This is Waverley, the world's last seagoing paddle steamer.
She's currently on a two week foray up and down the Thames Estuary and adjacent coasts. And if you'd been in Gravesend on Sunday evening you could have enjoyed a two-hour voyage up the estuary to Tower Bridge for just one pound.
(sorry, she won't be doing that again)
The paddle steamer Waverley was built in Glasgow and launched on 2nd October 1946, which'd be 78 years ago today. A twin-funnelled pleasure steamer, she spent over 20 years ferrying passengers up and down Loch Long as part of the British Railways Caledonian Steam Packet Co Clyde coast fleet. After being withdrawn from service she was offered to a charity called the Paddle Steamer Preservation Society who bought her in August 1974 for the symbolic price of £1, which'd be 50 years ago. Multiple refits have been needed since, most recently a full boiler replacement, and today she acts as a pleasure steamer not just in Scotland but around the British coast. She's quite the way to travel. [11 photos]
Sunday's special offer came courtesy of a disruption to the intended timetable, and the realisation that rather than running empty from Gravesend to Tower Bridge it'd be better to have some passengers on board. The call went out at lunchtime - anyone for a one-way trip for a quid? - thus a couple of hundred people made their way to Gravesend Pier for a 6:40pm departure. Many lived locally so faced a decision as to how to get back afterwards, and some of us headed out to Kent by train with the prospect of a rather easier journey home. Waverley was moored at the end of the pontoon where the Tilbury Ferry used to depart, her twin funnels (and Paul the purser) waiting to welcome us aboard.
The ship is 73m long so has plenty of room for wandering around, sitting up top or burrowing below. The uppermost public section is aft and open to the elements, with a covered saloon at deck level near the bow for less clement weather. Assuming you're on board for the view and need a seat, these are where you ought to head. Above and below decks are the four hospitality options - a dining saloon, a lounge, a tea bar and a proper bar - depending on whether you're after plated meals, light snackage, a refreshing cuppa or a range of spirits. A souvenir shop helps to keep the charity afloat. But the most amazing thing down below is the engine room, open to public view on two sides, where a 2100 horsepower triple expansion reciprocating steam engine does its thing to make the paddles turn. Come watch the pistons pumping, noisily, while white-coated crew members oversee the whole shebang.
You don't get the scenery of the Scottish lochs on a Thames estuary cruise but you do get low industrial shorelines and intermittent tidal marshes. You also don't get much scenery on an evening cruise, especially when departure time coincides with sunset, so best make the most of the first couple of miles. On Sunday that meant a decent view of the Tilbury landing stage, a gently dimming look at Tilbury docks and an appropriately-shaded look at Grays. By Broadness the red lights at the top of the UK's tallest pylons were illuminated, one either side of the river, and by the time we turned towards the QE2 bridge only a small patch of sky still glowed orange.
The river's so wide at this point that the bridge is the only thing to be seen up close. A curving ribbon spans the estuary at height with tiny vehicles flowing across, southbound only, before disappearing into the dying of the light. And after that the sky was essentially dark, which it could be argued is a twinkling disappointment or could be argued is the best way to look at Purfleet. I had the advantage that I knew what all this looks like because I've walked it in daylight, so I knew that was Erith Pier, that was Coldharbour Point and that was the landfill hillock at Rainham. Thankfully the Waverley also lays on a in-house commentary, delivered live from on deck, and hats off to the gentleman doing that because he was comprehensively excellent.
One thing you really get a sense of from the river is how bendy the Thames estuary is. A landmark off the starboard bow can be off the port bow within minutes, and the first sight of Canary Wharf as a cluster of tiny red dots isn't where you'd expect it to be either. Crossness Sewage Works, unsurprisingly, isn't well lit whereas the new Belvedere incinerator (going up beside the existing swooshy one) is fully dazzling. Those new flats at Barking Riverside are clearly seen, taller but as yet further back than the social stuff at Thamesmead. But it's only once you're past Beckton Sewage Works that the elevated cuboids of illuminated rectangles begin, and then basically never stop all the way to Southwark. The journey's been pretty speedy up to this point, those whirring paddles being capable of 14 knots, but as Woolwich approaches the rules of the river call for slowing down.
The Thames Flood Barrier looks majestic after dark, or at least very orange. Once through you might see a plane landing alongside at City Airport, and then it all starts looking like Fritz Lang's Metropolis with the cabins of the Dangleway pulsing purple in front of the glowing towers of Canary Wharf. I took all sorts of photos along this stretch but they mostly came out as blurry smudges, and I fear a lot of videos being taken from the bow will have been wholly disappointing too. The Isle of Dogs is Waverley's companion for the longest time, briefly joined by the lights of the Greenwich Observatory on its hill, and then you may sense the captain slowing down so as not to arrive at Tower Bridge in advance of its appointed lifting time. We still did.
A round of applause for its engineers because Tower Bridge still looks amazing, especially now it's extra-illuminated after dark. This inspires anticipation, then excitement, as you wait for the bascules to lift and then inexorably they do. I'd seen it from the banks before, and from the bridge, but never raising to allow through the vessel I was on (and its massive mast). Then you're nearlyunderneath, then with a whistle the walkway's right above you, then the folk waiting on the roadway deck are giving you a cheer and the whole one-off event is behind you. Mooring up alongside Tower Pier took several minutes longer, its usual vessels being a lot smaller, and if you watch this video filmed from the ship's bridge on Sunday you can watch Rotherhithe to the Pool of London in 22 seconds flat. [Twitter][Facebook][Instagram]
Waverley is on the Thames until Sunday 13th October, taking in Gravesend, Southend and sometimes Clacton, Whitstable and Folkestone along the way. Several sailings are fully booked, and also cost rather more than the £1 I paid, but a trip on the world's last seagoing paddle steamer will linger long in the memory.
