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Thekla
The jolly joy-tub Thekla is the stuff of Bristol legend, having first chugged into the docks in 1982 as The Old Profanity Showboat, which played host to a mind-bending array of theatre, comedy, music, cabaret, poetry and art. In the 90s it became a more traditional nightclub – although still Bristol’s only club on a boat – plying frequently messy, D&B-heavy all-nighters. Hazy days indeed.
Now it’s an altogether sleeker, more professional proposition, with nice clean toilets and a decent range of boozes. The beat goes on though, with a roster of the better up-and-coming bands, heavy involvement in the annual Dot to Dot festival and a fistful of good club nights – plus a freshly refurbed poop deck for smoking and fresh air.
The famous Banksy spray painted on the ship’s hull back in the late 90s has now gone – carefully cut out by the boat’s owners when in dry dock and given to the Council’s Museums and Galleries service for future display. It’s now hidden somewhere in the bowels of the M-Shed.
is needed now More than ever
The following fascinating facts come from Wikipedia:
“The Thekla was built in Germany in 1959. One of the last riveted ships to be produced, she was 650 tons unladen, measured one hundred and eighty feet long from stem to stern, and thirty feet wide, with an eight-foot draft. The Thekla’s hold was lined with one of the hardest woods in the world, red jarrah from Australia. She is a “Coaster” ship and powered by a U-boat engine left over from the Second World War). The Thekla was used for more than twenty years to transport timber to and from ports of the Baltic Sea. After running aground at Gravesend in Kent she was left rusting away for seven years in the half-abandoned docks of Sunderland on the eastern coast of England, before being purchased by the Stanshalls.” If you don’t know who the Stanshalls are, get thee to Google.
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