St Katharine Docks has confirmed its Classic Boat Festival for Saturday 12 and Sunday 13 September 2026, the 17th year the London marina has opened its basins to a fleet of preserved boats, several with a direct line back to Dunkirk in 1940. Over 73 vessels are expected across the central and west basins.
What’s confirmed for 2026
The festival will be held at St Katharine Docks, London’s only central marina. Categories of vessel include Thames sailing barges, historic steam tugs, Dunkirk Little Ships and motorboats from the Bates Star Craft range. Talks run through the weekend on the SKD Events Platform, with maritime writer and broadcaster Tom Cunliffe a regular fixture. Each day still opens and closes with a salute of horns across the fleet.
Dunkirk Little Ships: A fleet with a shared past
Between 26 May and 4 June 1940, somewhere between 700 and 850 civilian vessels, fishing boats, pleasure yachts, tugs and ferries, crossed the Channel as part of Operation Dynamo, helping lift more than 338,000 Allied troops off the beaches at Dunkirk. Many of those boats are still afloat, kept going by the Association of Dunkirk Little Ships, a history we presented in the article Dunkirk’s Little Ships – 85 years back in May 2025. The Association only makes its big commemorative crossing to Dunkirk itself every five years. Unfortunately 2026 isn’t one of those years, so this year we’re not expecting to see as many Little Ships at St Katharine Docks, but those there will have owners on hand as usual welcoming visitors onboard.
The other classes on the water
Beyond the Little Ships, three other categories make up most of the festival’s line-up.
Thames sailing barges are flat-bottomed, shallow-draughted vessels steered with leeboards rather than a fixed keel, built specifically for narrow tributaries and shifting sandbanks. A typical barge ran around 120 tons and carried 4,200 square feet of canvas across six working sails, a lot of sail for two people to handle, which is part of why the surviving fleet still draws a crowd wherever it turns up.
Steam tugs are rarer again, most of Britain’s fleet having gone to diesel or the scrapyard decades ago. A few survivors remain including Challenge, now based on the Medway, was herself one of the original Dunkirk Little Ships, working to berth vessels in the harbour during the evacuation and later towing a disabled destroyer back to port; for twenty years from 1973 she sat as a static exhibit at St Katharine’s own Yacht Haven, before being rescued for restoration in 1993. Portwey, a twin-screw coal-fired tug built in 1927 and now based in London’s Docklands, is one of only two of her type still active in the UK, and spent years as part of the Maritime Trust’s historic ship collection at St Katharine’s Dock in the 1980s and 90s.
Then there’s the Bates Star Craft, the wooden motor cruisers built at Chertsey and still cared for by their own owners’ club, formed in 1993 to keep the type on the water. They’re a regular presence at St Katharine Docks, sociable boats built for exactly this kind of gathering.
For anyone in London that weekend, it’s a chance to walk pontoons lined with boats that were actually there, owned and sailed by people who’ll happily tell you about it.
Learn more about the event https://www.skdocks.co.uk/events/classic-boat-festival/.
