The Saturday briefing
YOUR QUESTIONS ANSWERED
Is there anything you’re yearning to know? Send your questions, on any subject, to the contacts given below, and we will do our best to answer them...
Q
Can you name the old paddle steamers that, with the more modern Royal Daffodil, used to head down the Thames to Ramsgate in Kent? I remember watching one called Golden Eagle, while standing on the beach between the barbed wire, seeing all its coloured lights.
Mr A Constable, Gillingham,
Kent
AFor years, giant pleasure steamers took thousands of Londoners to Southend, Margate, Ramsgate or Clacton for magical day trips.
Golden Eagle was marketed as the “Happy Ship”, and a typical timetable back in 1935 would see her leave Tower Pier at 8am, calling at Greenwich, North Woolwich and Southend, arriving at Margate for 12.30pm, where she’d run sea cruises before turning back.
Sports and games started as soon as passengers were on board, with its handbook stating that “the kiddies find real fun and enjoyment in the balloonblowing competitions, skipping, musical chairs, tug of war and streamer throwing”.
Royal Eagle was billed as London’s Luxury Liner, “the largest and most luxurious pleasure steamer ever seen on the Thames”, but tickets would set you back double what you’d pay on the Golden Eagle.
Royal Eagle was put to good use in the evacuation of Dunkirk and returned to passenger service in 1946, but was then withdrawn in 1950.
You may have also seen the Crested Eagle, which was known as “the Greyhound of the River”, as well as Royal Sovereign and the Queen of the Channel back in the 1940s and 1950s.
Sadly these day trips on the Thames fell in popularity as rail and car travel took over.
Q
Why do we “grin like a Cheshire cat”? Surely the cats here in London have just as much to smile about?
Richard Hustwayte, Blackheath, Greater London
A
We tend to associate this with Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland, with Lewis Carroll’s cat grinning from ear to ear.
It is thought he was inspired by a couple of stone carvings – one in StWilfrid’s Church in Grappenhall, which was close to Daresbury in Cheshire, where his father was vicar.
In his memoirs, Carroll also recalled a cat with a gigantic smile that was carved into the wall at Brimstage Hall, which was in Wirral, historically part of Cheshire.
The phrase was actually in use for almost a century before his book was published in 1865.
One explanation is that it stemmed from a painter’s unhappy attempt to represent a lion on an inn’s sign in Cheshire, with the finished product looking more like a grinning cat than a mighty beast.
But it is also reasoned that cats would be happier in Cheshire, getting their fill of cheese from a county that’s rich in milk.
Q
Can you tell me why blackbirds stop singing at this time of year? The song is so nice and I’ve often wondered why it ceases.
A J Osborn,Warfield, Berkshire
A
Birds sing to establish a territory and then defend it, and also to attract a mate, and that is why you will often hear them in spring and in the early summer months.
When the chicks have flown the nest, the adults don’t need to make so much noise.
Bird calls are very different to songs, and are used to raise an alarm or keep in touch with others in the flock. Blackbird song is absolutely unmistakable and often kicks off the dawn chorus, continuing into dusk, and you may even notice it a lot more after it has rained.
That mellow sound will return to your garden in February, or even earlier.
Young males have been known to sing in January to establish territories that they then hold all their lives.
It might seem like the birds have disappeared from your garden in late summer too, but this is because they don’t need the bounty on your bird table quite as much.
Blackbirds also start to moult into fresh new feathers after the breeding season, so they tend to hide away for much of the time, as their scruffier wings make them easier prey.
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