INTRIGUED to learn from Looking Back last week that the old Isle of Man boats, Mona's Queen and King Orry, were sunk at the same time as the armed trawler Blackburn Rovers in the 1940 epic evacuation of Dunkirk in World War Two, 72-year-old East Lancashire exile Ken Brooks asks from America after the fate of the Manx steamer that was anchored for years in his old home town of Blackburn.

Says retired engineering company boss Ken, of Wilmington, North Carolina: "Though I sailed many times on the midnight boat from Heysham to Douglas to the TT races, I did not know the Mona's Queen was sunk in the evacuation.

"As a child and into adulthood, I used to admire the large model of an Isle of Man boat in a glass case on a platform at Blackburn railway station.

"I think it may have been of the Mona's Queen."

"It was a beautifully detailed model, probably four or five feet long and I would love to know where it went to."

The model which Ken recalls was a feature of Platform No.2 at the old station for decades, but it was not of the Mona's Queen.

It depicted the Isle of Man Steam Packet Company's SS Viking which ferried thousands of holidaymakers between Lancashire and Douglas for 49 years from 1905.

Pictured (above) being moved from the station in 1988 -- with Blackburn pensioner Mrs Edna Wyatt taking a souvenir snap of the replica of the boat she sailed on many times -- the model was taken to Blackburn Museum for restoration, with a view to its eventual transfer to the Manx museum that the shipping company then had planned.

It was also removed from the station for safekeeping, having become worth an estimated £12,000-£15,000 over the years.

It stayed at Blackburn Museum until early last year when it was moved to Steam Packet Company museum in Douglas.