BOAT NAME OR TYPE KARIAT
ALASKA
TID 164
VIC 96
STEAMERS AND WORKBOATS Steam, sail and sweat
One of the finest sights in the Pageant is guaranteed to be a matched pair of 85ft (25.9m) steam-powered Thames passenger cruisers from the turn of the 19th/20th century. Still coal-fired, and with their original Sissons triple-expansion engines, Nuneham (1898) and Streatley (1905) were originally built for Salters of Oxford and have now been lovingly restored by French Brothers of Windsor. There’s certainly something about steam, and these vessels have it in spades (or perhaps shovels?) – as does the resplendent Alaska from 1893, a more modest 60ft (18.3m), but immoderately lovely and extravagant in her lines.
20 CLASSIC BOAT JUNE 2012 Traditional workboats offer an
always-intriguing blend of form and function. Compare tugs like TID 164 and Barking, both steam-powered, with the restored Cornish mackerel driver Barnabas, a sailing lugger, or again with victualling craft VIC 96, developed to service the warship fleet and based on the Clyde ‘puffers’ – the maritime ‘delivery vans’ of the Scottish west coast.
Possibly the most
distinguished workboat present, though, will be the Port of London’s ex-launch Havengore, remembered for her part in Sir Winston Churchill’s state funeral, bearing his coffin up the Thames from Tower Pier to Festival Pier.
SCOUT HUT TO SWAN UPPING One of Alaska’s less dignified periods was as a scout hut – Putney Sea Souts punted the engineless hull upriver to Oxford. But with her original engine re-installed, she carried the Queen in 2009 on her first visit to the annual swan upping ceremony.
ONES TO WATCH FOR
WHAT’S A TID? Built for the Ministry of Defence as part of the war effort, TIDs were made in sections by different firms, and welded together by women; 182 were built. But what does TID stand for? MoD records contain numerous versions, based on ‘Tug’, ‘Towing’ or ‘Temporary’; ‘Inshore’, ‘Invasion’ and ‘Intermediate’ and ‘Duty’, ‘Defence’ or ‘Design’. “Or maybe they were just nicknamed ‘Tiddler’ in the yards,” suggests Martin Stevens of the Medway Maritime Trust.
FOUNDER MEMBER Former yacht tender, 1897 Kariat (ex-Puffin) was raised from the bottom of Chichester Harbour to attend the first Steamboat Rally in 1971, and become a founder member of the Steam Boat Association.
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100