HERITAGE OPEN DAYS 2024 - September 6th to 15th
Routes and Prices
Online only; note that the vessel itself is not included in this Heritage Open Days event.
Routes and Prices
Online only; note that the vessel itself is not included in this Heritage Open Days event.
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This map shows the routes operated by the new Medway Steam Packet Company after World War II. PS Medway Queen primarily operated on a Strood-Chatham-Southend-Herne Bay route with occasional forays to Margate and Clacton. Excursions and special hire trips took her elsewhere including the Pool of London and Spithead (for the Coronation Naval Reviews). Her normal sailings were much the same after the war as they had been in the 1920s and '30s.
Sun Pier, Chatham, (below) was a major pickup point and in those days a far grander structure than it appears now. The ships moored to a floating pontoon that that rose and fell with the tide. 
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As you would expect, there was a huge change in prices between the start of her careeer in 1924 and its end in 1963. Inflation is not a new phenomenon. The prices sound cheap today but wages were a fraction then of what they are now and in that context it doesn't sound so good.
In 1925 a return ticket from Strood or Chatham to Southend cost three shillings (15p). Although our collection of advertising material is incomplete for this early period, fares seem to have remained fairly stable until the Second World War. In 1947 the day return fare from Strood or Chatham to Southend had risen to five shillings and six pence and in 1948 it was six shillings and six pence ("Bicycles and perambulators 5/- each way"). By 1963 the day return fare was 10 shillings (50p) Herne Bay was a popular destination and departure point in the 1950s and '60s with day trips advertised in both directions. Leaving Herne Bay in the afternoon meant that the return was via Strood, with an included rail ticket to get back to the departure point. A Southend-Herne Bay day return in 1950 cost six shillings and six pence, and by 1959 that had risen to nine shillings. The day return fare in 1963, returning via Strood (rail link), cost fourteen shillings. |
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