Monuments

Railways 200: a maritime perspective, Part Three

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All Aboard!

In the last blog we looked at the 19th century rise in passenger travel and the drive to make the connectivity between trains and ships an ever more seamless experience for both passengers and cargo. But how could that experience be made even more seamless?

Train ferries: the beginnings

The answer: by making it multi-modal! The concept had its origins in Scotland, on boats on the Forth & Clyde Canal onto which railway wagons were loaded from the Monkland & Kirkintilloch Railway from 1833 onwards [1].

As stated in Part Two, the new ‘rail and sail’ technologies were brought into use on existing routes, with trains serving existing ports. In the next – also Scottish – case, this included ferries traversing the Firth of Forth. The passage across from Burntisland to Granton evolved towards a conventional train-ferry-train arrangement, but from 1850 onwards trains were rolled on to the purpose-built paddle steamer Leviathan and rolled off again at the other end. This permitted the carriage of ‘goods, minerals, etc. without breaking bulk’, i.e. without having to be unloaded from the train, loaded on to the ferry, unloaded off the ferry, and once more loaded onto the train. [2]

‘The first experimental trial took place on Wednesday last . . . 12 trucks, laden with coals and general merchandise, were taken on board at Burntisland in about seven minutes. The time occupied by the steamer in crossing was 25 minutes, and the trucks were safely run ashore at Grandon in the course of three minutes afterwards.’ [3]

The train ferry had a 40 year lifespan until the Forth Bridge – still in operation today – effectively replaced it in 1890.

Train ferries: the 20th century

There was a short-lived attempt to run a train ferry to the Isle of Wight between 1884-1888 [4] but it would not be until the First World War that the concept of the train ferry came into its own again in UK waters – more specifically, English waters – meeting a critical need. The Richborough train ferries came into being, with corresponding infrastructure built at Calais and Dunkirk, shuttling war matériel back and forth across the Channel. These were known simply as Train Ferries 1 to 3 (TF1 to TF3). [5]

Historic black and white print of the hull of a vessel propped up by timber props (left of image). The sheer size of the hull casts shadows and dwarfs the tiny figures working underneath (bottom right of image)
Building a Cross-Channel Train-ferry : Underneath the bows (Art.IWM ART 1481) Part of a series by the artist recording shipbuilding on the Clyde, this image is sometimes labelled in other collections as Building a Cross-Channel Ferry. If this is indeed a train ferry, it almost certainly references TF3, which was built on the Clyde by Fairfield, Govan.
Muirhead Bone, Wellington House and Ministry of Information Commission, First World War Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/2634

The then new-fangled medium of film provides extraordinary footage of the train ferry berthing at Dunkirk, a locomotive reversing from landside and coupling up with the wagons, filled with tanks and shells – which also illustrates that the modus operandi was to carry rolling stock only and be re-linked with a locomotive at the other end, not to run a locomotive onto the ferry. Aerial photographs – again a remarkable new hybrid technology facilitated by the war, of camera equipment on board aircraft – of the train ferry making the crossing with wagon-loads of tanks, confirm that locos did not also make the crossing. The film and aerial photos also show that the train ferries were painted in dazzle camouflage – a temporary measure adopted in the latter stages of the war (see our blog on March 1918 for more on dazzle camouflage).

Multi-modal transport here intersects with the temporary – the military train ferries and the ship camouflage regime – in a conjunction of new technologies and new ideas.

Historic black & white photograph of railway wagons on either side of a train ferry, with empty tracks in the middle. The ferry is in port being loaded as the gantry is visible in the background. Wires from the vessel's superstructure criss-cross the foreground.
First World War train ferry
Science Museum Group Collection © The Board of Trustees of the Science Museum https://collection.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk/objects/co417786/horwich-collection CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

TF4 was built at Cammell Laird, Birkenhead, for the St. Lawrence River in Canada, but was also rendered obsolete three years after delivery by the opening of the Quebec Bridge in 1917. [6] She was navigated back to Britain for the Southampton-Cherbourg train ferry run over 17 days, which, in a transatlantic landscape of war, was no mean feat for a fairly evidently slow vessel that would have proven very vulnerable both to deep-sea waves and any lurking enemy dangers.

TF4’s time on the Southampton-Cherbourg service was also to be brief, ending in 1919, but she was a remarkable vessel which operated differently to the others, with a platform that could be lowered to connect with the landward end, rather than using linkspans to ‘bridge the gap’ as TF1-TF3 did.

Modern photograph of train ferry model in glass case
Model of the Leonard at the Williamson Art Gallery & Museum, Birkenhead, where she was built, on showing rolling stock conveyed on the raised platform which could be lowered as required. Wikimedia Commons Creative Commons 3.0

Rolling on into the mid 20th century

It would not be until the early 1920s that the train ferries would once more be put to use for their intended purpose, in a joint Anglo-Belgian enterprise between the Great Eastern Ferry Company Ltd. and the Société Belgo-Anglaise des Ferry Boats, for a service to be run from 1923 onwards between Harwich and Zeebrugge. [7]

The question was how to transport the landside infrastructure at Southampton to Harwich. The proposed solution was to ‘load the bridge on one barge, and the towers and machinery on another’ in tow of the tug Plumgarth in early September. This did not end well. ‘When out in the North Sea the weather became very rough, and the continued heavy rolling motion caused slight damage to the barge with the tower on it, and she started to take in water.’ [8]

The master of the tug tried to reach Harwich, but ‘. . . the waves pounded in between the two barges, causing one to drag on the other in a submerged condition.’ [9] The incident occurred on the 5th of September and by the 12th the wreck sites of the barges and the infrastructure had been marked in a Trinity House Notice to Mariners. [10] By the following week one of the barges had been raised, with salvage works ongoing. [11] By the beginning of October the ferry bridge (or linkspan) had been brought ashore at Harwich, but it was not possible to raise the towers.

History does not record whether the second barge was recovered, but it may have been underneath the towers. The wreckage was cleared by explosives, since it lay in the fairway on the approaches to Harwich, but the site is now uncharted, suggesting that any archaeological remains may, at best, be level with the seabed. [12]

Fortunately the towers from Richborough were still available to mesh with the linkspan from Southampton and the Harwich-Zeebrugge service commenced operations in 1924.

Historic black and white aerial view of Harwich harbour, with the train ferry docked in the foreground, with rails running onto the ship at bottom right. The shoreline is seen at right with other ships berthed or moving about in the harbour.
Trinity Pier and the Train Ferry Berth, Harwich, 1952 EAW043676 © Historic England Archive

The Harwich train ferry continued in operation until 1987, alongside the Night Ferry service between Dover and Dunkirk, introduced in 1936. Both services ceased operations for the duration of the Second World War, while the train ferries once more went to war, and TF3 was lost to a mine off Dieppe in 1945. [13]

A vintage colour poster advertising 'The Night Ferry' train service, featuring a nighttime scene with sleeping cars and train details, over a timetable advertising the nightly service in both directions between London and Paris. The poster has evidence of streaks which look like water or oil damage to the left.
British Railways (Southern Region) Night Ferry poster, Barber, 1953
Science Museum Group Collection © The Board of Trustees of the Science Museum https://collection.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk/objects/co231568/the-night-ferry CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

Both services resumed post-war, the Dover-Dunkirk service ceasing operations in 1980, but the Harwich-Zeebrugge ferry managing to survive until 1987. The berth at Harwich was listed at Grade II that year. [14]

Modern colour photograph of the 1923 gantry, painted in grey, and rusty dock infrastructure, under a cloudy sky.
View of the gantry towers at Harwich Train Ferry Berth from the south-east, 2014
DP165500© Historic England Archive

Trains on board ship

We have seen that small ships could be carried on trains in kit form, and we have also seen that full trains (minus their locomotives) could be carried on board ship, fusing the two modes of transport together. There were other circumstances in which ships carried trains, including locomotives, and other railway materials – wheels, carriages, sleepers, and so on – primarily for export during the expansion of the railways during the 19th century. At that time these export cargoes were often described by the catch-all term ‘railway iron’.

Our earliest example of such a wreck is the Ann, lost in 1844 off Whitby with a locomotive consigned from Newcastle for one of the south coast railways. [15] Even though Britain’s railways were booming, there was no other way to get stock to its intended destination on a network that was not yet fully joined up.

Thereafter losses of ships carrying railway components occurred with some regularity, and underline the truly international nature of Britain’s railway exports. The English brigantine Spartan stranded in Cornwall during a storm in 1846, with ‘railway iron’ from Cardiff for Livorno, for example. [16]

In 1849 the Archelaus of New Orleans foundered at her anchors off Lundy Island, again bound from Cardiff with ‘railway iron’ but for New York. ‘Railway bars’ were regularly brought up from the wreck over the course of the ensuing six months by a number of local vessels engaged in the salvage operation. [17]

Occasionally the wrecks would involve three countries: Britain as the manufacturer and exporter of the railway components, the destination country to which they were consigned, conveyed by a ship belonging to a third country. A good example is the Dutch galliot Jonge Wirther, which again stranded on the Cornish coast en route from Cardiff to Stettin (now Szczecin) in 1846. [18]

The export trade in British railway technology was truly global. The American full-rigged ship Cornelia likewise foundered off the Isles of Scilly while bound from Greenock for Santos in Brazil with rolling stock and railway components in 1861. The Palala was wrecked on Kimmeridge Ledge, Dorset, in 1886 while bound for Durban with a general cargo including wines, candles, tins of paint, and eight railway carriages. [19]

A modern colour 3D scan of a shipwreck showing railway wheels and machinery, covered in sediment.
Perspective view of the Brackenholme and her export cargo of rolling stock components for Denmark lost off St. Catherine’s Point, Isle of Wight, following a collision in 1865 with HMS Supply.
Maritime Archaeology Trust

Such exports continued into the 20th century, including railway carriages consigned for France in the First World War: see our blogs for the Africa, 1915, and St. Chamond, 1918, which also makes a comparison with the Fort Massac, lost in the Thames Estuary with a loco from Darlington consigned for South Africa in 1946.

One story that comes up over and over again with consignments of ‘railway iron’ is its propensity for the cargo to shift, with predictably disastrous results. This happened to the full-rigged ship Ganges in 1881, stranding on the Goodwin Sands en route from Middlesbrough for Calcutta; the clipper South Australian, which foundered off Lundy in 1889 while bound from Cardiff to Rosario (and now a Scheduled Ancient Monument). [19]

Possibly our most extraordinary story of an unfortunate railway cargo concerns the English schooner Georgiana, bound from London for Cork with railway sleepers in 1881. She ran aground near the Manacles and ‘signals of distress were made by pouring paraffin on an old sail and lighting it.’ Though this was successful in alerting rescuers to the crew, it was disastrous as it ‘ignited some of the creosoted railway sleepers’ and burnt the vessel to the waterline. [20]

Coming full circle: the last rail & steamship experience

And finally . . . no blog linking the sea with the railways is complete without referring to the Southend Pier Railway running for most of the length of the Grade II-listed pier, the longest pleasure pier in the world. The pier head is approximately 1 and a third miles out to sea on a stretch of mud flat shoreline in which the sea can recede up to a mile at low tide. Since the pier head therefore stands in deep water, the pier thus served a practical purpose in enabling vessels to draw alongside to take trips out into the Thames Estuary.

This tradition continues today with the regular visits to the pier by paddle steamer Waverley, the last sea-going steamer still operating in the world, to pick up passengers for pleasure cruises in the Thames. Part of the experience is taking the train out to sea! And so we come full circle, for the Waverley was built for the London and North-Eastern Railway (LNER) in 1947, just before the railways were nationalised in 1948.

Historic black and white aerial view of the Southend Pier Railway stretching over water from top left to lower right: the railway is seen in operation with a train towards lower right
A train near Middle Landing on Southend Pier, 1928 EPW024886 Source: Historic England Archive

We hope you’ve enjoyed your voyage on the high seas and the connections we’ve made between trains and ships!

With many thanks to Andrew Wyngard, railway consultant for this blog.

Logo celebrating 200 years of train travel since 1825, featuring stylized numbers and a train graphic.

Footnotes

[1] Hennessey R 2016 ‘The Train Ferries: Part One’ Backtrack (30:11 661-667); ‘The Train Ferries: Part Two’ Backtrack (30:12, 742-747)

[2] ‘Melancholy Accident at Burntisland’, The Scotsman, 30 January 1850, No.3,137, p3

[3] ‘The Floating Railway across the Forth’, Bell’s Life in London & Sporting Chronicle 10 February 1850, p2 [issue not numbered]

[4] Hennessey 2016; Burns R 2023 ‘Train Ferries’, Maritime Archaeology Trust online

[5] ibid. ; Batchelor, S 2014 Port of Richborough and the birth of the cross-Channel train ferry Railway Museum online

[6] Hennessey 2016. She was converted post-war into the oil tanker Limax, and was broken up at Kobe, Japan, in 1932 (Report of Total Loss, Casualty &c. for Limax, 26 January 1932, LRF-PUN-W639-0101-W)

[7] ‘The Harwich Train Ferries’, Harwich and Dovercourt: a time gone by, online (nd); National Heritage List for England, Harwich Train Ferry Berth, official list entry 1187897, first listed 1987

[8] ‘250-ton Ferry Bridge Lost: Lighters founder six miles from port’, Lancashire Daily Post, 6 September 1923, No.11,307, p4

[9] ibid.

[10] Notice to Mariners No.64 of 1923 Liverpool Journal of Commerce, 15 September 1923, No.30,232, p6

[11] ‘The Sunken Train-Ferry Bridge’, Staffordshire Sentinel, 18 September 1923, p3

[12] Shields Daily News, 4 October 1923, No.20,150, p6; ‘The Harwich Train Ferries’, Harwich and Dovercourt: a time gone by, online (nd); examination of UKHO data in and around the position quoted in [10] above

[13] The Loss of the Train Ferry HMS Daffodil Maritime Archaeology Trust, online

[14] National Heritage List for England, Harwich Train Ferry Berth, official list entry 1187897, first listed 1987

[15] Historic England NMHR records

[16] Historic England NMHR records

[17] Historic England NMHR records

[18] Historic England NMHR records

[19] Historic England NMHR records

[20] Historic England NMHR records; Royal Cornwall Gazette, 25 February 1881, p6

Railways 200: a maritime perspective, Part Two

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Full Steam Ahead: Tourism and Freight

In the second part of our three-part Railways 200 special we go full steam ahead . . .

If the railways and the steamship were virtually born together, they also grew up together. The railways not only facilitated the development of new ports and new markets: together they enabled both domestic and international travel for work, study and leisure. They opened up tourist travel, which percolated down the social classes as workers’ holidays began to gain traction with employers and the law – especially to the seaside, to ‘London-on-Sea’ at Southend and Brighton, and to other resorts. Nowhere was it easier to access the sea by rail than at the Kent resort of Ramsgate, decanting passengers straight onto the beach.

Historic B&W aerial photograph of Ramsgate Harbour Station, showing people walking straight from the station onto the beach; a park and genteel terraces in the town are shown in the upper register of the image
Ramsgate Harbour Station, 1920. Ramsgate Harbour Station was operational between 1863 and 1926.
EPW000093 Source: Historic England Archive

Isambard Kingdom Brunel and Bristol

Elsewhere passengers started their overseas journeys by rail. Trains provided connections with steamship and ferry services. Bristol is a city which became a transport hub – Isambard Kingdom Brunel’s transatlantic steamer and early ocean liner, the SS Great Western, entered service in 1838, followed by the SS Great Britain in 1845. (A liner is a vessel that provides a regular ocean-going passenger and/or cargo service between two or more fixed points, in this case Bristol and New York.) From 1841 the Great Western Railway (GWR) terminus at Bristol, also designed by Brunel, provided a connection for passengers to and from the liner, with a hotel also built for the convenience of passengers.

Modern colour photograph, Brunel's old station now beside a busy road with plenty of car traffic. The front elevation is built of cream limestone but areas behind, such as the side returns and chimney stacks, are built of less prestigious and darker Pennant stone.
Brunel’s Old Bristol Station, 2013 adjoining the present-day station. Its Tudor Revival style with its crenellations and oriel windows gives an impression of age and prestige
Peter Broster Wikimedia Commons CC-BY-2.0

In this case the connection was not entirely seamless, as passengers still had to traverse the city, and potentially stay overnight in the hotel, but it is a travel cityscape which sprang from the brain of one man – and one which is still legible in the city today with the Grade I-listed old station next to the present-day Temple Meads (itself built in the 1870s), Grade II-listed hotel (known today as Brunel House) and SS Great Britain in preservation in the city.

Modern colour photograph seen looking down from a nearby window over the SS Great Britain displayed in dock and 'dressed overall' with flags flying between her six masts. and the city beyond. The river is seen to left and foreground.
SS Great Britain in Bristol, 2025
© Anthony O’Neil, geograph.co.uk CC BY-SA 2.0

How many visitors to Bristol today alight from Temple Meads, with Brunel’s original station on their right, to see the SS Great Britain and realise that they are following in the footsteps (or perhaps train wheels!) of passengers making the original transatlantic connection?

The Port of Liverpool and the Great Western Railway

Another ‘nearly seamless’ integration between the railways and port infrastructure can be seen in the Great Western Railway warehouse and office on the dockside at Liverpool, dating from the late 19th century. The GWR did not actually reach Liverpool itself, but goods could be moved by barge between the GWR’s Morpeth Dock at Birkenhead [1] and their warehouse at Liverpool alongside the Manchester Dock (filled in: now underlying the Museum of Liverpool) – a reminder that the railways also joined up with canal and river traffic in many different locations.

Modern colour photograph of Liverpool: edge of dock in foreground with propeller to left and steam crane to right, with the black & white hull of the ship just beyond in the middle ground. The deck lies under the lower roof of the warehouse saying RAILWAY, while the upper structure lies beneath the upper roof structure of the warehouse with the words GREAT WESTERN RAILWAY, creating a visual echo in the composition, also echoed by the building works beyond, and the varied heights and sizes of the Port of Liverpool and Royal Liver Building domes at the top of the image.
In this 2009 photograph the Great Western Railway warehouse is sandwiched between dockside infrastructure and the museum ship Edmund Gardner on the one side and on the other the dome of the Port of Liverpool building, with the Royal Liver Building beyond – two of the iconic ‘Three Graces’ of Liverpool fronting the River Mersey.
DP073748 © Historic England Archive

The rise of passenger travel

As the great age of the steam liner expanded, so also did the railways, and the two fed off one another, not only in Britain, but in parallel developments in other countries in Europe and elsewhere. This in turn enabled mass tourism (Cook’s Tours from 1855 to Europe, for example), emigration, and its darker side, colonialism. The liners, linking with railways on both sides of the Atlantic, made it possible for Charles Dickens to connect with his audiences in the United States and for Frances Hodgson Burnett of Little Lord Fauntleroy fame to regularly criss-cross the Atlantic.

Historic B&W photograph of men, women and children posing beside a railway carriage to the left, steam rising against the roof of the station
Passengers waiting on the platform at Waterloo for the Cunard Steamship Company boat train, probably for Southampton, 1913. The photograph was commissioned by Cunard from Bedford Lemere, who also specialised in photographing newly-built liners.
BL22173/001 Source: Historic England Archive

In the same way, liners grew not only to serve specific passenger routes such as Southampton or Liverpool to New York, or to serve European colonies abroad, but also to become cargo specialists. The late 19th and early 20th centuries saw the rise of cargo liners and of refrigeration, benefiting not only the growth of fish and chips (see Part One) but also enabling meat to be shipped from South America and Australia under refrigerated conditions, for example by the Nelson Line, and despatched onwards by rail. Our records mark the loss of the Nelson Line’s Highland Fling on Enys Rocks, Cornwall in 1907, and Highland Brigade, torpedoed off St. Catherine’s Point, 1918. [2]

Like the coal magnates of the north-east before them (as covered in Part One), the railway companies saw the potential in an integrated market and a seamless experience. They would run passenger trains to the ports: thence it was but a short step towards commissioning the building of steamers, operating ferry services in their own right, and providing onward travel.

Trains and ships in the Lake District

Sometimes the ‘onward travel’ was a new development in its own right and an extension of the leisure experience within Britain. The steam yacht Gondola, the idea inspired by Venetian travels, as well as her name and hull form, was commissioned by Sir James Ramsden of the Furness Railway Company and entered service from 1859. The Gondola allowed passengers alighting from the Furness line at Coniston to enjoy pleasure cruises on Coniston Water in the Lake District, enhancing their holiday experience. [3]

The links between railways and ships were especially close in the Lake District, because trains could also transport small ships like these: the Gondola‘s hull was transported in four sections by rail and heavy horse to Coniston to be assembled locally, a methodology also adopted for the motor vessel Teal on nearby Windermere in 1938. [4] The railway line to Coniston was closed in 1962 so the link between Gondola and the railway that once brought passengers to her has been broken. [5]

Modern colour photo of the Gondola on the lake against a background of green tree and heather-covered mountains
Steam yacht Gondola on a cruise on Coniston Water in 2011 © Ian Greig CC BY-SA 2.0

The growth of the ferry

Where the railways could most easily dovetail with the steamers and provide the most seamless experience was on what we would today call ‘short-haul’ routes and ferries across to Ireland, France, Belgium and the Netherlands. They built on existing ports and routes with a history of passenger demand. The experience could be completely seamless and was a strong selling point. ‘The train comes to a standstill bang opposite the boat’ at Southampton, as described in promotional literature for the Southern Railway in 1931. [6]

The wreck record illuminates how old some of these ferry or ‘passage’ routes could sometimes be. The Duke of York ‘passage boat’ struck the Goodwin Sands in 1791 en route from Dunkirk to Dover – perhaps even with some refugees from Revolutionary France? (Turner was ‘nearly swampt’ on landing at Calais in 1802 as his painting Calais Pier demonstrates.) In 1669 one of the regular packets between Harwich and Hellevoetsluis (the precursor of the Harwich-Hook of Holland service which still continues today), was wrecked at Dunwich.

Some railway + ferry services were run by prestige named trains, such as the Golden Arrow train of the Southern Railway, which linked with the Southern’s first-class ferry Canterbury at Dover, which in turn connected with the reciprocal Flèche d’Or train which took passengers from Calais to Paris.

Steam locomotive in green and black livery with a Golden Arrow on its side (to right of image) and the prominent Clan Line Merchant Navy Class logo, enclosing the line's house flag of a red lion rampant
The post-war Golden Arrow seen at the Railways 200 Greatest Gathering in Derby, August 2025, one of the Merchant Navy class, commemorating the Clan Line. © Andrew Wyngard

In general, the railway steamers had a fairly good safety record, but collisions in fog could and did happen, most notably with the Normandy paddle steamer, belonging to the London & South-Western Railway Company, which was involved in a collision off the Needles in 1870 with considerable loss of life while en route to the Channel Islands. [7]

Another collision in fog which ended more happily was that in the Channel between the London, Brighton & South Coast Railway steamer Seaford, having left Dieppe with passengers for Newhaven, and ‘le cargo-boat’ steamer Lyon, belonging to the French railway firm Compagnie des chemins de fer de l’Ouest, voyaging in the opposite direction under a reciprocal service arrangement. All on board the sinking Seaford were saved by the French ship, which returned to Newhaven, and ‘special trains’ were run for the passengers to get them home, although a few people were sent to hospital with broken legs and ankles. [8]

Vintage Southern Railway booklet cover featuring a map and promotional text for weekend and holiday travel to the continent, dated May 1st, 1939.
1939 Southern Railway brochure with map of connections, the last hurrah of passenger services before World War II. The Art Deco cover design blends stylised ships (white and pink) with steam trains (green) (Author’s own collection)

In 1918 the London & South-Western Railway ferry South Western was attacked by U-boat while on a cargo run from Southampton to St. Malo. More commonly, however, the railway ferries were lost outside both their normal roles and usual routes during both World Wars. They found themselves requisitioned for war service and were sometimes sunk on that service, such as the Southern Railway’s Tonbridge, which pivoted from her cross-Channel service to become a net layer (setting anti-submarine nets), and was sunk by a bomber off Sheringham in 1941.

Railway ferries also played their part both at Dunkirk in 1940 and during D-Day on 1944, including one very special class of ferry which we will take a look at next week in the conclusion to this blog series.

An artistic depiction of the steamship SS Canterbury with the Red Ensign flying astern, steam billowing from her funnels, and heading towards the White Cliffs of Dover
Southern Railway steamer SS Canterbury (of the Golden Arrow service described above) approaching Dover. Walter Thomas, c.1936 Science Museum Group Collection © The Board of Trustees of the Science Museum
A vintage black and white photograph of the ship in wartime livery, with an aeroplane flying overhead.
HMS Canterbury (FL 7489) Underway, at sea. As HMS Canterbury, the railway company ferry would participate in Dunkirk and D-Day
Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205124826

All aboard for Part 3 next week . . .

With many thanks to Andrew Wyngard, railway consultant for this blog.

Logo celebrating 200 years of train travel since 1825, featuring the number '200' in stylized red design with a train track element.

Footnotes

[1] The Great Western Railway Warehouse and Office, Coastal and Intertidal Zone Archaeological Network (CITiZAN), online; photograph of the warehouse and office, CITiZAN, online

[2] Historic England NMHR records

[3] History of Steam Yacht Gondola, National Trust, online

[4] Gondola, National Historic Ships, online; Teal, National Historic Ships, online; MV Teal, Windermere Lake Cruises, online; ‘Lake Flotilla’, Liverpool Echo, No.17,595, 6 June 1936, p4

[5] Andrews, M and Holme, G, 2005 The Coniston Railway (Pinner: Cumbrian Railways Association)

[6] Leigh-Bennett, E P and Fougasse 1931 Southern Ways & Means (Plaistow: Southern Railway)

[7] Historic England NMHR records. It should be noted that the comment on the safety record pertains principally to records of losses within English waters, which are relatively few by comparison with the regularity of the service and the number of journeys undertaken; however, other wrecks did occur outside English waters, around the other home nations, the Channel Islands, and the coast of France.

[8] Historic England NMHR records; ‘A Channel Steamer Sunk: Loss of the Seaford‘, Morning Advertiser, 21 August 1895, No.32,535, p5; ‘Le Naufrage du Seaford’, La Marseillaise, p3 (in French)

[z] Railways 200 Fridays – PS Waverley, National Historic Ships, online

Diary of the War – June 1944

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D-Day 80

Modern colour photograph of the ends of two concrete Mulberry Harbour structures at sea, exposing their respective staircases, with a ship visible in the gap between them.
Two Phoenix caisson components for a Mulberry Harbour can still be seen at Portland, Dorset, where they were towed post-war. Listed Grade II
© Des Blenkinsopp 2019 CC-BY-SA 2.0 https://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/6173674

Eighty years on from the launch of Operation Neptune on 6 June 1944, the largest seaborne invasion in history, we take a look at those craft which, for one reason or another, did not make it to the landing beaches of Normandy, but which do form part of a tangible heritage of D-Day around the southern coasts of England.

An invasion of this scale required considerable preparations, in assembling the fleet, in meeting the conditions they were likely to find geographically and militarily, and in meeting the needs of the invasion forces once the assault on Normandy began in earnest.

A key problem for the invasion forces was the issue of landing supplies in a hostile environment until French ports could be recaptured from the occupying forces. To overcome this problem, the ‘Mulberry Harbours’ were prefabricated concrete units to be towed across the Channel and assembled at Omaha and Gold, two of the five designated landing beaches. ‘Phoenix’ caissons were built to be sunk in great secrecy off the southern coasts of England to be refloated and towed across once the invasion was under way to build the Mulberry Harbours, supported by subsidiary units such as ‘Whale’ pontoons.

Not all of the Phoenix caissons could be refloated to serve their purpose, and a number of these survive at the spot they were sunk 80 years ago. They are charted in southern English waters from the Bristol Channel in the west via the English Channel facing the Normandy coast to the Thames Estuary in the east. The remains of these Phoenix units form a counterpart to the remains of the ‘as built’ Mulberry Harbours on the opposite side of the Channel. (The Portland caissons shown at the top of the blog are slightly different, in that they came back as part of a return group post-war.)

Modern colour photograph: aerial view of two sunken caissons just visible to centre right, emerging from a large expanse of murky grey-green water. A small beacon lies atop one, marking them out as a navigational hazard.
Aerial view of sunken Mulberry Harbour caissons in the Thames Estuary, off Southend-on-Sea, Essex.
© Simon Tomson 2022 CC-BY-SA 2.0 https://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/7244874
Modern colour photograph of 8 sections of Mulberry Harbour in a bright blue sea, in various states of decay and angles from each other, no longer a coherent harbour assemblage.
Remains of the Mulberry Harbour at Arromanches-les-Bains, Normandy.
By Хрюша – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0 https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4770875

The invasion began during the night of 5-6 June. LCT(A) 2428 was a Mk V Landing Craft Tank (Armoured), which, as the description implies, was intended to carry tanks which could roll off directly onto the beach to provide covering firepower. This function would itself attract fierce return fire, so to that end the vessel was fitted with protective armour plating, hence the (Armoured) suffix.

Contemporary monochrome pen and ink drawing seen from the bridge of a landing craft under way, with the ramp being unloaded and tanks being readied for departure as the craft nears land in the distance.
A Landing Craft Tank at sea, 1944 (Art.IWM ART LD 4180) Edward Ernest James, 1944
Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/14233

LCT(A) 2428 was laden with Centaur CS IV tanks and Caterpillar D7 armoured bulldozers as she began to make her way over to Normandy. In the early evening of 5 June she broke down and anchored near the Nab Tower, to the east of the Isle of Wight. The vessel began to capsize following damage ‘sustained by weather to double bottoms on starboard side aft’ according to a military report, and shed her lading, although fortunately without loss of life. However, she remained afloat after capsizing, posing a navigational hazard, and the only remedy was to sink her by gunfire.

LCT(A) 2428 therefore lies some distance from her cargo of tanks and bulldozers, which now lie as an assemblage off Selsey Bill, Sussex – two wreck sites from one event. The remains of the tanks and bulldozers form a Scheduled Monument: read more about the scheduled site and discover more about the Landing Craft 2428 project.

Contemporary black & white photograph of a landing craft tank, ramp down, to left, temporary harbour infrastructure to right, and in the right distance, a steamer waiting offshore.
LCT Mk V 2291 (FL 7138), similar to LCT(A) 2428 but without the armour plating, discharging a bulldozer into a Landing Ship Dock. Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205120579

An operation at the scale of Neptune required air cover and air support. The wooden Horsa glider, a personnel carrier which could be towed to deploy troops by air, came into its own in seaborne invasions on D-Day and in other theatres of war. Like the Landing Craft Tanks, some of the gliders moved off for their own specific operations on the night of 5 June 1944, while others took to the air during D-Day itself.

Among them was Horsa Mk I LH550, bound for Landing Zone N at Ranville, Normandy, which slipped tow for reasons unknown, and ditched into the sea off Worthing, West Sussex, apparently without loss of life. Unlike the Mulberry remains or LCT(A) 2428 and her cargo, the last resting place of Horsa LH550 is unknown.

Contemporary watercolour sketch of grey aircraft, cockpit facing to the left of image, the fuselage broken at right, with its tail propped up against the wing. The wing has black and white invasion stripes.
A Horsa glider lying in a field with the rear end and tail fin resting against the left wing, giving some idea of how the Horsa wrecked off Worthing might have appeared, although in fact the rear compartment was intended to be broken off on landing:
preparatory sketch for ‘Crashed Gliders: the landing zone at Ranville, 1944’
(Art.IWM ART LD 6322) Albert Richards Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/22870

Convoy ETM-1, comprising American Liberty ships, sent to Britain under the Lend-Lease programme, and their escorts, left the Thames Estuary on the morning of D-Day en route to Normandy. The convoy moved south towards the Straits of Dover when one of their number, the Sambut, was struck by fire from German positions at Cap Gris Nez. War matériel by its very nature is usually hazardous, and cargo vessels laden with such dangerous cargoes extremely vulnerable. Sambut‘s cargo of petrol cans and vehicles caught fire, which led to an explosion of the gelignite she also carried, and it was impossible to save the ship, her crucial supplies, or, unfortunately, a quarter of the personnel on board. (Read our D-Day 70 blog for more detail on the loss of Sambut.) The loss of Sambut was captured on film in real time by another ship in the same convoy, and the reminiscences of a survivor of the 92nd Light Anti-Aircraft Regiment of the Royal Artillery who was on board, recorded 50 years after the event, are also in the collections of the Imperial War Museum (Reel 2, 05:50 onwards). It is a well-documented wreck and is known and charted.

In the breadth and diversity of the craft that were lost on 6 June 1944 within English waters – aircraft, land vehicles, cargo ships and floating harbour structures – we glimpse a little of the scale of the invasion. We recognise, too, the archaeological remains of a single day in history on this side of the Channel, linked to their counterparts lost the same day on the Normandy beaches, memorials in concrete, wood, and steel.

50th Anniversary of the Protection of Wrecks Act 1973

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Part 2: A PWA50 Project

In the second instalment of our two-part special commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Protection of Wrecks Act, we look today at one of the projects funded by Historic England to commemorate 50 years of the Act.

Our guest blogger Michael Lobb from MSDS Marine writes about their innovative PWA50 project – Landlocked and Looking Out – to connect landlocked counties with England’s maritime heritage.

Modern colour photograph of three rock formations tilted upwards as if they were ships ploughing through seas, instead of the grass platform on which they sit, seen against a blue sky.
Three Ships rocks, Birchen Edge, Derbyshire: three large gritstone outcrops, so-called from their prow-like appearance, near a monument to Nelson.
© Graham Hogg CC BY-SA 2.0 https://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/1946715

Landlocked and Looking Out

Maritime archaeology, by its very nature, is concentrated around our coasts, and as a result, opportunities for the public to engage with it can be limited to coastal communities and those who have the means to visit them. People living inland do not always get the opportunity to participate in maritime archaeology projects, so, to address this, funding from Historic England enabled MSDS Marine to deliver fifty public pop-up events over summer 2023, specifically for schools and youth groups, to encourage active participation with maritime heritage.

All events were held in landlocked Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire, and as a result 17,066 individuals have attended at least one of these events. Not everyone who came will become a maritime archaeologist or volunteer: however, it is hoped that by having an understanding and appreciation of maritime archaeology, more people will value the hidden maritime heritage that surrounds the UK and start to believe it is of relevance to them, and this blog further highlights this work.

As part of the project MSDS Marine explored the links between historic figures, sites and artefacts from the landlocked counties of Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire, with maritime heritage and archaeology.

Shipbuilding and provisioning of ships

Copper mines at Ecton Hill, Staffordshire (scheduled as an ancient monument) produced copper sheathing to protect the timber hulls of Royal Navy ships in the age of sail, while a number of Peak District lead mines produced ingots for use as ballast in ships.

Derbyshire quarries also produced consumable items for ships, such as Morley Moor quarries which produced holystones for use on ships up to the Boer War (1899-1902) when the practice stopped. Holystones were pieces of gritstone used for scrubbing wooden decks, a regular part of a sailor’s morning routine. They were most likely called holystones because the sailors had to scrub the decks on their knees, reminiscent of kneeling in church. Large holystones were known as ‘Bibles’, while smaller ones for use in difficult corners were called ‘Prayer books.’

Historic sepia photograph of sailors in uniform, the front row on their hands and knees scrubbing a ship's deck, the back and side rows standing. It is clearly a posed photograph with all the men smiling or laughing at the camera.
Holystoning the decks on HMS Pandora (1900-1913)
Creative Commons

Perhaps of more interest to sailors were the stoneware rum bottles manufactured for the Royal Navy by Pearsons’ Pottery in Chesterfield. The most popular size was one gallon!

Other companies produced more specialised equipment for ships, such as the Haslam Foundry and Engineering Company Limited in Derby. The late 19th century downturn in the agrarian economy saw fears of a meat shortage in Britain, but at the same time farms in Australia were producing large herds of sheep. The solution was to develop and construct refrigeration systems to allow ships to transport frozen meat on the lengthy voyage from Australia to the UK. From 1881 ships fitted with Haslam machinery were transporting frozen meat from Australia and New Zealand to London. The factory backed on to the river Derwent, allowing the finished machinery to be shipped to coastal shipyards via the Trent.

Historic B&W photograph of a long row of pipes with a flow meter connected to feeder valves on the right. The pipes are angled upwards, across the ceiling, and run down again opposite, with two rows of valves.
Brine distribution pipes in the refrigeration unit, Highland Warrior, 1924. Highland Warrior’s owners, the Nelson Line, a specialist in meat from Argentina, installed refrigeration units from both Haslam and the Liverpool Refrigeration Co. Ltd across its ships, the latter in Highland Warrior. BL26996/001 Source: Historic England Archive

The Midlands also played a part in the development of shipbuilding technology: in 1799 Simon Goodrich was sent on a tour of the industrial Midlands by the Admiralty to see how emerging technologies could be incorporated into the Naval dockyards. Goodrich was shown around the cotton mill at Derby by William Strutt, which inspired technology later used at Chatham Dockyard. He also visited a stone quarry near Derby where the saws used to cut the stonework later influenced the design of timber cutting saws at Portsmouth Dockyard. At Belper he was shown the mills by George Strutt and visited Outram’s foundry, where he took a particular interest in the boring mill.

Shipping and Trade

The proximity of Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire to the river Trent, and the many canals linking up with it, including the Trent and Mersey canal, meant that a range of products manufactured in the Midlands were transported to the British coast and then further afield: for example, the wreck record shows that in 1818 the sloop Industry stranded on the Sunk Sand at the entrance to the Thames while bound from Gainsborough to London with household goods, ironmongery and earthenware pottery. [1]

Historic B&W photograph showing the corn mill seen from the canal towards the boat arch, with the text 'F E Stevens Ltd./Trent Corn Mills in the gable of the mill, with a plaque saying 'No.2 Mill' below a window.
B’ Warehouse at Trent Corn Mills, Shardlow, Derbyshire, showing the boat arch, in 1960, when still in use as a corn mill on the Trent and Mersey Canal. This warehouse was built in 1780, and from the 1820s was known as the ‘B’ Warehouse, almost exactly contemporary with the 1817 wreck of the Crown which foundered off the Farne Islands carrying barley from Gainsborough for Leith. For centuries produce from the agricultural hinterland was circulated domestically via river, canal and sea, not road or rail.
Eric de Maré AA60/04515 © Historic England Archive

From the 17th century cheese from the Midlands was transported down the Trent to Gainsborough, where it was loaded onto sea-going ships which navigated the river to the Humber, then coastwise to London. At a later date, wreck records show that the sloop Fanny, laden with cheese for Hull, capsized in the Trent in 1811, while in 1783 another sloop, the Acorn, stranded off Tynemouth while inbound to Shields with cheese from Gainsborough. Similarly, in the 17th century coal from Wollaton in Nottingham was transported to the Trent, thence to Hull on the Humber, where it was transhipped to London. [2]

The War Effort

During the First World War, Chetwynd Barracks, just outside Nottingham, was the site of Chilwell Filling Factory, a munitions plant which produced 19,000,000 shells, 25,000 sea mines and 2,500 aerial bombs over the course of the war. On the 1st July 1918 an explosion destroyed part of the factory killing 139 workers. A memorial to the workers is located inside Chetwynd Barracks, but many of them are buried nearby in a mass grave at Attenborough church. There were suspicions at the time that the explosion was the result of an act of sabotage (typical of rumours in wartime – similar rumours circulated when the warship London blew up in 1665) but it was most likely caused by the summer heat triggering an explosion.

Historic B&W photograph of long rows and rows of shells and mines of different types loaded on trolleys in a large factory.
National Shell Filling Factory, Chetwind Road, Chilwell, Notts. Melt House for Land, Sea and Air, photographed a few days before the Armistice in 1918. To the right are rows of rounded sea mines: sea mines were used by both sides and hundreds of ships were lost to mines in English waters over the First World War 1914-18. AA96/03598 Source: Historic England Archive

Many other industrial sites in Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire also contributed to the war effort in both World Wars: Stanton Iron Works just outside Ilkeston made experimental torpedo casings, while parts of Mulberry harbours for the Second World War Normandy landings were built at Hilton, just south-west of Derby.

Sailors

There has been a Royal Naval Reserve base at HMS Sherwood in Nottingham since the Second World War, with the Midland counties of Derbyshire, Leicestershire and Nottinghamshire at one point providing the most popular recruiting ground for the Royal Navy.

The roots connecting the Midlands to the sea and seafaring are ancient: Nottinghamshire was the home of Sir Hugh Willoughby, an early Arctic explorer who led an expedition to find the North-East Passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific. He died in 1554 when two ships from the voyage were locked in the Arctic ice.

Sir Hugh’s descendant Rear Admiral Sir Nesbit Josiah Willoughby (1777-1849) was born in Cossall, Nottinghamshire. He was knighted twice, court-martialled four times, and, as his obituary in the Annual Register noted:

He was eleven times wounded with balls, three times with splinters, and cut in every part of his body with sabres and tomahawkes: his face was disfigured by explosions of gunpowder, and he lost an eye and had part of his neck and jaw shot away . . . and at Leipzig had his right arm shattered by cannon shot.

(See our previous blog on disabled sailors and shipwrecks)

Historic B&W engraved half-length portrait of man in military uniform with a black patch over his eye.
Sir Nesbit Josiah Willoughby by William Greatbach, after Thomas Barber
mixed method engraving, published 1837
NPG D11236 © National Portrait Gallery, London CC BY-NC-ND 3.0

Another significant figure in British maritime history with a strong link to the Midlands was Samuel Plimsoll. Despite having been born in Bristol, he only lived there for a short time, and it was as the Liberal MP for Derby from 1868-1880 that he fought for amendments to the Merchant Shipping Act, introducing the famous ‘Plimsoll Line’ showing the safe level of loading for a vessel, preventing the loss of unseaworthy and overloaded vessels.

Modern colour photograph of sculpted bust of bearded man on plinth flanked by statues of a man and a woman looking down at a commemorative plaque in gratitude. The sculpture is seen against leafless trees and an ornate background on a bright winter's day with clear blue sky.
Memorial to Samuel Plimsoll, Victoria Embankment, London.
The central plaque is surmounted by a sailing ship: just visible above Plimsoll’s name is his load line. On the plinth the modern load line is seen, a barred circle with the letters LR for the classification society Lloyd’s Register, with load lines marked for different seasons and bodies of water. Wikimedia Commons CC BY-SA 4.0 http://tinyurl.com/5fcb6wen

Monuments

There are numerous monuments to Nelson and the Royal Navy throughout England, but at Birchen Edge in the Peak District the obelisk commemorating Nelson and the Battle of Trafalgar is accompanied by a slightly more unique memorial in the form of the natural feature of Three Ships Rocks [shown at the top of the blog], three large rock outcrops which are carved with the names of warships from Trafalgar – Nelson’s own flagship Victory, Defiance and Royal Soverin.

Modern colour photo of the word VICTORY incised on a rock and still legible despite erosion. The rock formations run from bottom left to top right of the image, are weathered in places, and have light coloured spots of lichen.
Carving of the name VICTORY on one of the Three Ships boulders at Birchen Edge, Derbyshire.
© Neil Theasby CC BY-SA 2.0 https://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/2959671

The grounds of Thoresby Park in Nottingham contain a monument to Nelson’s Navy and another in the shape of a pyramid commemorating the Battle of the Nile in 1798. The interior of the monument is inscribed with the names of the ships and men involved in the battle. Both monuments were constructed by Charles Pierrepont, 1st Earl Manvers who had been an officer in the Royal Navy, and whose son was a serving officer at the time of the monuments’ construction.

Modern colour photograph of stone pyramid with entrance porch flanked by classical columns, seen against a backdrop of tall trees on a cloudy day.
Pyramid, Thoresby Park
IOE01/16506/05 © Mrs Mollie Toy. Source: Historic England Archive

Perhaps one of the most unusual tributes to Britain’s naval heritage can be found at Newstead Abbey, just north of Nottingham. The 5th Lord Byron (1722-1798), great-uncle of Byron the poet (the 6th Lord Byron), was forced to leave his position in the Royal Navy when he inherited the estate and title. Frustrated at leaving the sea, he expanded the lake outside the house, and built cannon forts on either side so that he could stage mock naval battles. The battles were no small affair, involving numerous boats, including a twenty-gun schooner manned by professional sailors!

Modern colour photograph of blue lake with fort on the left bank and a forest landscape on the right bank. In the middle distance a swan swims towards the viewer.
Newstead Abbey, Newstead, Nottinghamshire, looking NW across the lake towards the Cannon Fort.
DP278046 © Historic England Archive

Thus we can see that in the Midlands, the furthest it is possible to get away from the sea in England, there is a strong connection to ships and shipbuilding in times of peace and of war, a heritage expressed in a legacy of wrecks and terrestrial landmarks alike.

Explore our other PWA 50 blogs:

50 Years of Protecting Shipwrecks – Hefin Meara, Historic England

The Cattewater Wreck – Martin Read, licensee of the Cattewater Wreck

Footnotes

[1] Historic England wreck records

[2] Historic England wreck records