PRINCESS AT RAMSGATE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 18 July 1939, Page 2

PRINCESS AT RAMSGATE

A FORMER ROYAL HARBOUR. Excerpts from an old manuscript about the Royal Harbour of Ramsgate written in 1831 by the deputy harbour master of the port are contained in the June issue of "The P.L.A. Monthly. "When she was about two years old Queen Victoria was taken to Ramsgate by Prince Leopold and the Duchess of Kent for the sake of her health. The Hanoverians found Ramsgate a convenient stepping-off place for their visits to Germany, and their patronage did much to found the town’s reputation as a watering place. Since then it has become increasingly popular with Londoners.

“A special feature has always been the journey by water down the Thames —first in the hoys and tilt-boats of the pre-steamboat era; later in the somewhat erratic early ’smoke-jacks.’ and today in modern motor vessels larger than the Atlantic liners of a century ago.

“But before it became popular as a holiday resort. Ramsgate was a port. In Elizabeth’s time only twenty houses in detached clusters are recorded, but the huts of the poor fishermen were most likely not taken into account ‘being mere hovels along the strand from which that class of men who launch in gales of wind to the assistance of ships in distress have from time immemorial derived the name of hovellers.’ ”