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)

Ammunition airlift into besieged Khe Sanh, Operation Pegasus, April 1968. (Photo by Larry Burrows/AP Photo)

Members of the Apollo Rainbow Dancers stretch out in special A train late on May 4, 1985, in New York. The legendary Apollo Theatre celebrated its 50th anniversary in an official reopening after a 15 month refurbishing with a celebrity studded evening. (Photo by Ray Stubblebine/AP Photo)

Senior Buddhist monk Lobsang Tayang sits outside the Amarbayasgalant Monastery in the Baruunburen district, Selenge province, Mongolia, April 26, 2018. (Photo by Thomas Peter/Reuters)

Olena Korzeniuk, a 15-year-old girl poses on the stairs during a bid to set the national record for the longest hair on a child in Kiev, Ukraine on March 12, 2019. During a ceremony, the experts of the National Register of Records found the blonde hair of the Ukrainian Rapunzel to be 2.35m (6.5ft) long. (Photo by Tarasov/Ukrinform/Barcroft Images)

Members of the British Thai celebrate the Thai New Year (Songkran) at the Buddhapadipa Temple on April 16, 2018 in London, England. Buddhapadipa Temple, the largest Thai temple in the UK with religious ceremonies Thai classical music and dancing performances as well as stalls selling Thai food, groceries and souvenirs. (Photo by Paul Quezada-Neiman/Alamy Live News)

Mil Mi-8 combat helicopter flies over Moscow, Russia on May 7, 2019 during the dress rehearsal of a Victory Day air show marking the 74th anniversary of the victory over Nazi Germany in the 1941-1945 Great Patriotic War, the Eastern Front of World War II. (Photo by Sergei Savostyanov/TASS)

Children eat watermelons to meet the “beginning of autumn” at a kindergarten in Handan, China on August 7, 2015. Chinese tradition to eat watermelons or peaches before that day symbolises “biting away summer”. The solar term ‘beginning of autumn’ falls on 8 August this year. (Photo by Xinhua/REX Shutterstock)