The cumbersomely named Southampton, Isle of Wight & South of England Royal Mail Steam Packet Company, known more informally as the Red Funnel Line, needed to replace two paddle steamesr lost in the war and, in October 1947, ordered the motor vessel BALMORAL from John I. Thornycroft & Co. Ltd, of Woolston, Southampton. Her raked red funnel had a horizontal black top and she had two masts - the mainmast was a stub mast but was later increased to full height. The promenade deck had two saloons.
BALMORAL, whose engines were also built by Thornycroft, was launched on 27 June 1949 and started trials at the end of October. She entered year-round service on the Southampton-Cowes route in December 1949 and, from 1952 onwards, was also used for summer excursion work from Southampton. Her car deck becamse an impromptu sun deck on these occasions. One popular excursion was the Round the Island cruise, also picking up passengers from Southsea. These excursions and a range of charters took her further afield on the South Coast from Brighton to Swanage.
She was also used as a tender to ocean liners lying in Cowes Roads, ferrying passengers to Southampton. One one such occasion, BALMORAL collided with the Italian liner, FAIRSKY, in November 1961, and her starboard lifeboat was smashed and she sustained a gash in the side of the hull. The summer season of 1968 was her last with Red Funnel and she was offered for sale, having been replaced by a dedicated car ferry. In the event, she was chartered to P. & A. Campbell Ltd, Bristol, to replace a paddle steamer and she was eventually purchased by them in 1978.
From May 1969 onwards, she was employed in excursion work in the Bristol Channel area, adopting the white funnel lievery of the Campbell fleet. Cruises to and from the resorts of Ilfracombe, Weston and Minehead were complemented by passenger-ferry work to Lundy, and there was an annual four-day cruise to the Scilly Isles. She was later based at Swansea, until being withdrawn at the end of the 1979 season. In 1980, she was chartered by White Funnel Steamers, a company set up with the support of the Landmark Trust, which owned Lundy, to continue the island service, but made her last sailing on 14 October 1980.
BALMORAL was then sold to become a floating pub and restaurant at Dundee in 1982, but this venture failed. The Paddle Steamer Preservation Society purchased her in March 1985 for continued work as a cruise vessel, operated by Waverley excursions and complementing WAVERLEY. A refit equipped her with a new dining saloon aft, where the car deck had been. On 27 June 2009, exactly sixty years after her launch, she celebrated her Diamond Jubilee with a cruise from Southampton around the Isle of Wight, with calls at Cowes and Portsmouth. Source: Paul Brown, Historic Ships The Survivors (Amberley, 2010), updated Feb 2011.
10 April 2012 BALMORAL is due to dock in Whitehaven next month. Will be also back in the port in June when it will be taking passengers to the Isle of Man. Source: Times & Star, April 2012.
December 2012 BALMORAL is being looked after on a care and maintenance basis by volunteers in Bristol. We are looking at alternative ways of utilising the ship in 2013 and over the coming months we will seek to identify a robust operating programme to offer the prospect of returning her to service in 2014 and beyond. Source: Waverley Steam Navigation Co., Dec 2012.
