Paddle steamer Waverley

I was sitting at my table/desk late one recent afternoon, working on my laptop, when I flicked my eyes from screen to window and noticed an unusual vessel chugging up the Bristol Channel (I am lucky to live in an apartment building on a clifftop overlooking the Channel). It was instantly recognisable: the paddle steamer Waverley. 

I went immediately to the Waverley Excursions website to check the Waverley’s timetable and was delighted to see that the paddle steamer would be in the local area, cruising to various locations around the Bristol Channel, viewing the local islands and sailing along the coastlines of England and Wales, for the following couple of weeks.

I checked when she would be in the local area and, the following Sunday morning, went down to Penarth Pier to watch the paddle steamer depart for her daily cruise and get these photos. You might wonder whether I booked a cruise but no; I’m a very poor sailor so the prospect of spending a couple of hours, even worse a whole day, on a boat is my worst nightmare. I do like to look, though. 

The excursions website proudly announces that, in 1970, the Waverley became ‘the world’s last seagoing paddle steamer’. Built in the world-renowned shipyards on the River Clyde in 1946, for the London & North Eastern Railway (LNER), the Waverley began her working life on 16 June 1947, cruising the waterways of south-western Scotland, from Rothesay to Loch Goil and Loch Long, into Loch Fyne and the Kyles of Bute, and later out to the Isle of Arran, and up the Clyde to Glasgow city centre. 

Since then, the paddle steamer Waverley has been registered as part of Britain’s National Historic Fleet ‘as being a vessel of pre-eminent national significance’. I first saw her over 40 years ago when I lived for a couple of years in Glasgow. At that stage, the Waverley was just beginning the next phase of her life, as the ’history’ page on the National Historic Fleet website explains:

WAVERLEY was sold [for £1, essentially a gift] on 8 August 1974 to the Paddle Steamer Preservation Society and refitted for the WAVERLEY Steam Navigation Company and her livery was returned to the LNER colour scheme of red, white and black. In 1975, she re-entered service on the Clyde, sailing at weekends from Glasgow and in mid-week from Ayr. In 1977, she spent a week on excursions from Liverpool and the success of this led to over a month being spent on the South Coast in the following year. In 1981, she was fitted with a new boiler and embarked on her first full season of Round Britain cruising, with the peak summer weeks spent back on the Clyde.

Between 1990 and 2003 the Waverley underwent a series of refits and restorations, getting new paddle wheels and a new boiler, as well as having her timber refurbished and her paint job restored to her LNER colours. All this has prepared the Waverley for her current busy schedule of cruises in various locations around the British coast. Check the excursions website if you’re a better sailor than me and fancy a unique paddle steamer experience.