Ramsgate tugboats
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At Ramsgate the Harbour’s development happily coincided with the growing use of the ever popular steam tugs that were then being built for the shipping industry.
During this era a considerable amount of the work undertaken by the local boatmen was carried out by these tugs. The benefits of this in regard to the heavier ships in distress was inestimable but nevertheless the salvage of wrecks soon became an intense and contested undertaking, offering as it did substantial cash rewards to the boatmen and the tugmen, neither of whom, it is reported, were otherwise that well paid.
Ramsgate’s tugs became a regular feature in the Harbour and unlike the Lifeboats they were also able to be of great benefit in being able to easily haul ships out into open waters against an unfavourable wind or under conditions of dead calm.
The first Ramsgate tug, built of wood and measuring 90 tons, and provided with an engine of 50 h.p. was built at South Shields by Woodhouse in 1843, and was named the ‘Samson’.
The ‘Samson’ along with her successors ‘Aid’, a wooden paddle steamer of 112 gross tons built at Blackwall on the Thames and in use by 1855, and ‘Vulcan’ which was an iron steam paddle tug of 140 tons, also built at Blackwall and delivered to Ramsgate in 1858 were to receive national acclaim for the epic work undertaken alongside the local Lifeboatmen, receiving a good number of rewards from thankful foreign administrations and the RNLI although they remained much less well known in general for their heroism.