The Royal Iris
Queen of the Mersey since 1951
Still loved today by generations of
merseysiders under her other, less official, name of 'The Fish and Chip Boat'.
(Come
to think about it, possibly the conception of many of them after a good night
out on her).
She may be disposed, banished and decaying, but for all of that she
is still the beloved Queen of the river, regardless of what is done to promote
the remaining boats.
It was suggested to me that I might look her up by Andy, one of the Chief Engineers (now sadly retired on medical grounds) from the existing fleet. He told me that she was lying at Woolwich somewhere. That somewhere became quite hard to find. I tried what remains of the docks with no luck and could not find her listed by the Ports Authority. However I finally found her on Google Earth at 51degrees, 29min 43sec N. 2min 54sec E. Actually sat moored on the River Thames.
So today, 29-2-06, I made a journey into my past and found her, these being the pictures I took.
She is tied up by way of a riverside
industrial estate, I actually approached her though the yard of a Marble Masons'
thanks to their kind permission.
Talking with some of the people working there,
it would appear that there is a ship minder living on board in the mobile home
perched on the top deck.
Sadly, however, I was not able to contact him from
shoreside and since it was a four foot or so jump down to her, something
extremely discouraged even during my time at sea, I decided that now, thirty two
years later, perhaps I could be forgiven for exercising some discretion in
pursuing the matter.
It would appear from looking at some earlier
web sites that she was painted blue (In her hey day She used to be Yellow with a
Green Boot toping).
Now she is in silver. It also looked from the amount of
detritus about that either quite a bit of restoration work was in hand, or
someone needs to work a bit more tidily. I sincerely hope the former case.
However from what little I could see from shoreside I was surprised to see that
internal work appeared to be the order of the day whist, certainly the case with
the upperworks, the steelwork had been repainted, but left with through and
through corrosion, see a couple of the pictures.
I sincerely hope that eventually money and labour can be found to restore this famous boat and bring some of her former glory back.
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