A historic listed steam ship which predates the Titanic spent 10 days visiting her home port of Ellesmere Port.

The Daniel Adamson, restored with the help of a near £4m grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund, tied up at Telford’s Quay near the Inland Waterways Museum in her new role as a moving visitor and museum attraction following her maiden voyage from Liverpool.

The ‘Danny’, then the Ralph Brocklebank, was built at the Cammell Laird shipyard in Birkenhead in 1903 to tow barges laden with goods from the inland towns of Cheshire and the Potteries to Liverpool, today’s Daniel Adamson Preservation Society records.

A small but incredibly powerful canal tug, the 150-tonne twin screw, coal-fired steam vessel is now unique in being the last surviving steam-powered tug to be built on the Mersey and is believed to be the oldest operational Mersey-built ship anywhere in the world.

In her early days she also carried passengers between Ellesmere Port and Liverpool, a service that continued until 1915 while the First World War also saw her in service as an unarmed patrol boat with the Royal Navy around the Liverpool coast.

In 1936 the Ralph Brocklebank was chosen to become the ship canal company’s official director’s launch with a radical refit and a name change to that of the ship canal’s founding father Daniel Adamson.

The Daniel Adamson steam ship restored with the help of a near £4m grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund
The Daniel Adamson steam ship restored with the help of a near £4m grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund

By the 1980s, the octogenarian vessel was nearing the end of her era and in 1984 the ship canal company decided to withdraw her from service. Arrangements were made in 1986 for her to be towed to the Boat Museum in Ellesmere Port, the very place where she had started her working life 83 years before.

At the museum her unique combination of steam engine and stylish Art Deco interiors drew admiring visitors but she soon fell victim to funding cuts and maintenance became too expensive to carry out.

In 2004, despite being a unique century-old maritime survival, she was earmarked for scrapping but within days a decision to try and save her was taken.

The campaign was spearheaded by Mersey tug skipper Captain Dan Cross who formed the preservation society with the help of Tony Hirst, a former director of the museum on Ellesmere Port’s waterfront.

Mr Cross bought the vessel from the ship canal company for £1 and the campaign was underway.

Grants started to be raised culminating in February last year when the Heritage Lottery Fund awarded £3.8m to restore the vessel to full working order.

From a vandalised wreck days away from the breaker’s yard, the Daniel Adamson has now sailed into the elite ranks of the National Historic Fleet, the maritime version of a Grade I-listed building, alongside vessels of national significance such as the Cutty Sark, HMS Victory and SS Great Britain.

Last month she sailed into Liverpool’s Canning Dock after firing her furnaces and crossing the Mersey from Cammell Laird, Birkenhead where for 12 months a team of volunteers and shipbuilders at the shipyard used their world class skills to lovingly restore the vessel.

Mr Cross, chairman of the preservation society, said: “It’s fantastic that the Danny has been restored to its former glory.

“We are immensely proud of all our volunteers and workers and for managing to restore the ship on Merseyside at the shipyard where it was first built.

“Around 100,000 hours of volunteer labour has gone into refurbishing the ship.”

He added: “It was an incredibly proud moment to see her leave Cammell Laird and head back to the Albert Dock where our project began.”

Whilst static, the Danny will offer interactive ‘story-experience’ tours which include real-life stories from past boat workers along with the sights and sounds of the past.

This season will see 39 cruises along the Mersey, the Weaver and the Ship Canal by the vessel, described as ‘a moving piece of history’.