Barry Railway Steamers: (No. 80 Series X)

Almost a century has elapsed since the Barry 'Red Funnel Line' steamers disappeared from the Bristol Channel excursion scene, and although Barry Pier has gone, as has the railway that served it, the remains are yet visible, and so the memory of the handsome fleet of paddle-steamers that were based there lingers on. The recollections of those who travelled on the former Barry vessels that survived until World War II have been the stimulus to ask why it was that the White Funnel Fleet of Bristol was so challenged, at a key time of the evolution on the British paddle-steamer, by the upstart South Walian Barry Railway Company. To understand the story of the so-called 'Barry & Bristol Channel Steamship Company' it is necessary to consider - on the one hand - the origins of the parent Barry Railway Company and - on the other - how P. & A. Campbell Ltd of Bristol with its 'White Funnel Fleet' became the dominant excursion-steamer operator in the Bristol Channel by the 1890s, the era in which this story starts. The Barry Railway was very much a company created to serve a docks complex for the export of coal.Here, passenger train operations were somewhat secondary to the primary purpose of moving minerals traffic down from the various valleys. The company had succeeded in gaining access to numerous valleys already served by other railways in order to tap the abundant minerals traffics of the South Wales coalfield for export through its large new Barry Docks. As the Barry Docks complex had taken shape, it was a relatively straightforward matter to extend passenger railway operations from Barry across to Barry Island for leisure traffic, and then to push further through tunnel to what was to become Barry Pier station, immediately adjacent to the main entrance lock to Barry Docks. Although the Barry Railway thought in terms of controlling its own steamship operations from the outset, it was realised that this would meet with opposition from Campbells at Bristol with its large fleet, and so the Barry company initially settled for an alliance whereby the White Funnel Fleet of steamers served Barry Pier when it opened in 1899. But it was to be an uneasy alliance, and so the point was soon reached where the Barry company would feel obliged to go it alone.The struggle that followed was to be both litigious and complicated. Presented in A5 format with a laminated card cover with square-backed spine, this work contains 224 pages, including 4 pages of colour, with 128 illustrations. A 520mm X 395mm pull-out plan of the steam ships Gwalia and Devonia is also included.