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City & Village Tours: 0845 812 5000 info@cityandvillagetours.com
Queen Elizabeth attended Swan Upping for the first
and only time in 2009. Built at Bourne End on the
Thames in 1883, Alaska is now the oldest working
passenger steamer on the Thames. She’s moored,
where else, at Harleyford Marina and when you first
hear her whistle you don't look up the river but across
to land thinking
I didn't known there was a steam
train near here!
Alaska is an immaculate survivor of
a bygone age meticulously restored after an ignoble
decade as a derelict boat used as a mooring pontoon
for hire boats in Oxford. Alaska is now owned by
Peter Green of Thames Steamers and is part of the
National Historic Fleet alongside HMS Victory and
Cutty Sark.
In the Victorian and Edwardian age the Gentlemen’s
Launch reigned supreme on the Upper Thames and
among the original ranks of these sleek beauties is
Verity, built by James Taylor of Staines in 1904 for
the Australian opera singer Dame Nellie Melba for
whom the afters is named. Dame Nellie intended the
launch to be a gift for her pal King Edward VII but
he declined to accept it when he discovered that it
was powered by a French Renault petrol engine!
It was later owned by the Prime Minister Neville
Chamberlain (who took the Renault out and put a
British engine in!) and was eventually found sunk
at Pangbourne and bought and restored by the Turk
family of Thames Watermen. The Turks kept her as
a family boat for many years before she was sold at
auction just a few years ago to Peter and Elaine
Laverick. Verity is pictured below alongside Bates
Star Craft Louis Phillipe back in July on the day of
Her Majesty’s picnic on the barge Gloriana.
Verity, 42 feet of exquisite mirror-varnished
mahogany has what is known as a beaver stern and
there is another classic boat of the River Thames, the
Thames Slipper Launch, so named because the stern
looks like a slipper! You could imagine that the older
man in his sedate Gentlemen’s Launch might frown
upon the Bright Young Thing in his Slipper Launch.
It’s the Volvo and the Porsche. Designed as sports
boats for motorists, the prototype Slipper Launch
was built in 1910 for man-about-town Arthur Whitten
Brown and named Merk in honour of his beloved
Mercedes motor car.
With John Alcock Whitten
Brown was to become a household name when the
were the first navigate the transatlantic non-stop
by flight in 1919. Louis Renault ordered a 30 foot
slipper launch in which he put a 100hp Renault
engine capable of speeds of up to 37mph - on the
Seine, thank goodness, not the Thames! You’ll
often see slipper launches and Edwardian gentlemen’s
launches on the Cliveden reach where the hotel runs
a luxury fleet of classic Thames craft for guests.
Verity is looked after now by Mark Thomas of
Stanley & Thomas, boat builders and restorers of
classic wooden boats, based at the Tom Jones Boat
Yard at the Romney Lock in Windsor. The firm
also undertakes brokerage of classic wooden craft,
powered and unpowered, and currently have on
their books 20 and 25 foot Thames Slipper Launches
complete with traditional Lloyd Loom chairs for
£20,000 and £30,000 respectively as well as a
mahogany and teak punt for £3,000 and some
beautiful Thames Skiffs from £7,500 to £12,000.