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PREFACE At the beginning of the last century it was possible to sail from London to Glasgow via south coast ports and Belfast, returning along the east coast from either Dundee or Leith for as little as £5. Circumnavigation of the coast was provided seasonally by M Langlands’ steamers from Liverpool, and a passenger and cargo service from Belfast north-about to the Tees was also on offer at £6 return. The coastal passenger and cargo liner was then in its heyday and catered both for the first-class tourist as well as keenly priced second-class fares for the likes of football fans following away matches.The coastal liners competed, and remained competitive on some routes, with the railways, most notably the London to Newcastle service offered by the Tyne-Tees Steam Shipping Company. But the Depression of the 1930s coupled with competition from both railway and the motor coach spelled the end for most of the coastal liners.This, combined with losses incurred in the Second World War, left only a few ships each offering just a handful of passenger berths. The days when 300 passengers were landed twice weekly at Grangemouth or Dundee from the London boat are long gone. Sadly, these wonderful steamer services are also largely forgotten and this book aims to stir the memory of readers. It is a nostalgic reminder of Hibernian Coast and Caledonian Coast sailing from Liverpool to London until the 1960s; it paints a picture of Bernicia and Hadrian disembarking passengers for the City at Southend Pier in the early 1930s; it describes the express east coast passenger routes and the more relaxed west coast services; and it recounts the evolution of the steamers from the days of the sloops and schooners running down the east coast, and the rantapikes of the west coast. Various written works have been both an inspiration and an invaluable source of information that would not necessarily have been apparent from company records and other archive material. The work of the late James Layton recorded in Tees Packet (the Teesside Branch World Ship Society journal) on the Tyne-Tees Steam Shipping Company is invaluable and I am grateful to Harold Appleyard and Roy Fenton for finding this material. The history of the Carron Line by Ian Bowman is equally important. Others have helped in gathering information and in collecting suitable images for the book, including staff at a variety of libraries and maritime museums, and Tony Shields is thanked for preparing the images for publication. Unless otherwise credited, all the photographs are from the author’s collection, original sources unknown. As always, the role of reader or editor of a draft manuscript is important. The author is indebted to Malcolm McRonald, recognised expert on Coast Lines, and to Iain Hope, expert on Scottish coastal shipping, both for critical review and provision of information, and to Donald Meek for ensuring that the finished text is meaningful. The well-known maritime artist Derrick Smoothy offered to create a cover picture for this book after admiring the cover of my book An Illustrated History of Thames Pleasure Steamers, which is from a screen print by his friend Harry Hudson Rodmell. The painting of London reproduced on the cover of this book was one of the last works completed by Derrick Smoothy, who sadly died in 2009. This book, with its magnificent cover is, therefore, dedicated to the memory of Derrick, who has left us all a wonderful and plentiful legacy of maritime paintings. Nick Robins Crowmarsh, Oxfordshire