| Guests and officials
made history in Ellesmere as they helped launch the
first steamboat of its kind to operate in
Shropshire. The Victorian
style steamboat, the Lady Katherine, has been
hand built specially to operate on the Mere in
Ellesmere. It was launched on August 5th by
Ellesmere town mayor, Councillor Geoff Elner.
He paid tribute to the vision of
Gavin Lewery of the Shropshire Steamboat Company who
had spent the previous eight months building the
boat at his workshop in Wem.
Councillor Elner said, as he
officially launched the Lady Katherine, that the
town of Ellesmere was very pleased that Mr Lewery
had decided to make his dream of building a
steamboat for the Mere come true.
“He is not only a dreamer, but one
of life’s achievers and he shows us all what can be
done if we put our mind to it,” he said. It gave
Ellesmere a unique attraction which could be used in
an innovative way to promote the town and help
visitors explore its wildlife and history, he added.
The launching ceremony also
included a song specially written and performed for
the occasion by Peter Wakefield and Loraine Baker,
of the band Shake the Roots of Alsager, near Crewe.
Mr Lewery has headed a team of
steam and boat building experts from across the
country to build the Lady Katherine. The nine
ton boat is driven by a 20-horsepower steam engine
powered by a modern boiler designed for the boat by
Lancashire based company, McEwen Boilermakers. Mr
Lewery was also helped by boat builder, Malcolm
Webster.
Funding has come from Advantage
West Midlands, North Shropshire District Council and
the Market Towns Initiative as well as from Mr
Lewery’s friends and family.
The Lady Katherine is open
to passengers on the Mere every weekend up to
Christmas and every day of the October half-term
holiday. It will carry up to 12 passengers for a
cruise around the 100-acre lake.
The boat is named after the first
wife of Peregrine Cust, the 6th Baron Brownlow who
gave the lake and the adjoining Cremorne Gardens to
the townspeople of Ellesmere in 1953. |
