Tattershall Castle, SW1

This was known by all of us in the MOD as the Belgrano, in a sort of black humour kind of way. The original ship has been returned after being away for a refurbishment. It has comfortable inside seating on two decks, but the main draw for this pub/ship is the seating space on deck, with superb river views of course. As others have said, it's all about location. When I was here on Monday there were a couple of ales on - London Pride (£4.60 a pint), and Marston's Pedigree (£4.65 a pint). So, the prices are still sky high, but there's no incentive to change that when the place always seems to be busy. For some reason they were dispensing the Pedigree through a sparkler, and it took me a fair bit of explaining and gesticulation to get the foreign barmaid to understand that the nasty little widget can removed. Neither the Pride nor the Pedigree were in very good condition. You don't visit this place for the ale quality (it's never been particularly good), but if you can bag an outside table on a warm summer evening then it's a great place to watch life on the river pass by.

Well described below, the boat being one of three sister vessels, paddle steamers launched in 1934. After a career as a passenger ferry, Coastguard support ship and various other unglamorous roles, she was brought to Victoria Embankment and converted into a hard-moored pub and restaurant. There is a fairly regular cadre from some of the nearby Government departments, and she is known affectionately among MOD Navy staff as The General Belgrano. There is currently only one ale on, London Pride, but on this occasion I tried a Czech beer for novelty value: Kozel, a lagered beer from the Velkopopovickŷ Brewery which was fine but not good enough to justify the high price. Staff were a bit dim, but this too has been mentioned below. The food tasted good but was probably very damaging to the waistline. I actually quite like it and quite often pop in for lunch when I'm passing.