Austin's pontoon before 1906
A downriver view from the south end of Wearmouth bridge.The two small boats on the left are paddle boats which were very manoeuverable and used as tugs. An amusing story was that being very basic they used sea-water in the boilers and during maintenance the engineer would put a potato in which would float on top if the salt had built up to the degree that a flush out was needed.
Information from Len Charlton.
