I looked again at the photographs Dave Griffiths had recently sent me. I copied them and returned the originals. What a day it must have been for those aboard. I wondered whether Dominic was one of them or whether he had waved from somewhere along the Dart’s banks. Might that have even been him with the newspaper. I doubt it; but one can sense the occasion of this, the last excursion of the longest serving paddle-steamer, on the River Dart. The Compton Castle was no ordinary boat. You could see that here was a very special paddle-steamer. Dominic knew that too.

M Langley in his book ‘Lost Ships of the West Country’ recalls the last day

. "In peacetime hundreds of romances must have begun and blossomed on her wide decks. Flying a ‘paying off pennant’ and crowded with passengers the steamer made her last river trip in September 1962 and was then laid up."