Celebrating Your Projects
Rosemary Collins finds out about the work of the Medway Queen Preservation Society
The work of the Medway Queen Preservation Society
The PS Medway Queen is a paddle steamer berthed at Gillingham, Kent. The Medway Queen Preservation Society now works to restore the ship and research her history. We spoke to Richard Halton, one of the society’s trustees, to find out more.
What Can You Tell Us About The History Of The Medway Queen?
The Medway Queen was built in 1924 as a steamer for seaside excursions. In those days every big seaside town had a pier, and there would be a fleet of ships doing day trips or half-day trips. The Medway Queen was based in the Chatham area on the River Medway, and ran trips across to Southend and then to Herne Bay. That was from 1924 right through to the end of the 1939 season. When war broke out the Medway Queen, like most paddlers, was requisitioned for use by the Navy and converted to be a minesweeper. She also made seven trips to Dunkirk, rescuing 7,000 soldiers.
After the war the ship returned to her old role until the end of the 1963 season. She was withdrawn due to falling revenues and increasing maintenance costs, and in 1965 was bought by a consortium on the Isle of Wight to be used as a clubhouse restaurant and nightclub, which opened in 1966. She was a nightclub until 1974, then she fell into disuse and became partially sunk in the River Medina.
The Medway Queen was purchased and moved back to Kent in 1984, and our society was formed the following year. We were eventually given a lottery grant to rebuild the hull in 2006. That work started in 2009 in a yard down in Bristol, and in 2013 the completed hull was towed back to her current berth on Gillingham Pier. We are now fundraising to complete the job. We’ve got a nice new hull but the interior of the ship needs to be fitted out, the machinery needs to be refurbished and of course we need a new boiler.
‘She made seven trips to Dunkirk, rescuing 7,000 soldiers’
You’ve Written Three Books About The Ship. How Did You Research The Subject?
I started by seeing what I could find online. As long as you’re careful about which sites you believe, the internet can be very useful, and help you to identify places where you might find out a bit more. For researching Dunkirk, the accounts left by the ship’s cook and her first lieutenant were invaluable. For a general history of the ship the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich was a fairly obvious choice, and The National Archives at Kew. The National Museum of the Royal Navy in Portsmouth had some information too.
The research for the Isle of Wight book, The Medway Queen Club, was completely different because there was a finite range of sources. First of all I put a piece in the Isle of Wight County Press asking for people to come forward with their memories. Also the newspaper has digitised its archives, and they are searchable online ( archive. iwcp.co.uk).
Why Is It So Important To The Trustees To Preserve The Medway Queen’s Heritage?
The main thing of course is that the steamer is part of our history, whether it is the social history side of things with the seaside excursions, her wartime history or even her technical history. So it’s a matter of keeping that history, and teaching people about the ship in all of those different aspects.