Salters Steamers
UK business
Salters Steamers, formerly known as Salter Bros, is a family boating firm on the River Thames, founded in Oxford in 1858. Prior to that the family operated a riverside tavern in Wandsworth, having moved there around 1836. The company runs passenger services in summer along the length of the River Thames between Oxford and Staines. They also hire boats from Oxford (at Folly Bridge), Reading, Henley-on-Thames and Windsor. In Oxford in particular, punts are available.
History
The firm was established when John and Stephen Salter took over Isaac King's boat building firm based at Folly Bridge in Oxford. They were the country's leading racing-boat-builder in the 1860s (distributing craft around the world) and they built many of the beautiful Oxford University barges at Christ Church Meadow, used over many years as a base for the various colleges for the sport of rowing. These have now all been replaced by boat houses. They became one of the largest inland boat-letters in the country by the late 1880s and in the twentieth century they built many pleasure craft for corporations and councils around the country.
On the death of John Salter, the firm passed to his three sons (John, James and George) and become known as Salter Bros.
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This entry incorporates text from “Salters Steamers” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.