Plymouth Boat Trip - and the Cremyll Ferry

Part 1, by The Captain

Plymouth Sound has an extensive series of ferries and cruise boats running across it.  All of the local ferries, with the sole exception of the Mountbatten Ferry, are run by Plymouth Boat Trips from their HQ on Commercial Wharf in the Barbican

Their oldest service is the Cremyll ferry. It was first documented in the year 1204! Initially, the ferry was rowed by a crew of several men and could carry horses, livestock and carts, as well as foot passengers.  The original route ran from Devil’s Point to Barnpool.  Those who have stood at Devil’s Point when the tide is in full flood will realise what a hazardous crossing this was – it could easily take over an hour. 

The path from the Barnpool landing site went up the hill and past the site of the present Mt. Edgcumbe House, to the north side of Maker church.  This historic path is still in use today, but ceased being the Cornish end of the Cremyll ferry service in about 1730, when it moved to the present site at Cremyll. 

When Royal William Yard was built in 1825, the Plymouth end of the ferry moved to Admiral’s Hard.  The first steam ferry, as in the photo below, ran from 1885. 

For 400 years, from 1511, the Earl of Mount Edgcumbe ran the Cremyll ferry. It is said that the Earl’s Winter Villa at Stonehouse was built for when it was too rough for him to cross the Tamar, but it is also said that the Earl wanted somewhere more modern and comfortable than Mt Edgcumbe House.  The 50-room summer villa was sold to the Sisters of Nazareth in 1927, bombed in the war, rebuilt and is now Nazareth House.

After several different owners, a disputed retendering by Plymouth City Council in 2008 and a serious collision between the foot ferry, the Northern Belle and an Navy landing craft in 2013, Plymouth Boat Trips took over the ferry service in 2017 and continues to run it to this day.

The Cremyll ferry service is mainly served by the Edgcumbe Belle, with the Tamar Belle as back-up.  The ferry presently runs (weather and tides permitting) every day of the year, except on Christmas Day. The Edgcumbe Belle was built in 1957 and is the oldest boat in the fleet. 

She is constructed of wood, is 17.64 m long and 35 gross tons. All of PBTs’ boats are diesel powered and the Edgcumbe Belle can run at 8 knots across the Tamar from Admiral’s Hard to the Cremyll Quay.  She is licensed and, regularly inspected by the Maritime and Coastguard Agency, as are all PBTs boats.  The Edgcumbe Belle started life as a British Railways' ferry – the Humphrey Gilbert was built to carry railway passengers from Kingswear Station to Dartmouth Station across the Dart. 

(Sir Humphrey Gilbert lived in Greenaway House (now National Trust and associated with Agatha Christie).  He was Sir Walter Raleigh’s half-brother and Sir Richard Grenville’s cousin.  Very much part of the great Elizabethan West Country seafaring family.)

In 1976, Humphrey Gilbert was sold to the St Mawes Ferry Co., but she never actually left the River Dart and she was bought back by BR, re-engined and then used on the River Thames between Gravesend and Tilbury until 1978, when she was laid up in Newhaven harbour.  But not for long, as later that year, she was bought by the Millbrook Steamship and Trading Co. and finally arrived here in Plymouth, to be used primarily on the Drake’s Island run.   In 1985, she was back on the River Dart, Kingswear to Dartmouth run for another ten years.  For a time, she then ran a ferry service to Greenaway House, by now named the Edgcumbe Belle, and in 2013, she was back in service in the Sound.  Such is the life of a well-built wooden boat and, as any boat owner amongst the Beagle’s readers will know, old ladies like the Edgcumbe Belle need a lot of TLC, but the hordes of passengers who cross the Tamar every day clearly like a proper boat with ‘character’.