-based General Steam Navigation Company (GSN), which vied among others for the available trade. Other routes had a more relaxed outlook, for example, the various Glasgow and Liverpool services that were on offer to London via Plymouth and Southampton, although the Dublin and Cork routes to London were highly competitive in the early days. But London was not the only destination, and services also developed from Liverpool north to Glasgow, the Western Isles and Orkneys, from Belfast north-about to the Tees, from Aberdeen to the Tyne and Humber and between Glasgow and various Bristol Channel ports.

The earliest coastal passenger voyage by steamer was almost certainly that made in 1815 by Argyle, which carried two passengers from Dublin to London on her delivery voyage from the Clyde to new owners in London. The passengers were Isaac Weld, Secretary of the Royal Dublin Society, and his wife. Argyle was only 65 feet long and of 70 tons register. The officer in charge, Captain George Dodd, had just one engineer and one fireman, making a brief stop in the lee of the Welsh coast to rest the stoker and to allow the engineer to oil his engine. The average speed of the vessel at sea was about 6 knots. On arrival at Portsmouth, an Admiralty court martial was hastily adjourned so that the Commander-in-Chief, three admirals and an array of captains could inspect the vessel and enjoy a trip around the harbour. Once at London, the wee Argyle was anglicised by renaming her Thames, and put to work between London and Margate.

Of course, the West Highland passenger steamer service from the Clyde was truly the pioneer, when Henry Bell’s Comet forsook the estuary where she was built to trade, and commenced a service to Fort William via the Crinan Canal in 1819. In December 1820, this vessel was wrecked near Craignish, and was succeeded by Highland Chieftain.

Following the incorporation of GSN in 1824, the newly formed company was quick to develop a passenger service between London and Great Yarmouth with its wooden paddle steamers. The service soon progressed north to compete with the Humber Union Company and its service between Hull and London, and north again along the coast to Leith in competition with the London & Edinburgh Steam Packet Company. The latter was swallowed up by the expanding GSN empire in 1836, placing GSN ahead of the pack on the east coast route for some years thereafter (the Humber company, also, was eventually taken over by GSN, in 1842). One of the Edinburgh ships acquired by GSN was Monarch, which was three years old. A glowing description of her in the contemporary press reported ‘that she is larger than any of His Majesty’s frigates, longer than the 84 gun ships of the day and able to make up 140 sleeping berths and accommodate 100 in her dining saloons’.

Many established companies were content to stay with the tried and tested sailing smack and let others experiment with newfangled steam technology. In the North Sea, the smacks were armed with carronades (see Chapter 2) and pistols as defence against Napoleon’s raiders. By 1824, the Dundee & Perth Shipping Company and the competing Dundee & Perth Union Shipping Company had twelve smacks trading to London, offering four regular sailings per week. Following an agreement between the two companies in 1826, only two sailings were offered each way, as Graeme Somner reports in his history of the subsequently formed Dundee, Perth & London Shipping Company:

Of the 23 vessels … 13 were smacks which were principally employed on the London sailings, departing twice weekly on Tuesdays and Fridays so as ‘to avoid sailing on the Lord’s day’. The average passage time was 5 days 17 hours southbound and 6 days 12 hours northbound. The master of such a vessel was paid £50 per year plus commission of 7½% on the passage money received, and an allowance of 10/6d per round voyage for expenses.

Arrival of the London Packet in Leith Harbour 1822 (FROM AN OLD PRINT)

The smacks reigned supreme until 1832 when another threat emerged on the London route in the form of the Glasgow-owned steamers, Liverpool and Glasgow. This precipitated a somewhat belated decision by the board of the Dundee, Perth & London Company to charter the paddle steamer London Merchant, and commission two new ships to see off the rivals. In an instant, the passage time was reduced to thirty-eight hours.

Although the wooden-hulled paddle steamer started work on the east coast routes in the 1820s, sail was not wholly overtaken until the 1870s. Regular cargo services were maintained by smacks before the top-sail schooners were introduced in the late eighteenth century, the latter soon to be in direct competition with the steamers. The Clyde to Mersey route was the last to give in to steam, when the romantically named rantapike schooners (a rantapike is a rakish young lass) and other remaining sailboats were retired in the 1850s.

The introduction of the steamer on the west coast of England was hastened by the need for government to maintain contact with Ireland – its ‘largest colony’ following the Act of Union in 1801. Bristol was an obvious focus for trade with its easy travel to London, while Holyhead Island was also identified as useful, should the road to the capital be improved. In 1822, the Saint George Steam Packet Company steam packets Saint Patrick and Saint George maintained a regular service between Liverpool and the Clyde via the Isle of Man, and Dublin or Cork to Bristol. The competitive and privately owned War Office Steam Packet Company’s Palmerston was in service between Bristol and Dublin via Tenby and George IV between Bristol and Cork, also via Tenby, by 1823.

A regular service was inaugurated between Dublin and London in 1826 by the Dublin & London Steam Packet Company with the paddlers Thames and Shannon. These were joined in 1827 by City of Londonderry and in 1829 the route became a four-ship service when the new William Fawcett was commissioned. It is the latter that is widely, but erroneously, credited to be the first ship owned by the fledgling Peninsular Steam Navigation Company in later years.

While Thames was wrecked with the loss of sixty men off the Scillies in 1841, Shannon attracted attention when she caught fire at Plymouth five years later, as Graham Farr reports in his book West Country Passenger Steamers:

She had arrived at her moorings in the Cattewater, from London, at 2.30 am on a thick foggy night. At about 5.30 smoke was seen rising through the cabin floor, and some loud orders to rouse the crew caused panic among the passengers, numbering 120 or more. To make matters worse a rumour circulated that there was gunpowder in the hold, and two women plunged overboard, being saved by a seaman with difficulty. Others scrambled to a coal hulk which was alongside. At six the Shannon was put ashore at Cattedown and scuttled an hour later. The passengers were hurried ashore, but those berthed aft lost their heavy baggage. The police came to protect the ship-agent, and fire engines came from various insurance companies as well as the army and navy. With great difficulty the fire was got under control …

From 1818 onwards, the Clyde had a steamer service to Belfast. The first vessel on the route was David Napier’s Rob Roy. She was soon joined by others, including the Clyde Shipping Company’s steamer Rapid, which was resold to GSN for service between London and the near Continent in 1825. The Belfast to Liverpool steamer service commenced somewhat erratically in 1819 with George Langtry’s Waterloo, and became surer footed in 1824 when the Belfast Steam Packet Company’s Shamrock was introduced to the route. The link between Dublin and Glasgow was started only in 1836 when the Dublin and Glasgow Sailing & Steam Packet Company was formed to manage the 200-ton wooden paddle steamer Arab.

Within a short time, a host of coastal, rather than cross-channel, steam packet services developed. The small size of the early and somewhat erratic and smoky steam paddlers promoted services from the shallow riverside quay at Dumfries to Liverpool, from Liverpool to a variety of Welsh ports, none of which we would associate with shipping today and, of course, north from London to a variety of east coast destinations. In 1821, the Leith & Aberdeen Steam Yacht Company based its steamer Tourist at Leith, calling at up to eight intermediate locations, and arriving at Aberdeen some twelve hours later. The established Aberdeen, Leith & Clyde company, which had smacks on the route, retaliated by commissioning its own steamer, Velocity, for the same service. The fare between Leith and Aberdeen was rather expensive, being 21s (shillings) saloon and 12s steerage (21 shillings is equivalent to £1 and 5p in today’s money and 12s to 60p; there were 20 shillings to a pound and 12 pence to a shilling in old money). The march of the wooden passenger paddle steamer was unstoppable, or so it seemed. Services blossomed between the most unlikely ports, and carried passengers and goods ranging from groceries and provisions to livestock, machinery and other valuable items.

The nineteenth century hosted several significant technological breakthroughs, all of which directed the evolution of the coastal passenger liner. Boiler pressures rose steadily from the three atmospheres of the early paddlers to working pressures of 200 lbs per square inch, when the triple-expansion engine was introduced in the latter part of the nineteenth century. Passengers’ fears that speed could be gained at