paddlesteamers.info  :  The Internet's leading website for Side-Wheeled Paddle Steamers

Notes on vessels in the table above which do not have their own vessel page:

The 12-horse power compound engines and paddle wheels of this 72-feet long yacht are preserved. Originally displayed in the Merseyside Maritime Museum in Liverpool (UK), they are now at the Anson Engine Museum at Poynton, Cheshire, UK. Built for a wealthy aristocrat (Frederick Wynne, 1853-1932, of North Wales) by W Roberts of Chester in 1900, the engines were removed when the yacht was converted to screw propulsion around 1920

Goethe
The engines removed from PS Goethe after her 2008 season ended in October of that year are due to be exhibited at the Kolnisches Stadtmuseum, on loan from Goethe's owners, the Koln-Dusseldorfer line.

OUTSIDE EUROPE

USA - BRITISH OSCILLATING ENGINES IN PRIVATE COLLECTION AFTER ONCE BEING AT THE HENRY FORD MUSEUM IN DEARBORN

The famous US motor industry magnate Henry Ford established an engineeing museum alongside his automobile factory at Dearborn, Michigan. One exhibit was the small oscillating engine of PS Albert Victor, rescued some time after the ship's demise in the early 1930s. The ship was built in 1879 by Westwood Baillie & Co of Poplar, London and engineered by Rennie of London. It served as a ferry for transporting patients to asylum ships moored in the River Thames below London at Deptford and Gravesend and was owned and operated by the Metropolitan Asylum District Board. The two cylinders are 25 and 30 inches. The 106 GRT ship was 129.9 ft long

USA - CIVIL WAR PADDLE GUNBOAT ENGINE PRESERVED IN VICKSBURG
The engine, one paddle wheel and the remains of the hull of USS Cairo, a civil war gunboat, is preserved at Vicksburg Military Park. The ironclad river gunboat was sunk by an electronically-detonated torpedo seven miles north of Vicksburg in December 1862 - reputedly the first ship ever to suffer this fate. The ship was raised in 1964 and preservation efforts began. She was allocated to the US national Parks Service in 1972 and eventually arrived at Vicksburg in 1977

NEW ZEALAND - OLD ENGINES PUT TO NEW USE
In Queenstown, the engines of the former paddle steamer Antrim (built in 1868) continue to operate the Kinloch slipway which is still used by the screw steamship Earnslaw (coal fired, built in 1912) which appeared on Lake Wakitpu eight years after Antrim was laid up. Antrim was finally dismantled in 1920. A second historical paddle steamer on Lake Makitpu was Mountaineer (1879-1932, scrapped in 1941)

CHILE - DERELICT WRECK :
The remains of the walking beam engine of PS Olympian an 1883-built sidewheeler, wrecked on the south Atlantic coast of Chile still survives on the beach in a remote area. Built in the east of the USA she had already passed around Cape Horn when delivered for service out of Seattle. Soon she was moved to Portland and the Columbia River in Oregon but was not a success despite her opulence due to her draught and was laid up in 1890. It was decided to move her back to the east of the USA in 1906 but she foundered and was lost on the journey.
http://www.panoramio.com/photo/23929449
Photo of Olympian in service : http://www.oldoregonphotos.com/sidewheeler-olympian-in-portland-harbor-c-1905.html

Perhaps the best visible illustration of the heart of the ship - the heart that makes a paddle steamer different from any other ship - can be found outside the Transport Museum at Budapest, Hungary, where the compound diagonal engines of the former Danube tug Vertes (ex-Tihany) are on display, complete with both paddle wheels. For more about paddle steamer engines and numerous illustrations, click here.   Thanks to Zsolt Szabo for the photo.

Homepage