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Spent Saturday (26/7/25) down in Portsmouth visiting the Historic Dockyard for the Pontoon Dock Open Weekend, run by Portsmouth Historic Quarter out of Boathouse 4. One of the highlights was Steam Pinnace 199, built for the Admiralty in 1909. The sole survivor of 786 steam pinnaces of various sizes built between 1888 and 1929, she was rescued from a Thames mudbank in 1979 and restored. She is now part of the National Historic Fleet alongside historic ships including Cutty Sark and HMS Victory.
I got chatting to the volunteers about the boiler and engine, and the next thing I knew I was invited to climb down the hatches into the (rather cramped) boiler room and engine room for a personal guided tour. I think they were delighted to encounter a visitor (me) with a strong interest in how it all worked, and enough technical knowledge gleaned from time around steam locos to understand the mechanical details.
