Scale: 1:48. The paddle steamer ‘Royal Sovereign’ (1893) was built by Fairfields on the Clyde for the Victoria Steamboat Association (VSA). Fairfields had entered into an agreement with the VSA to build three large paddle steamers at their own expense, which the VSA would then purchase by instalments. The first of these, the ‘Koh-I-Noor’ (1982), was followed by the similar ‘Royal Sovereign’ launched the following year. The three steamers were all operated by separate companies, with the ‘Royal Sovereign’ under the management of the London and East Coast Express Steamship Service Ltd. They eclipsed the standards of all other Thames steamers, and were not surpassed for many years.

‘Royal Sovereign’ operated from Old Swan Pier in central London, sailing to Southend, and to resorts in Essex and Kent. She was 310 feet in length and built entirely of steel, with ten watertight compartments. The deck saloons, forward and aft of the machinery space between the paddles, supported an unbroken promenade deck 290 feet in length. The aft deck saloon, which extended the whole width of the vessel, was for the use of the first-class passengers, and was luxuriously fitted out. Beneath that was their high-ceilinged dining room, with seating for 170. The forward deck saloon, with its airy, well ventilated, dining room beneath, was the domain of the second-class passengers. The vessel had electric lighting throughout and a call system.

A number of the ‘Royal Sovereign’s’ features are visible on this superb model such as the seating on the promenade deck (there were twice as many seats for first-class passengers on the aft-part of the deck) with the pivoting backs to the benches, so that the seated could face either to the bow or the stern; the retractable funnels and pivoting foremast for enabling the steamer to navigate the low bridges of the River Thames; and the essential lifeboats. Accidents, particularly involving pleasure steamers, were becoming more frequent at this time on London’s congested river, and many passengers would still have remembered the collision involving the paddle steamer ‘Princess Alice’, 15 years earlier, in which more than 600 people perished.