Gondola (steam yacht)
Gondola on Coniston Water.
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| History | |
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 United Kingdom
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| Name: | Gondola |
| Owner: |
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| Operator: |
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| Port of registry: | Barrow |
| Builder: |
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| Yard number: | The rebuilt hull is the only ship built at Vickers not to be numbered |
| Launched: | 1859 |
| Recommissioned: | 1979 |
| Out of service: | 1936-79 |
| Refit: | Every November - March |
| Motto: | 'Cavendo Tutus' |
| General characteristics | |
| Type: | Steam yacht |
| Tonnage: | 42 |
| Length: | 86ft |
| Beam: | 15ft |
| Draught: | 4ft 8inches |
| Installed power: | V twin steam engine |
| Propulsion: | Propeller |
| Speed: |
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| Capacity: | 86 |
| Crew: | 3 |
| Time to activate: | 1.5 hours |
The steam yacht Gondola is a rebuilt Victorian, screw-propelled, steam-powered passenger vessel on Coniston Water, England. Originally launched in 1859, she was built for the steamer service carrying passengers from the Furness Railway and from the Coniston Railway. She was in commercial service until 1936 when she was retired, being converted to a houseboat in 1946. In 1979, by now derelict, she was given a new hull, engine, boiler and most of the superstructure. She is back in service as a passenger boat, still powered by steam and now operated by the National Trust.
Gondola is one of the inspirations for Captain Flint's houseboat in Arthur Ransome's book Swallows and Amazons. In Coniston's Ruskin Museum there is a black and white post card of Gondola that Ransome sent to his illustrator, with changes to the outline in ink to show how he wanted the houseboat to look.
Originally trained in railway engineering, by the late 1850s James Ramsden - first mayor of Barrow-in-Furness (1867) - had become a director of both the Coniston Railway Co. that ran the Foxfield-Coniston line and of the Furness Railway Co. that ran the line from Barrow to Windermere. He had visited Venice in the early years of the decade, and it seems he encountered a style of Venetian boat called a Burchiello, as depicted in some of Canaletto's paintings. These were large wooden barges which between the 16th and 18th centuries carried wealthy passengers along the Riviera del Brenta between Venice and Padua in elegant cabins, luxuriosly upholstered and decorated with Corinthian columns and mirrors. Emulating their flowing lines and level of comfort, he proposed an outline design and commissioned a steam yacht for Coniston Water from Jones, Quiggin & Co. of Liverpool. Douglas Hebson, the naval architect, finalised the details of boat and engine. At a cost of 1,000 guineas (£1,050 or about £120,000 in 2016 prices), Steam Yacht Gondola was to have not only a state-of-the-art boiler and engine borrowed from railway locomotive technology but also an innovative mild steel hull, riveted to frames of Low Moor wrought iron, quite a special material which was also used for the gunwale, and one of the new screw propellers as adopted by Brunel for the SS Great Britain, not to mention the opulent internal finish.
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