Ramsgate, Margate and Broadstairs photos historic and 2013

 I was off around the area buying books for Michael's Bookshop in Ramsgate which is where I work today. A round trip up the north Kent coast and coming back via Canterbury. Most of what I buy is what I would loosely call bookshop fiction. A lot of it falls into either being literary or genre fiction and on the whole it is easier to understand what I mean by looking at a few pictures. We put a lot out yesterday and here is the link to the pictures of it    should you need to turn some of your paperbacks into cash, then this type of stuff.

The other type which I would roughly classify as fairly recent bestsellers, the type of book that mostly has a life in supermarkets followed by charity shops, for the most part doesn't get as far as our main fiction alphabet but goes out at 50p mostly on the shelving in one of our shop windows.

On the way back we followed the number 9 Canterbury to Ramsgate bus and the fumes from it were so bad we had to drop back and adjust the ventilation in the car so it wasn't taking in air from outside. 

Not good when one considers using public transport to reduce pollution and to be honest I don't really know what to do about it.

With the following eclectic batch of archive photos I think the most striking thing is what a benefit the heritage pontoons were in Ramsgate and what a pity the council removed them.

Another Ramsgate Tourist Attraction Gets Removed and a minor ramble

I don’t think any of the Thanet tourist attractions were more cost effective than the heritage pontoons. The way the worked was that people paid reduced mooring fees to keep heritage vessels opposite the café culture.

I wasn’t an easy place to moor but the boat owners put up with the problems of having there boats there so we could all enjoy them.

There isn’t an alternative use for this part of the harbour as it lacks the security and facilities for pontoons there to be used in the ordinary way. 

Back in 2010 the council decided this wasn’t such a good idea and told the owners of these boats they would have to pay almost full mooring fees so off they went.

Well now the council have removed the pontoons altogether, they seem to be saying too expensive to maintain, although frankly trying to contact the council to find out about this didn’t go too well as I just got put through to a phone that no one answered.

There is of course the foi request route which is expensive for the council and time consuming for me so I haven’t bothered to pursue it.

Work on the Royal Victoria Pavilion seem so be going on at a pace, as far as I can ascertain the asbestos removal is now complete and contractors are removing the inside. 

A note here the Pav which was first built in 1903 as been gutted inside several times and also had a major fire plus numerous minor ones. 

The inside is basically modernish buildings built inside the outer shell. Here is the link to the pictures I took on the inside http://thanetonline.blogspot.co.uk/2010/11/pictures-of-inside-of-royal-victoria.html   

The Pleasurama site is still deserted and the most recent cliff repairs starting to sprout vegetation, it’s difficult to know where this one will go, it still looks like a land banking operation to me. I can’t see any reputable developer starting work there without a flood risk assessment and a proper assessment of the cliff, both in terms of how safe it would be for people to live under and in terms of how close anything can be built to it to allow for economic cliff maintenance for the life of any development there. 

British screw schooner Amazon and Ramsgate Maritime Museum.

The beautiful 1885 steam yacht “Amazon” is currently visiting Ramsgate Royal Harbour as the guest of the Maritime Museum.

“Amazon”, once the property of Arthur Lowe of Dad’s Army fame used to be a regular visitor to Ramsgate in the 1970’s, when many riotous parties were held onboard with other members of the cast, including local resident John Le Mesurier.

On Sunday (17th June) the Museum played host to a visitation from a large group of Kent mayors, all of whom spent an entertaining morning looking at the fascinating displays of maritime history and the famous ocean-going steam tug which is on display in Smeaton’s drydock. 

Amazon (1885)

This distinctively British screw schooner was built at Southampton in 1885 from designs by the renowned Dixon Kemp. Kemp intended her to be 'fast and a good seaboat' and her successful sea trials were recorded in his definitive Yacht Architecture (First Edition, 1885).

Carvel planked in teak and pitch pine on oak frames, with alternate wrought iron strap floor reinforcement, bronze fastenings, lead keel and copper sheathing, Amazon's survival reflects the high quality insisted upon at build - her hull is still largely original.  She has not had a ‘restoration’, just necessary repairs.  She is the real thing.

Her builder and first owner, Tankerville Chamberlayne, Esq., a gentleman of local standing, personally superintended her construction by his own 'Arrow Yard' at Northam on the River Itchen.  Amazon's original engine and boiler were supplied by the adjacent works of Day, Summers and Company.

Amazon was used for summer cruising, to attend sailing regattas along the south coast of England, and to visit France. Having been prepared appropriately for the occasion of Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee Royal Fleet Review in 1897, she was shortly after sold to a prominent French yachtsman and was based at St. Malo as Armoricain until 1900, when she returned to British ownership.

Already too old (and with a coal-fired compound engine no doubt thought to be rather too old-fashioned) for the First World War, she remained in south coast ports as a private yacht.  A new owner took her to London and after 52 years of service her original engine and boiler were removed on her conversion to diesel in 1937.

During the Second World War she became an unpowered houseboat lying in a west London Yacht Basin.  Encouraged by his surveyor's positive report, the actor Arthur Lowe, who bought her as a houseboat in 1968, fitted her out for sea again.  At first his private yacht, she pursued a successful charter business in family ownership after his death in 1982, before migrating to the north of Scotland in 1990. She was sold to the current owners at the end of 1996.

Amazon is today used as a family yacht, from 1997 to 2009 based at Malta in the Mediterranean.

In February 2009, at 124 years of age, Amazon departed Malta, motor sailing via Gibraltar, the Canary Islands, the Cape Verde Islands, Barbados, St Vincent & the Grenadines, St Lucia, Antigua & Barbuda and Bermuda to New England.

In 2011, at 126 years of age, Amazon re-crossed the North Atlantic Ocean, taking the rougher ‘northern route’ from St John’s, Newfoundland, Canada to Bantry Bay in Ireland in August.

On 4 June 2012, Amazon was the only vessel attending the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Pageant on the River Thames that had also been present at Spithead on 26 June 1897 to witness the Royal Fleet Review for Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee – a truly unique ‘double’!

Amazon’s dimensions are:

• 83 ft waterline, 102 ft hull, 114 ft over spar (c.25m / 30m / 34m)
• Beam - 15 ft 6 ins (c.4.6m)
• Draught - maximum 8 ft 3 ins (aft) (c.2.5m)

Ramsgate Maritime Museum is now open

If you are wondering what to do on this rather dismal bank holiday, the maritime museum is now open and well worth a visit, entrance is free.

Looking out for banana skins with this one, I think there may be some problems relating to the amount of time heritage vessels can remain on the heritage pontoon, I think the council have restricted this to two weeks, which may mean that some of the ones run by volunteers may find this time frame difficult.

On the same track I gather The New Britannic that was being restored there has been effectively evicted by the council and at Richborough at the moment, which is a very difficult place to continue the restoration.

There is also considerable restriction on the number of events that the museum can hold this year, although this is combined with the limitation of what they could hold given the time frame.

I think the trust’s decision to open immediately without lots of improvements to the museum is the right one, they also seem to very keen to involve local people, I think if you want to volunteer now is your chance.

Here are a few of the pictures I took yesterday http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/laptop512/id3.htm

Both the mayor of Ramsgate and the soon to elected new mayor of Margate were there.

None of the Conservative councillors in sight and the messages I am getting from the Conservative group seem to be saying that they are still against the lease being signed, strange mutterings about pacts with the devil, the crazy talk of lost parking revenue of £40,000 per year, when the revenue for all the spaces in the car park for the six weekends it is to be used for event couldn’t reach a tenth of this figure.

It makes one wonder if the years of delay were actually due to misplacing the decimal point, what I can’t get from the Conservative group is any sensible reason, in terms of a potential banana skin, so it looks like we have got our museum back at virtually no cost to the council taxpayer.   

More pictures and thoughts to follow on this one, not sure when as I am a bit tied up with the bank holiday weekend.

Ramsgate Maritime Heritage and the toilet display

Following the signing of the Ramsgate Maritime Museum lease we can look forward to a different display on George VI Memorial Pontoon.

Currently we have an unusual display of vessels displaying outside toilets.

I guess as visitor attractions go it summarises what happens when things go wrong.

Where is ECR when you need him, I am just no good at this sort of thing.

These were the only two vessels on the pontoon today and I don’t know if the outside loo thing is a new thing, some sort of special club perhaps there is a funny handshake, perhaps it is related to outside cottaging any ideas.