Piers, Paddle-steamers & Profits

Piers, Paddle-steamers & Profits

Piers, Paddle-steamers & Profits

Blackpool 1860 to 1920 
Author: Dr Peter Walton  

This book focuses on the Blackpool piers as businesses and competitors and examines how their profitability in the nineteenth century was tied up with pleasure steamers. All of the three Blackpool piers were built by separate public companies and competed fiercely. Their success or failure was closely monitored by the local press and the business community.   

The resort of Blackpool was, in effect, created from nothing in the second half of the nineteenth century. The role of the paddle steamer is now largely forgotten but, at that time, it was a key element of the pier business model. Some pier companies also ran their own steamers. This book examines how the piers made money in their heyday and how this was linked to the sea trip. It also looks at how the First World War brought Blackpool's steamer business to an end. 

This research, by Dr Peter Walton, is based primarily on contemporary newspaper reports from the Blackpool Central Library archives. It brings to life the cut and thrust of the Victorian business community that built the Blackpool we know and love today.   

This book is available in paperbackcomplete with archive imagesand as a digital book.
Paperback printed version £10
ebook for tablets/Kindles/phones £ 7.50
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