page_title: PS Lincoln Castle
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: PS Lincoln Castle / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Lincoln Castle crossing the Humber
context_page_description: PS Lincoln Castle was a coal-fired side-wheel paddle steamer, which ferried passengers across the Humber from the 1941 until 1978. She was the last coal-fired paddle steamer still in regular services in the UK. Later, she served as a pub at Hessle, and then as a restaurant under permanent dock at Alexandra Dock, Grimsby. In September 2010, the Hull Daily Mail reported that she was in an advanced state of demolition, despite the efforts of local people to buy the historic vessel and restore her. On 31 March 2011, the Lincoln Castle Preservation Society were reported to have purchased the broken up parts of the ship for restoration.
context_section_description: PS  Lincoln Castle was launched on 27 April 1940, by A. & J. Inglis of Pointhouse, Glasgow. She was named after the Norman castle at Lincoln. She was delivered to the LNER at Grimsby's Royal Dock on 4 July 1941 to complement the 1934 Wingfield Castle and Tattershall Castle built by Gray's of Hartlepool. She entered service on 4 August 1941 on the New Holland to Hull public service. The route was operated by the LNER until nationalisation in 1948, when it was taken over by British Railways, later known as British Rail. Lincoln Castle served this route until 1978, under Sealink management, when known to be unable to pass a boiler inspection. At the time of her withdrawal, she was the last coal-fired paddle steamer providing a daily scheduled service in the United Kingdom.
  The paddle steamer was converted into a pub and opened at Hessle, close to the Humber Bridge which had, since 1981, rendered the remaining ferries obsolete. In 1987 she was re-sold and moved to Immingham for refurbishment. Her sponsons and funnel were removed and crankshaft cut to reduce her width and enable her to be pulled into Alexandra Dock at what was to be her last port of call. Re-assembled and refitted and her faulty boiler removed, she opened as a bar and restaurant in 1989 alongside the National Fishing Heritage Centre and Sainsbury's flagship branch on Grimsby's historic original Haven Alexandra Dock, close to the retired fishing trawler Ross Tiger. Thinning of her hull due to corrosion and pinhole seepage through some of her bottom plates led to her being taken out of public use in 2006, a move considered to be only temporary while repairs were conducted. The hull plates were considered to be defective (and thus requiring attention) over 15 percent of the submerged hull of the ship and impossible to replace in-situ. To remedy this would either require the ship‘s removal to a dry dock, or a partial or complete lining of the lower hull of the vessel with concrete (a recognised repair solution for long term static steel ships which had already been used on the Lincoln Castle‘s half sister Wingfield Castle). Several 'concrete blocks' already covered leaking plates as later advertised.
  As an attraction she was never to re-open.
  In 2009 it was announced that unless a new owner could be found, the vessel could be scrapped, despite the fact that she was unique (and yet somehow not listed on the Core Register of Historic Ships), and had survived these 70 years in remarkable condition. Before being advertised for sale for a nominal sum, the vessel was offered to the Paddle Steamer Preservation Society who were to seriously consider taking ownership. In the Autumn 2010 issue of the society magazine Paddle Wheels (no 201), the society's chairperson Myra Allen admitted that the decision not to acquire the ship had been 'a heartbreaking one, but our heads had to rule our hearts.' It was also stated that other avenues were being pursued, and that the PSPS was acting in support of the Lincoln Castle Preservation Society, later formed to save the ship when all attempts to purchase it were rejected. In light of what was to follow the society has been criticised for declining to take on the Lincoln Castle, preferring to concentrate on their existing ships, even though one, the MV Balmoral, is not a paddle-steamer.
  The ship was advertised for sale by the Marine ship-brokerage firm Norse Shore for the sum of £20,000; the ridiculously low figure was explained by Norse Shore as being due to the vessel requiring partial dismantling in order to be moved from Alexandra Dock. Norse Shore admitted that North East Lincolnshire council had declared that the vessel had no historic interest to them at all, and as responsibility for the dock rested with the council, they were refusing to transfer the existing lease without payment of a bond of £50,000, in effect a guarantee from a new lessee.
  It was then that other details emerged suggesting previously unvoiced problems.
  The ship's owner was to claim that having been left unused for two decades the channel leading to Alexandr
caption: crossing the Humber in 1975
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