One of the largest paddle steamers afloat in Britain is the H.M.S. Royal Eagle, former peacetime excursion boat which carried passengers on pleasure jaunts from Tower Bridge to Southend, Ramscate and Margate. Commissioned two years ago as a warship of the Royal Navy, the craft has been in action 52 times against enemy aircraft. The Eagle took part in the evacuation from Dunkirk where she was dive-bombed 48 times and brought home nearly 3,000 British troops. Members of the crew cleaning the paddle boxes of H.M.S. Royal Eagle in London on January 18, 1943. (Photo by AP Photo)

An Israeli policewoman calls out as behind her Israeli right-wing activists scuffle with a Palestinian man at the archaeological and religious site of the Tomb of Samuel at the Nabi Samuel village between Ramallah and Jerusalem in the occupied West Bank on September 2, 2022. (Photo by Ahmad Gharabli/AFP Photo)

Canada's Jean-Simon Desgagnes competes in the men's 3000m steeplechase final of the Pan American Games Santiago 2023 at the National Stadium in Santiago, on November 4, 2023. (Photo by Martin Bernetti/AFP Photo)

SKY SPORTS presenter Anna Woolhouse has stunned in a glamorous outfit ahead of Saturday's World Darts Championship action at Alexandra Palace in London in the last decade of December 2024. (Photo by @woolyanna1/Instagram)

A man wearing a face mask walks his dog as he pulls a trolley after shopping in Beijing on February 13, 2020. The number of deaths and new cases from China's COVID-19 coronavirus outbreak spiked dramatically on February 13 after authorities changed the way they count infections in a move that will likely fuel speculation that the severity of the outbreak has been under-reported. (Photo by AFP Photo/China Stringer Network)

English-French actress Jane Birkin shopping with a basket bag in Paris on June 4, 1970. (Photo by WATFORD/Mirrorpix/Mirrorpix via Getty Images)

French fashion designer Julien Fournie (R) poses with his Czech model Michaela Tomanova during the shooting of a film designed in place of the fashion show on June 30, 2020 as France eases lockdown measures taken to curb the spread of the COVID-19 disease caused by the novel coronavirus. (Photo by Franck Fife/AFP Photo)

Mini-pigs perform during the presentation in Balashikha, Russia on December 19, 2018. (Photo by Maxim Shemetov/Reuters)