Tim will keep Waverley steaming!
MEET Tim Jenkins, PS Waverley’s new first engineer. Tim came to the rescue of the world’s only seagoing paddle steamer when he responded to an appeal for a steam-ticket chief engineer, without whom the 75-year-old paddler was going nowhere this season.
“After 28 years with P&O Cruises, during which I’d worked on the Canberra, and even been in charge of the QMII’s machinery, I decided I’d like a change and when I saw the advert for the job with Waverley, I applied and landed it.
“I’d gained my all- important steam ticket by going back to marine college in South Shields, as I wanted to be steam and diesel qualified,” said career marine engineer Tim, who hails from Swansea.
General manager Paul Semple said: “I was relieved when Tim got in touch in response to a job advert we put on LinkedIn. We’d been searching without success for months, and Tim came along to solve our problem. I was relieved!
“Then we heard from our other new chief, Paul Hughes, again a steam ticket holder with very wide marine engineering experience and we now have Tim and Paul working back-to-back, three weeks on, three weeks off each, so we have cover for the whole season.”
Tim said: “Working on Waverley is different from anything I’ve done before as we have a 75-year-old triple expansion engine, designed and built long before the age of computers, married up with modern boilers and control systems, so it is a challenge.
“I often think that we’ve made modern engineering too complex and harder to diagnose if there are faults. There’s no doubt that Waverley’s engines are a superb example of heritage steam engineering which works perfectly today.”
Also joining Waverley’s crew for 2022 is the ship’s new master, Captain Dominic McCall. A native of Pickering, Yorkshire, Dominic was very much aware of Waverley, having seen the paddler in action on the south coast of England when he was a boy.
Dominic, who has extensive experience in merchant shipping and is making the jump to carrying passengers on Waverley, said: “She is a very special ship and it’s a privilege to be master for 2022. Sailing a steam- driven paddle steamer is totally different from being in charge of a dieselpowered ship which has bow and stern thrusters, but I love the smooth power that steam gives, and it’s a pleasure to listen to the rhythm of the engine as the paddle wheels turn.”