September 2021

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September was a month of contrasting thoughts and realities. 10th September was a date that has been in our diaries for some months, if not years; as it was on this date in 1971 that the sum of £525 was exchanged in the Old Church Yard offices of the Liverpool Lighterage Co. for the purchase of the Kerne, River Mersey’s last operational coal fired steamship. Little did we know then that 50 years later we would be battling against time to have the vessel in steam to celebrate the fantastic achievement of continuous operational preservation. We so nearly made it, but time ran out on us, not only for the anniversary, but also the Leigh Arms Steam Party at Acton Bridge on the River Weaver at the beginning of October. That said, our volunteers made a monumental effort to get Kerne back in steam, but we missed out by very narrow margins, despite huge progress with the outstanding list of repairs. As reported earlier, in order to facilitate the installation of the new stay tubes, it was necessary to cut away significant areas of the coal bunkers as you cannot install 8ft tubes when you only have a maximum of 6ft between the bunkers and the tubeplate. In commercial days, vessels requiring boiler work would have their decks cut away, and the boiler craned out for the repairs to be carried out ashore. That is not an option for us, so the bunkers have to be sacrificed. Unfortunately, all manner of pipes, wiring and other ancillaries run across the stokehold and bunker bulkheads, all of which had to be dismantled and now reinstated. It was decided at an early stage that any attempts to reinstate the much-repaired and patched 1913 platework would be fraught with difficulty, so the decision was taken to replace the cut-away sections with new steelwork. As can easily be imagined, it takes some skill and patience to weld new steel to the existing 100 year old platework and frames, and it proved just as difficult, and some more!! As well as the bunkers, new steelwork was employed in the replacement of the lower sections of the smokebox. This had to be shaped and fashioned to the new framework before being bolted and welded into position. Our small team of volunteer engineers deserve a medal for the time and effort they put into this work in their attempts to get the job finished so that steam could be raised for the all-important steam test by the Boiler Inspector. However, having seen the 10th September come and go, and with the Leigh Arms on the horizon, we had to make the difficult decision on 22nd September to abandon our planned trip to Acton Bridge and concentrate on finishing the job. Whilst the volunteers and crew are extremely disappointed to miss our targeted goals for steaming, having such dates to aim for gave us the impetuous to put in the huge amount of time and effort, which we are confident will enable us to have Kerne back in steam and operational in the coming weeks.

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