VIC 96 | Royal Navy | Steam ship 1945

Описание: You can catch the same ship in another video:    • Royal Navy | VIC 96 | Steam ship 1945  

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Ex Admiralty Victualling Inshore Craft VIC 96 was built for the Navy with economy in mind by Dunston of Thorne in South Yorkshire in May 1945. The VICs were built for the Navy (in order to service the fleet) on a design based on the Clyde Puffers. Use of simple machinery and simplicity of construction enabled a range of modest shipyards to produce VICs during the War making them quick and economic. Most plates have curvature in only one direction and the hull has straight rather than curved frames, there being an angled bilge. They could also run on indigenous fuel rather than scarce imported oil. VIC 96 has a 14ft high 7ft diameter coal fired Cochran boiler producing steam at 120 psi for a large Crabtree compound engine. The hull is 80ft long between perpendiculars, 85ft long overall and has a beam of 20ft. Working draught is about 7ft 6in. The cargo hold is 40ft 3in long. Originally she had an armoured wheelhouse.

Internally the design is traditional, there being a foc’sle crew space with 4 iron bunks, an after cabin for the Engineer and Master with 2 wooden cots, a tiny galley and a single head.

The propelling machinery consists of the Cochran boiler and Crabtree main engine. There is a steam winch-windlass mounted on the foc’sle and the engine room has a Worthington general service pump, a donkey pump and a reciprocating steam generator for the electrical supply. The engine is condensing, unlike a Puffer, and the auxiliaries (apart from the winch windlass) can also be exhausted through the condenser. The fore peak tank under the foc’sle holds 34 tons of fresh water and the coal bunkers on either side of the boiler have capacity for 8 tons each.

VIC 96 served at Sheerness Dockyard from 1946 to 1959 and then at Chatham Dockyard where she was known as C668 until August 1972. Sold out of the Navy, laid up in docks in the East End of London, sold to the steam ship Museum at Maryport and then sold again to Allerdale District Council, like so many redundant ships, VIC 96 suffered from broken and stolen fixtures and general deterioration. She even flooded and sank at her moorings and had to be pumped out and raised.

Unlike many relics of our maritime history, VIC 96 was fortunate to have been noticed by Martin Stevens who, having formed the Medway Maritime Trust, purchased her to prevent her being scrapped and then looked for ways of preserving her. Eventually in 2003, boiler maker and vintage restorer Julian Hopper together with his father in law, Derek Gransden, had a look at her. Both owned Sentinel steam waggons (lorries) and were no strangers to restoration. Derek got in touch with other like-minded Sentinel owners and their friends with preservation and fund raising in mind. An inaugural meeting of the initial group of 10 was held in Kent in autumn 2003. At the time it seemed a low key meeting but, in fact, several momentous decisions were made.


Between 2004-2009 the ship was steadily rebuilt, refitted and repainted. At an early stage she was pulled out of the water on the slipway at Maryport and wasted plates were replaced. The propeller was taken off and used as a pattern for casting and fitting a new one. The ship was emptied of stores and debris and all machinery dismantled and much of it taken away for rebuilding. The boiler was found to be in excellent condition apart from some external rusting from water dripping onto it and only partial re-tubing was required.

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