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The paddle tug Reliant (pictured above) was built as the Old Trafford in 1907 for service on the Manchester Ship Canal at a cost of £6,400.

As larger ships visited the canal, the Old Trafford became outclassed by ever more powerful tugs and, in 1950, she was sold for £1,650 to the Ridley Steam Tug Co of the River Tyne and renamed Reliant. She set off from the Mersey on October 7th of that year for her new home at Newcastle but encountered severe weather forcing her to take shelter in Liverpool, Holyhead, Dover and Ramsgate on the way. Six years later she was sold on (and at a price of £4,000 making a nice profit for her owners) to the Seaham Harbour Dock Company which continued to operate her until the late 1960s when she was withdrawn.

Reliant was a first rate example of a traditional British paddle tug with two wonderful side-lever steam engines. There was much concern that she would be scrapped and that an example of this sort of vessel would therefore be lost to history. The Paddle Steamer Preservation Society and others campaigned hard for her to be saved and fortunately there was interest. People in San Francisco came to look. The National Maritime Museum came to look and the museum's then director, Basil Greenhill, took a personal interest. As a result, the Reliant was "saved for the nation" and bought to become a central feature of the National Maritime Museum at Greenwich. The Americans looked elsewhere and bought the paddle tug Eppleton Hall which they sailed across the Atlantic and through the Panama Canal under her own steam to San Francisco where she remains today now owned by the Maritime Museum there.

In June 1969 the Reliant was towed from the Tyne to the yard of Thomas Ward at Grays in Essex and work began on transforming her for her new role at the National Maritime Museum.

With the exception of the starboard paddle wheel which was removed, the development left the Reliant virtually intact from her bow to a point around the towing hook. Aft of this the upper deck merged into a newly constructed mezzanine floor of the gallery but below this she was again virtually intact. Right at the heart of the National Maritime Museum's Neptune Hall, the finished result was absolutely stunning. Visitors could walk on the decks, go into the engine room, watch the machinery turning the wholly intact remaining paddle wheel and visit the crew accommodation. The ship provided the perfect opportunity for everyone, individuals, families and children alike, to explore and absorb the atmosphere of a real paddle tug.

Then policy changed. The management of the National Maritime Museum decided to have a major redevelopment and the Reliant was not to be part of it. Following Museum Association procedures, she was advertised. Invitations to take her on were made. But the Reliant was a big exhibit, an almost complete paddle tug and an individual or organisation with the necessary space and finance could not be found to take the whole tug. So that was that. The Reliant was, in current museum-speak, "dispersed".

"An example of reform in action is the disposal of the steam paddle tug Reliant, which had been removed from display in 1996. Early in the reform programme, in 2001, the Museum established that such a large object could not be displayed intact and was too costly to preserve and store. The Museum retained some iconic items, including one of Reliant’s engines, which is on show as working exhibit. The remaining parts of the vessel were made available under the dispersal/disposal plans. Various bodies were contacted, including other museums, the lead professional body (the Museums Association), the Maritime Curators Group and DCMS. Several institutions agreed to take parts of the tug, while her other engine is now located at Markham Grange Museum near Doncaster. The remaining sections were disposed of after the Museum had made all reasonable efforts to find them an alternative home within the maritime community. This action released just under 1000m² of storage space, saving more than £200,000 per year".

One of the Reliant's two side-lever steam engines is retained at the museum and displayed (pictured above) with an excellent view of the modern electric motor and giant bicycle chain used to turn the engine positioned right at the front of the display.

Sadly the Reliant's remaining paddle wheel (pictured above right) has been much altered and diminished for the new display from what it was (pictured above left in 1969 and, pictured centre, still intact and still a working part of the previous Reliant display at the National Maritime Museum.) Now, most of each paddle blade has gone leaving only tiny stumps. The outboard rim has gone. The feathering mechanism has gone. Much of the total structure has gone. Even tiny bits of detail on what remains are not quite right. The two reduced boards of each blade are not mounted butted up to each other as they should be to produce a solid blade for pushing water but have been sloppily mounted with a gap between them.

The picture on the left shows a real feathering paddle wheel. Like many paddlers, the Reliant had wooden paddle blades and the one pictured has them made of steel but essentially the basic structure of the wheel on the left is very similar to those originally fitted to the Reliant. That is what a feathering paddlewheel looks like. No real paddle wheel, either feathering or of the radial sort, looks anything at all like what is now on display (pictured right) at Greenwich. Some will say that this doesn't really matter. What is there suggests the idea of a paddle wheel, doesn't it? Others may say that it should matter a lot in a National Maritime Museum.

The Museum is presently reviewing its collection once again and is apparently looking to disperse a further 4,500 items from its stores. In the UK newspaper The Guardian of December 6th, 2004 the museum's current director Rear Admiral Roy Clare, declared "We are talking dispersal, not disposal. This is a drive for efficiency and better understanding and care of the collections, not a cost-cutting operation by some weaselly little accountant".

Many will be much reassured by this last comment. But others may wonder why, if this is the case, the museum felt the need to boast in its 30th November press release that the disposal of the remaining sections of the Reliant "released just under 1000m² of storage space, saving more than £200,000 per year". Those who are good at sums might also make the point that these storage costs would not have been incurred if the Reliant had remained on display and, in that case, using the museum's own figures, eight years at £200K per annum would have saved £1.6 million of public money and the Reliant would still be with us.

Of course dispersal is a good thing if dispersal means dispersal. It is much better that exhibits should be on display somewhere rather than stacked up in stores seen by nobody. And if a place can be found for artefacts currently in store to be put on display somewhere else then that is great. But if dispersal means trying to disperse items and then if nobody can be found to take them, chucking them out, then that is something else.

Of course some items in the collection may have very little merit on any score. Few people would weep buckets of tears at the disposal of a box of blue plastic swizzle sticks manufactured as cheap souvenirs in 1958 for the launch of the film A Night to Remember about the sinking of the Titanic. Nor is there much in favour of a lump of shrapnel excavated from a bomb site in Woolwich in the Second World War. And both are cluttering up valuable space in the National Maritime Museum collection.

But then there is the Reliant . She was not a blue plastic swizzle stick nor a piece of shrapnel. She was an almost entirely intact paddle tug brought to the National Maritime Museum by a former museum director who thought it very worthwhile to save her. Now she has gone. And let's be absolutely clear about this. She has gone for ever.

There is a great generosity of spirit out there extended to the National Maritime Museum from all who love matters nautical. People want the museum to be successful and to attract visitors. But many will find it difficult to see how the sad story of the demise of the Reliant and the subsequent interpretation of what remains of one of her engines and a part paddle wheel squares with the declared aim of "better understanding and care of the collections". Some understanding of paddle wheels. Some care of the Reliant.

And what a contrast with the Swiss Transport Museum at Lucerne. It has just announced that the paddle steamer Rigi, which has been on display there since 1958, is to be completely refurbished and put back into steam on the lake by 2009. Rigi is about Reliant size and, ironically, was built at Greenwich in 1848. So all credit to the Swiss for showing what can be done in a positive way to preserve maritime heritage for future generations.

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I myself have really fond memories of the Reliant from a family visit many years ago. It's always stuck in my mind and the maritime museum has always been one of my favourite museums. The displays of beautiful museum models and the Reliant museum display was a superb part of the museum. I'm really saddened to hear of it's fate and what they have done with the resulting butchered display of one of it's steam engines and "dummy" pretend paddle wheel.