The Queen of Dunkirk
QUESTION
What is the story of HMS Medway Queen, which has been dubbed Dunkirk’ s largest artefact? PADDLE steamer Medway Queen was built by the Ailsa Shipbuilding Company of Troon, Ayrshire, in 1924, for the New Medway Steam Packet Company of Rochester, Kent.
She was the last of the estuary paddle steamers built to take passengers on day trips on the Thames and Medway.
At the outbreak of World War II, she was commissioned into the Royal Navy and became a minesweeper. As HMS Medway Queen, she was armed with a 12lb gun and two Lewis machine-guns.
On May 27, 1940, she was ordered to the beaches of Dunkirk ‘to embark some troops that would be waiting there’.
During the next few days, the Medway Queen rescued in excess of 7,000 men, completing seven trips, a record for a ship below the size of a destroyer. At the start of her final return home, she sustained significant damage in a collision.
After the war, she was refitted and then returned to her peacetime role, taking her place in the Naval Coronation Review of 1953. After the summer of 1963, she was withdrawn because of falling business and sold to a shipbreaker.
Following an outcry from the public, a campaign was set up by the Daily Mail and she was saved. Medway Queen became a nightclub on the Isle of Wight. But when she was replaced by a larger vessel, she was left to become derelict.
In the summer of 1985, the Medway Queen Preservation Society was formed and the campaign to save this little ship began in earnest. Those few well-meaning amateurs faced an enormous task.
In 2006, the project was awarded a Heritage Lottery Grant of £1.86million and more recently £1.9million from the European Interreg IVA 2 Seas Initiative. It is now a multi-million-pound enterprise.
With these substantial funds, the ship was dismantled as the first stage of its reconstruction. Sadly, the old hull was beyond repair so a new one was built at the Albion Dry Dockyard in Bristol by boat builders David Abels. Many of the original components survive and some have been installed in the new hull. A large amount of original decking has also been used.
Following the completion of the new hull, the vessel was towed to the Medway towns during late November 2013.
Thanks to Medway Council, we have a site at Gillingham Pier where the visitor’s centre is equipped and open on Saturdays between 11am and 3pm.
We were delighted that Medway Queen was taken to Ramsgate (under tow) to participate in the Dunkirk 75th Anniversary Commemorations in 2015. She remained there for more than a week.
Pam Bathurst, Thanet, Kent.
QUESTION
Is it true that birds are immune to the heat of chilli peppers? MANy plants have fleshy, coloured fruit to attract animals that will eat them and then disperse their seeds in droppings.
However, it is thought that the chilli plant has evolved a method of dispersing its seeds more efficiently. They deploy their heat as a chemical weapon to selectively deter hungry predators who are poor at spreading seeds.
The chemical that generates ‘heat’ in your mouth when you eat chilli is called capsaicin. This stimulates the areas of the skin and tongue that sense intense heat and pain, tricking the brain into thinking the affected area is burning.
Trials in Arizona found that desert mice and rats avoided spicy chillies, but birds fed almost exclusively on the plants.
The researchers also noted that when birds ate the chillies, many seeds germinated, but there was no germination after mice had eaten the chilli seeds.
In the digestive tracts of mice, rats and other mammals, the seeds don’t make it out in one piece as they are broken down by the acidic juices during digestion.
To determine whether it was the burning sensation that deterred the mammals, a number of cactus mice, packrats and curve-billed thrashers were captured and, in laboratory tests, offered three types of fruit: wild chillies; a mutant chilli similar in appearance to the wild variety but lacking capsaicin; and hackberries, a cherry-like fruit that is found in the wild in Arizona.
The rats and mice ate the berries and non-pungent chillies, but ignored the wild chillies.
But the birds ate all the fruits and were not put off by the capsaicin.
Ian Munro, Carlisle.
QUESTION
Before the Iran-Iraq war, Barrowin-Furness shipyard (Vickers) built two destroyers, Zaal and Rostam, for Iran. What became of them? FURTHER to the earlier answer, the four frigates built for the Iranian navy spent a lot of time in Portsmouth in 1973 for trial periods.
We in the Royal Navy were impressed by the sharp suits of the Iranians and the huge amounts of money they spent. Many Portsmouth women were swept off their feet by their good looks and manners. Some married and went to Iran.
After the revolution, newspaper reports said unhappy British parents were unable to get their daughters back from Iran as their passports had been taken away.
One father flew out with a forged passport for his daughter, bought a Hillman Hunter and drove her over the border.
S. J. Griffin, Portsmouth.
IS THERE a question to which you have always wanted to know the answer? Or do you know the answer to a question raised here? Send your questions and answers to: Charles Legge, Answers To Correspondents, Scottish Daily Mail, 20 Waterloo Street, Glasgow G2 6DB; fax them to 0141 331 4739 or email them to charles.legge@dailymail.co.uk. A selection will be published but we are not able to enter into individual correspondence.