PS Medway Queen

The Medway Queen at The Albion Dock, Bristol.

When I was a boy, in the ‘fifties, an annual treat was to board the Paddle Steamer Medway Queen at the end of Southend-on-Sea Pier (an excursion in itself as the pier is a mile and a quarter long and had – has? – a train running its length) and sail south to exotic destinations in Kent, such as Margate and Herne Bay. A highlight of the trip was to visit the engine room, below decks. The engine was massive, oil-fired, made of cast iron with gleaming brass accessories and attended by a number of incredibly well-muscled and tanned dwarfs, who, like the beast they served, were covered in a fine mist of engine oil. No, they can’t have been dwarfs, can they? I have to stop myself imagining that they performed somersaults and juggled spanners as they worked, but, in retrospect, there was certainly an atmosphere of gay theatre about the place. It was very hot and we had to stand behind steel railings. Unintelligible instructions were barked from the captain, way up on the bridge, which arrived via tubes. It was fabulous, darlings! After all this, Herne Bay was, frankly, disappointing with its short, trainless, pier, and I couldn’t wait for the return journey.

I’m not sure if I was aware at the time, but Medway Queen had a proud history, including serving at Dunkirk, rescuing 7,000 men, and minesweeping duties during the war.

After contributing to my childhood memories, she was withdrawn from service in 1963, opened as a nightclub for a while on the Isle of Wight then, in the ’70s and early ’80s, lay derelict.

But, the good news is that she was returned to Chatham, the Medway Queen Preservation Society formed and, to cut a long story short, she was moved to the Albion dry dock in Bristol in 2009 for extensive restoration work. [Note to self: Phone Lloyd-Webber; there must be a musical in this.]

This weekend Bristol held its Harbour Festival, a get-together for anyone interested in boats of all types. We went early on Saturday (because we’d seen the weather-forecast) and I visited the restored hull of Medway Queen. I was talking to one of the volunteers and mentioned that I travelled on the boat, as a small boy, from Southend to Herne Bay. He said that he had lived in Herne Bay when a child and was taken by his parents on the boat to Southend. Now that would have been a day out!

We laughed. Albeit briefly.