m.v. ROYAL DAFFODIL
The ship:- The twin-screw motor vessel Royal Daffodil was built by Wm Denny & Bros, Dumbarton, Scotland in 1939.  It could carry 2073 passengers at 21 knots.  She was 299ft 7inches long, 50 feet 1 inch wide and 2060 tons (gross). The ship went into service in May 1939 and had just 3 short months of ‘Summer season’ excursions from Tower Pier, London, via Gravesend, Southend and Ramsgate to Ostend, Calais and Boulogne before the start of WW2.

War Service

At the end of August 1939, Royal Daffodil started her war by helping to evacuate some 4000 school children from East London to the (safer) east coast ports of Lowestoft, Felixstowe and Yarmouth. She was then sent to Southampton and assisted in taking the BEF to France between October 1939 and May 1940.
Royal Daffodil was at Calais a week before the start of Operation Dynamo.  She made seven trips to Dunkirk and saved over 8500 troops. On her final voyage she was dive bombed and hit on the starboard side. The bomb passed through three decks, through the engine room, just missing the main fuel tank on that side, and exploded astern of the ship. This caused the engine room to flood. The Master, Captain G Johnson ordered all on board to move over to the port side and had the port side lifeboats filled with water, causing the ship to list sufficiently to lift the hole out of the water; this enabled the chief and second engineers to crawl in and block the hole with mattresses and timber. She then returned to Ramsgate, disembarked her troops, and had temporary repairs. From there she travelled round the coast, into the Thames and on to the Company's repair yard at Deptford for full repairs. The upper structure was riddled with bullet holes, one of the lifeboats having 187 holes, all of which had to be filled.
After repair, she was returned to service ferrying RAF personnel and troops between Stranraer and Larne, Northern Ireland.  Her trooping service continued after the war carrying BAOR (British Army of the Rhine) troops to/from Dover and Calais on leave sailings.  She was not returned to civilian service until January 1947 by which time she required a complete refit.  By the end of the war the officers and crew had been awarded 3 DSCs, a DSM and 3 mentions in despatches.  The vessel had carried 2,443,979 service personnel and covered 170,000 miles

Post war

Royal Daffodil was operated by General Steam Navigation Co as an excursion ship through to 1966 when GSNC decided to withdraw from the excursion business.  She made the final journey under her own steam to ship breakers in Belgium in 1967.

The model

The model depicts the ship ‘as built’ with an open bridge.  I used pictures of the 1/48th scale model ship, built by Denny’s apprentices and photos from the internet and books as reference.  The apprentices model is in the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich but I have yet to establish if it is currently on display.
The ship was scratchbuilt using Evergreen plastics.  BMK tapered masts were supplied by Battlefleet Models along with BFMs winches, bollards etc.  Railings and ships wheels were from the GMM Merchant ships set.  Passengers are Eduard.  Boat davits are from Lionroar.  The windows and doors were created using the drawing features contained in Microsoft Excel.  These were ‘drawn’, coloured appropriately, then scaled down and printed on sticky backed parcel labels.  As there were no plans per se, I attached these doors/windows using my photo references, then ‘eyeballed’ the placement of upper deck features.  Carley float seating was from Slaters plastic ‘T’ section, scribed with an Exacto blade and painted, first black then drybrushed brown.  Funnels were made from rod with modelling clay added and sanded to provide the profile.
The model took about 60 hours to complete.

Jim Smith     November 2009