Post by Administrator on Nov 6, 2010 10:37:41 GMT
About the Boat
Silver Queen was built in Southampton in 1926. Throughout the 1920Œs and 30Œs she worked as a tripper boat off Barry Island in Wales. At the outbreak of WW2 the peaceful trips off the beach were interrupted as she was requisitioned by the government to take part in Operation Dynamo.
In 1940 the retreating British army was surrounded by the German army on the beaches near Dunkirk in France. Low on supplies and morale they looked certain to be obliterated. The implication of this would be a German invasion of Great Britain.
The situation was desperate with 350,000 men pinned down on the beaches. In 1940 the BBC made the following announcement:gThe Admiralty has made an Order requesting all owners of self-propelled pleasure craft between 30Œand 100Œin length to send all particulars to the Admiralty within 14 days from today if they have not already been offered or requisitionedh. Silver Queen answered this call,joined the armada of Little Ships assembling in Ramsgate and prepared to set sail for Dunkirk.
Due to her shallow draft she was ideal for ferrying solders off beaches to the destroyers waiting in the English Channel where they were taken back to England. Under fire,many of these heroic Little Ships were smashed to pieces or swamped by men desperate to escape the beaches and the rapidly advancing Germans.
One book describes how,with no compass or charts,Silver Queen was making her way home packed with soldiers but lost her way. After several hours they spotted what they thought was their safe home port of Ramsgate and headed straight for it. However,this was not Ramsgate but German occupied Calais,Six batteries of German guns pounded away at Silver Queen as she frantically reversed course. One round crashed into her stern,another landed on the starboard bow causing substantial damage. The Belgian launch,Yser,travelling in company,was hit too. Yser fired a flare in a desperate call for help. Amazingly,a friendly destroyer did catch the signal,hurried over,and provided covering fire whilst the two strays crept out of range. Somehow Silver Queen limped back to Ramsgate,discharged a load of troops and they quietly sank at her pier.
Between 28th May and 4th June 1940 no less than 338,000 British and allied troops were evacuated. Of these one third were saved from the beaches by these Little Ships. Although the retreat was a disaster for the Allies,the Little Ships like Silver Queen were immortalised in what is now known as the gMiracle Of Dunkirkh(read more about the evacuation)Miracle of Dunkirk.
However all was not lost for Silver Queen,she was refloated and worked in Ramsgate working under the Royal Navy as a Contraband control vessel chasing smugglers. During the war she was taken to Freetown in Sierra Leone working as a harbour patrol vessel. She was sold in May 1944 and we presume taken back to England on board one of the Navy ships.
Peacetime gave her a new lease of life up the coast in Sheerness as a tripper boat. In an era before regulation she reportedly carried 120 passengers on one trip around the WW2 wreck of the SS Richard Montgomery. In the mid 1950s she was bought by Mr. Ferguson from the Channel Islands who sailed her once again across the English Channel to St Peter Port where she was renamed Fermain V and operated as a Ferry until 1996 sailing from St Peter Port to the sandy beach of Fermain Bay.
LINK: silverqueencruises.com/about/
K.