Thames steamers

Steamboat services started on the Thames in around 1815 and for nearly 25 years were the main use of steam to carry passengers before the emergence of railways in the south of England. During this time at least 80 steamers are recorded in the Thames and the Steamboat Act of 1819 became the first statute to regulate the safety of the new technology for the public. Wooden boats driven by paddle-wheels, they managed during this time to establish themselves as faster and more reliable than the earlier use of sailing and rowing boats for passenger transport within the Thames estuary.

The early lead in practical steamboats established by William Symington in 1803 with the Charlotte Dundas in Scotland was not maintained, and the first steamboat passenger service was established in the United States in 1807 by Robert Fulton with his North River Steamboat on the Hudson River, using an engine manufactured in Birmingham. The first service on the Thames that can be established properly is the Margery in 1815, though the Richmond may have started taking passengers in 1813.

England, being the birthplace of the steam engine, was quick to put the engine to use by and on the river; a land-based Newcomen pumping engine was located at Pimlico in 1742. Other pumps soon followed. With the improvements of the steam engine by James Watt by 1776, William Symington's Charlotte Dundas in 1803 and the building of the PS Comet steamship by Henry Bell in 1812 to service the Clyde, steamships were soon sailing the Thames.

One of the earliest records is of a vessel Margery which was launched at Dumbarton in June 1814 and having run for a few months on the Clyde was purchased by the London firm of Cortis & Co. She steamed down the east coast and arrived at Gravesend in January 1815, entering service on the Long Ferry route from Gravesend to London on 23 January. Another contender for the first steamboat on the Thames was the Richmond which was brought from Bristol by a Mr. Dawson in 1813, but this was not a success. Civil engineer George Dodd placed an order for a steam paddle boat, also called Richmond, with Lepinghall & Co of Yarmouth in 1814 and this may have gone into service the same year, or possibly the next, on the route from London to Richmond. Dodd next bought the steamboat Duke of Argyll in Scotland, which reached London on 12 June 1815 having covered 756 miles at sea. She was put into service as Thames between London and Margate, the third major route in the Thames estuary, much used by passengers from the continent as well as for pleasure trips to the Kent coast by Londoners. The first steam passenger boat to have been built on the Thames, the Regent, designed by Marc Isambard Brunel built by Henry Maudsley and at 112 feet long larger than previous boats, was put into service in 1816 on the Margate run and served as a mail boat. Brunel's attempt to interest the Admiralty in steam-powered tugs for getting naval vessels in and out of harbour was met by the rebuff that they "consider the introduction of steam is calculated to strike a fatal blow at the naval superiority of the empire".

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