A SCARBOROUGH pleasure boat left its mark on the sands of the South Bay after recent maintenance work.

The Regal Lady, which played her part in the 1940 evacuation of 300,000 British troops from Dunkirk, was beached so that it could be repainted.

Workers had a four-hour window to restore her traditional white livery before the tide returned and refloated the vessel.

And bemused visitors were left wondering what had created the strange boat-shaped pool in the sands once the boat went back to ferrying passengers up and down the East Coast.

Tom Machin, the boat’s owner, said she was important to Scarborough. He said: “We have to paint it up every six weeks.”

He added the vessel was beached and painting could begin after about two and a half hours. “Then we had about four hours to get it done. We were dodging rain showers. She is fine, back to normal, and the Coronia will be back to normal after some final checks.”

The 75-ton vessel takes passengers on pleasure trips along the East Coast and was built in 1930 as the Oulton Belle by Fellows and Co of Great Yarmouth.

The steamer was bought in 1954 by Scarborough Cruises Ltd, which had its steam engine replaced by a dieselengine.

During the 1950s she worked out of Scarborough, alongside the original Coronia, before returning to Norfolk for a 14-year period until she was laid up.

In 1987 she returned to Scarborough, after being bought by North Sea Leisure, where she was given a refit and began providing sea cruises to passengers for the first time in 17 years.

From The Scarborough Evening News on Friday, July 20, 2007.