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Here an articulated lorry belonging to the W T Skeet haulage firm in Ipswich with a load of large pipes is driving on board an Army Avon-class Ramped Powered Lighter (RPL) watched by a somewhat casual soldier.
The Avon-class were a type of landing craft operated by the Royal Corps of Transport (RCT) from the 1960s until the 1990s. It had a vehicle deck that was 5.49m wide and 13.26m long, and a load capacity of 30.5 tonnes.
This particular example, the Eden, built in 1962, is seen in one of my Dad's photos on the River Ore, in Suffolk in 1969. A local vehicle ferry had had to be taken out of service for deep maintenance and, because the service was still required to support RAF Orfordness, the radio and radar research station on Orford Ness, and AWRE Orfordness, as well as others, the Army were drafted in to provide a continuing cross-river capability.
The RPL was designed to be capable of carrying four Army three-tonners or a single main battle tank weighing up to 54 tons. The RPL itself weighed 64 tons and was powered by two Rolls Royce diesel engines. From the early 1980s onwards the type was replaced in Army service with the larger RCL (Ramped Craft Logistic).
A short article about this deployment appeared in the Waggoner (an in-house RCT newspaper?) in November 1969:
"52 Squadron - In June RPL 05 Eden, commanded by WO II Forbes returned from an intensive three months' detachment to an MOD construction site on an island at Orfordness. The vessel made 2,781 crossings of the Ore estuary carrying 8,196 passengers and 3,529 vehicles totalling 12,398 tons deadweight. The vessel was maintained entirely by her own crew and remained mechanically reliable throughout. This very successful operation, which earned some generous letters of appreciation, proved the suitability of the RPL as a versatile load carrier under strong tidal estuary conditions."
Scanned from a slide.
Now, in 2022, I've been passed a cutting from a local Orford newspaper about the Eden's short residence on the river. It lists the crew as, in addition to my father, as: Mate: Corporal William Edgar from Londonderry; Lance Corporal Michael Green fro the Isle of Man; Driver Michael Price from Worthing; Driver Peter McGeoch, like my father, from Glasgow; and Driver William Minks, from Woodbridge. The trip round from their base at Matchwood had taken three days, with stops at Newhaven, Ramsgate and Felixstowe. The article quotes my father as saying that the journey was "a bit lively."