Here is the Clyde paddle steamer Waverley leaving Tower pier for an excursion to Southend last week, and owning the river.

Waverley is the last of the world’s sea-going paddle steamers, completed in 1947 and now restored to full post-war self-confidence, with further improvements including classlessness. The ship has two bars, a dining saloon and a tea room, Lloyd Loom chairs, oilcloth on the tables, a very public engine room, a saltire on the mast – and a surprising turn of speed.

An earlier Waverley was built in 1899 for the North British Railway company, the owners of Waverley station in Edinburgh. That history may have prompted someone to use an Edwardian display typeface (Pretorian) as a lettering style for the present Waverley, which appears on publicity material and even on the sterns of the lifeboats. Perhaps the designer was just thinking about waves; but the typeface, which reappeared in the age of Letraset as an emblem of 1970s taste, grates now when seen against the careful restoration of this 1940s vessel. Who knows what Sir Walter Scott would make of it, who took the name from an ancient place in Surrey and made it famous. Romance is one thing, ham-gothic twiddles are something else altogether.

As it happens, the North British Railway company’s designers took a less fanciful approach to lettering, in a badge that was embedded in the floor of the booking hall at Waverley station.

If that has too much of the North-British about it to consider as a model, an alternative might be the plain lettering tradition maintained on Waverley’s paddle boxes. Finally, as nearly all the preceding pictures were taken on board, here is the missing view of the vessel from the shore. The two red funnels (in 1947 there was a double-ended boiler) add up to a bit of Caledonian wit: beat that, Queen Elizabeth.