The ship handling tug of today is a lesson in ambiguity. A tug’s profile is no longer a reliable clue as to her direction of operation, nor her form of propu lsion. Power to length ratios have increased radically, aided by seemingly infinite hull forms and propulsion types in the search for ultimate manoeuvrability and control.

By contrast, in the year of JP Knight’s founding in 1892, three steam-driven single screw lighter tugs constituted James Percy Knight’s fleet: the Kaiser Steam Tug Company of 27 Great Tower Street, London. Although following his father John Peake Knight (the inventor of the traffic light) into the railways, his position at the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway’s new packet port of Newhaven extended to the maintenance of cross-channel ferries. From his experience of such vessels and the launches that attend them he could see the opportunity to adapt the more advanced locomotive standards of

the operation to the rudimentary steam tug of the day. Leaving the LB &SCR in 1891, James Knight purchased his first tug, the KAISER, the following year. A comprehensive knowledge of the steam engine allowed him to build Victorian London’s most powerful lighter tug KESTREL just five years later. The business became known as JP Knight from 1914 and was incorporated as a private limited company in 1928.

JP Knight’s influence on tug design more recently is notable in the first use of full automation with bridge control in 1965 (KENNET) and the first use of Z-peller or azimuthing stern drive propulsion in Europe in 1981 (KINROSS).

Links: For Capt Ray Harrison’s pictorial history of JP Knight’s fleet through the ages visit: www.riverman.gotdns.com