PS Little Western
The LITTLE WESTERN was for many years a favourite vessel on the London, Margate and Ramsgate station for the General Steam Navigation Co. Her first appearance in Ramsgate Harbour in 1844 created quite a sensation and she was visited by many anxious to inspect the luxurious and sumptuous fittings of her cabins and saloon. She carried a gilded serpent at her bows. The LITTLE WESTERN finished her days as a coal hulk bellow Gravesend until she was finally cut down by a screw steamer coming up the Thames.
‘Cross-Channel and Coastal Paddle Steamers’ by George Frank Burtt
The next steamer to be added to the fleet was a rather celebrated vessel named the LITTLE WESTERN, which had been built at Bristol in 1841. She was composite built of iron frames and wooden planking, and was of the unprecedented length of 200 feet and 25 feet 5 inches beam. Her propelling machinery consisted of a pair of beam engines of 90 h.p. each, made by Messrs. Acraman and Morgan, of Bristol. A remarkable peculiarity in these engines consisted in the position assigned to the principal parts. In ordinary beam engines either land or marine, the main rocking beam or lever and the steam cylinder in their normal positions were respectively horizontal and vertical, but in the engines of the LITTLE WESTERN these two prime parts changed places, the beam being vertically disposed and the cylinder placed in a horizontal position on a bed plate secured to the vessel’s floor plates; the main connecting-rod of the engine being attached to the upper end of the beam, and the paddle shaft crank pin, while its lower end was coupled by linkwork to the piston rod crosshead. Steam was supplied to the engines by two flue boilers, but on account of their peculiar construction and that of the valve gear of the engines, the vessel was found to be unfit for her intended work.
The General Steam Navigation Company purchased her in 1844, fitted her with new tubular boilers, and altered the steam distribution valves of her engines from double-beat to the ordinary slide type. She was at that time the largest river passenger steamer in Europe and was probably the first paddle-wheel steamer that was fitted with Morgan’s feathering float wheels. For a number of years she was the most celebrated passenger steamer on the Thames, being the fastest and largest. She was engaged on the Ramsgate service.
In 1880, she was employed as a coal hulk at Gravesend.
See Also
Sources of Information
- 'Steamers of the Thames and Medway' by Frank Burtt