Thames side Essex: Long Reach, Purfleet, 2017

Aboard The Waverley, bringing the sound of the paddle steamer back to Essex and adjacent counties.

This was recorded below deck. The clicking noise is some part of the engine you don’t hear elsewhere. The commentary is by Jeremy, a Paddle Steamer Preservation Society member. These commentaries are fairly new, previously you’d have to work out where you were all by yourself, which is not at all easy.

Travel is upstream so starboard is Essex and port is Kent, the pictures were taken that day but coming back downstream.

The commentary tells you all you need to know but, if I was doing it, I’d say that in the novel “Dracula” the solicitor Jonathan Harker is tasked with finding a country house for The Count and finds Carfax House in Purfleet, out on the Essex marshes with the asylum alongside, where Renfield, who starts off eating flies to obtain their life force, is detained.

If you listen carefully of a night time I’m sure they’ll be something you’ll hear.