Heritage under the hammer

This month, Towpath Talk canalia auction contributor Geoff Courtney reports on a striking poster that attracted admiring glances at a sale run by Talisman Railwayana.

THE poster, pictured below, went under the hammer at Talisman’s March 26 auction in Newark – the first such live saleroom event after two years of Covid restrictions – and was issued by the River Dart Steamboat Company in 1948 for display at local railway stations.

It was the work of artist and board game illustrator Howard Coble, and under the heading ‘River Dart trip covering the whole navigable River Dart’, it advertised combined rail, road and river tours. The double royal-sized poster featured one of the company’s distinctive paddle steamers against a bucolic background and such was the interest in this colourful rendering by Coble that it sold for £270 (plus buyer’s premium of 15% + VAT).

The River Dart Steamboat Co was incorporated in 1906 as successor to the Dartmouth & Torbay Steam Packet Co and its paddle steamers were a familiar sight on the river until the late 1960s, with its premier route being Dartmouth-Totnes.

It last ran trips in 1974 and one of the paddle steamers, the coal-fired PS Kingwear Castle, which was built by Philip & Son of Kingswear for the company in 1924 and withdrawn in 1965, was saved for preservation by the Paddle Steamer Preservation Society.

After restoration it ran trips on the rivers Thames and Medway, but fittingly is now, as part of the National Historic Fleet, back on the River Dart delighting holidaymakers on trips run by the Dartmouth Steam Railway & River Boat Co.

PHOTO: CREATIVE COMMONS/ROBERT MASON PS Kingswear Castle enters Whitstable harbour in July 2004. The preserved coal-fired paddle steamer was built in 1924 for the River Dart Steamboat Co, one of whose railway station posters recently sold for £270, and is now back on the river running tourist trips.

PHOTO: TALISMAN RAILWAYANA The River Dart Steamboat Co poster that sold for £270 at a recent auction in Newark.