The Royal Isabella Baths, the The Paragon Baths and R254, the ketch-rigged smack G.L.C + children's books

 The Royal Isabella Baths in Ramsgate, this is the cliff top entrance, roughly where the Churchill Tavern is now.

The second photo shows The Paragon Baths and is the one I put up yesterday where I wrongly described the Paragon Baths as the Isabella Baths. Sorry about that. 

As far as I understand the main part in front of the cliff contained a swimming pool and the part that is still next to what was the motor museum aka Westcliff Hall contained public baths, that is somewhere you could pay to go and have a bath. I think that was probably open until sometime in the 1960s. Anyway back in the good old days when ordinary people's houses didn't have bathrooms. The swimming pool part closed down between world war 1 and world war II, went into decline and was finally destroyed by a cliff collapse in 1958 The next is some extra information from Bob Lee about yesterday's photo.

The vessel launch Saturday 2nd May 1908 was R254, the ketch-rigged smack G.L.C., owner George Caseley. The event was covered 4 days later by the East Kent Times, as can be seen in the article attached below. G.L.C.'s fate was for it to be sunk by the German U-Boat UC17 12th May 1917, 6 miles south-east of Eddystone lighthouse. As was usually the case, the crew were cast off in a wherry to eventually find their way to safety. 

For more information on Ramsgate’s fishing smacks you may wish to come here to Michael’s Bookshop in Ramsgate and have a browse of the book “A History of the Ramsgate Fishing Industry” By Michael Hunt

The print of The Isabella Baths is is from the book picturesque views of Ramsgate by Henry Moses this was published in 1817 so the earliest date I can come up with for the baths is before 1817. We also do a cheap modern reprint of this book. The baths were demolished in the early 1860s.

Ramsgate Harbour

The first picture should be the launching of a Ramsgate fishing smack, this is from Moses Shipyard. To get your bearings the Churchill Tavern is top Centre of the picture, note the Isabella baths just above the fishing smack. Next I have added the picture of King George IV leaving Ramsgate for his visit to Hanover, 25 September, 1821 painter by John Saunders, lifted from Christie’s website, where it sold for £6,600.

Next the picture I posted on Wednesday as Facebook didn’t like it having a link in the post so for the most part it vanished. Ramsgate sands railway station with Ramsgate pier in the distance. You can see the scenic railway on Ramsgate pier.

Next some Ramsgate photos I took yesterday evening as an experiment.

Finally a video of my morning walk today

Ramsgate fishing fleet, a few hundred photos of Ramsgate today and a bit about retro digital cameras

 Ramsgate fishing fleet. The first picture shows Ramsgate fishing smacks in foreground and what are now where the red brick arches are,  in the background. You can easily place yourself because top left of the photo is the tidal ball mast which is still in the same place. I would say the photo was taken in the 1880s or 90s and I have added the same photo with the brightness changed so you can see more detail of the fishing smacks. These fishing smacks mostly had steam engines that were not to drive the boat along but to enable the smacks to be operated by a man and a boy. So the steam engine drove the winch that pulled up the sails. It also provided heat below decks, a smack boy would probably have slept curled up by the steam engine during the winter. Obviously when the fishing smack was in the harbour there would be no heat and this was one of the reasons for the Smack Boys Home. The other photo shows Ramsgate fishing fleet putting out and gives you some idea of the size of the fishing fleet. I was out and about this morning taking photos in Ramsgate, several hundred, as some of the people who can't get out and about in Ramsgate like to follow me on a walk, so here is the link to the pictures https://photos.app.goo.gl/g4fkk7GSoxvBJwYx7

If you followed the link to the hundreds of pictures of Ramsgate that I took this morning then you may want to watch the video about me playing with a retro camera 

Afew of the pictures from the link above,.

With Street photography I used to do a lot more but I now concerned about photographing people who don't want to be photographed, so I do a lot less.

The only way that I could take all these photos of Ramsgate was to go out at 6 am this morning when there was hardly anyone about.

Margate Photos 23.07.2026

We went to Margate today and I thought I would try the new fad of using a retro camera.

So this is my oldest bridge camera a Panasonic DMC– FZ30 this dates from 2005,

so 21 years old which I think is probably pretty ancient for a digital camera.

What I'm hoping is that I get some sort of retro look to the photos.

The only thing I had real issues with was the viewfinder which started off a bit dark

and it's part of the reason that a lot of the pictures are not straight.

As we were going for a walk, most of them were very much snapshots. The good thing about the camera is it has a very large aperture.

The other feature which I have never had or seen on any other digital camera is that

you can set it so you have four analogue knobs with which you can control, aperture,

shutter speed, focus and zoom. Effectively this means that you have the same sort of

control as you would have had a professional the film camera back in the day.

I used to use a thing called a Nikon F back in the day.

One thing I didn't account for is that the camera is much slower than the camera

in my phone to focus so some of the shots maybe a bit blurry.

Hopefully now the ones from my phone (S22 Ultra) camera for comparison 

I don't think the camera did badly at all and as you can buy the DMC– FZ30 on ebay for around £20

I would recommend it for someone who is learning how to use a camera.