Builders: H S Edwards & Son, Howdon 1884
Propulsion type: Paddle
Owners: Charles Mark Palmer M.P., The Tyne General Ferry Company, Tees Towing.
Service dates: 1885 - 1920
Tonnage: Gross 95
Comments:
The card was posted in 1917 in Jarrow and shows the paddle steamer ferry C M Palmer, which was built for Mr Palmer to assist his workmen to cross from Howdon to his Steelworks and Shipbuilding Yard at Jarrow. She and her fleet mate G H Dexter were known locally as the Punch & Judy.
One dark morning in 1916 a crowd of girls from Haggie's Ropery were on their way to board the C M Palmer and were involved in an unexpected occurrence. The Palmer was low in the water and an uneven distribution tilted the vessel which began to take in water. She began to sink but fortunately the master kept his head and beached the boat. There was no loss of life. The Palmer was a little paddle steamer and everything about her was eccentric from the officials to Cratchit, the deck hand, who used to wind up the gangway of the ferryboat. Winter and summer he smoked a clay pipe, very brown with use and about two inches long in the stem. He or some other member of the crew had to remove a steel handle to regulate the flow of steam into the piston. Sometimes the paddles refused to turn, then a man had to run on to the paddle box, open the top, and as if operating a treadmill, start the paddles working. A hazardous job and one that sounds even more dangerous than using the starting handle on my first cars! Once, on a night just before Christmas, a piece of floating timber lodged in the paddle box of the Palmer and the she began to drift out of control. Fortunately ships of the Royal Navy were in the river and the men took charge of a dangerous situation. After 35 years in service on the Tyne, she was sold for scrap in 1920 but later reports suggest she was sold to Tees Towing in 1923 for £350 for use as a tug. This part of her career was very brief, if indeed she did any tug work, and she was soon converted to a lighter.
Thanks are due to Paul Hood, George Robinson, Lex Cameron, Terry Cooper and Hugh Spicer for their efforts in helping to identify this steamer and for information about her.