THE exhibition that has taken over three entire rooms at the Beecroft Gallery must rank as one of the most ambitious Southend has ever viewed, let alone owned.

In 70 separate paintings, it provides a sweeping visual history of the pleasure steamers that once visited Southend and other seaside towns with a pier.

The paintings range across almost a century in time and a huge swathe of social and technological history.

The entire collection is now owned by the Beecroft Gallery. Once the current exhibition has run its course, the bulk of the pictures will go into storage.

But Beecroft director Claire Hunt plans always to have two or three on display in the galleries.

"The subject matter generates great affection, and these pictures are bound to be a very popular addition to the gallery's permanent collection, and the way it reflects the social history of Southend," she says.

Perhaps the most curious aspect of this collection, however, lies not in the subject matter, colourful though it is, but in the story of how the exhibition came into being, and the tortuous course by which it was finally steered into the public ownership of the people of Southend.

The best person to recount this rum tale is the artist who produced every one of the 70 paintings. A collection of such size and intricacy would be a lifetime's work for most artists. Not, though, for a professional like Westcliff maritime artist Derrick Smoothy. Mr Smoothy turned out the paddle-steamer paintings at the rate of about one a month, working on them in odd moments while he was also engaged on numerous other projects.

The paintings were commissioned by another local man, William Hopkins, who died in Southend two years ago.

"To say he was keen on paddle steamers would be to put it mildly," says Mr Smoothy.

The slow-burn saga began in 1980, after Mr Hopkins viewed a Derrick Smoothy painting on display.

"He commissioned a picture of a paddle-steamer, liked it, asked for another, and it went from there," the artist recalls.

The notion of an artistic patron suggests someone who, even if not positively super-rich, at least has cash to spare. Mr Hopkins, though, seems to have been so short of pennies he sacrificed some of the basics of life in order to fund the collection.

"I never charged him much money for the paintings because frankly I didn't think he could afford much," says Mr Smoothy.

"It always seemed to me he was strapped for cash. There were various giveaway signs that he lived in penury. I don't think his house had been redecorated since the 1920s. He more or less lived in his kitchen."

Yet the commissions kept on coming, and somewhere along the line they evolved into a much grander scheme, the notion of an entire visual history of the little coastal pleasure ships from 1890 onward. The paintings covered the steamers that their ardent fan William Hopkins had known and, in most cases, personally travelled aboard.

The project stretched over 14 years, ending in 1984. As it developed, Mr Smoothy observed an odd fact about his client and the paintings. William Hopkins, who had gone to so much effort and expense to create this collection, never hung the pictures. They were simply piled in a heap wherever there was any space.

"It was most peculiar," says Mr Smoothy. "I framed them for him, and I also glazed them at his request, though that's unusual, for an oil painting. And yet, for some reason, he never actually hung any of the paintings. He just kept them stored at home."

William Hopkins' second cousin, Rosamund Hattey, came down to Southend from her home in Wales to view an exhibition that she had previously only seen stacked on Mr Hopkins' floor.

She recalls the man she knew as Uncle Bill "kept them propped up against the settee, or wherever else he could find space."

She adds: "The one place you never saw them was on the wall."

Hopkins' friend and fellow paddle-steamer enthusiast Gerald Atwell recalls: "When he wanted to show you one, he would shuffle through his collection of pictures like a pack of cards until he found what he was looking for."

William Hopkins was always more interested in nailing the technical detail correctly than in the artistic impact of his pictures. Mr Smoothy, who worked from photographs of the craft, says: "Every small detail had to be absolutely accurate down to the last rivet. He had personal memories of all the steamers, he seemed to have been on them all, and he remembered every last detail. He would mull over each painting when he received it, and if the most minor thing was inaccurate, he would return it to me to amend."

The collection was not originally intended for the Beecroft. "He wanted it to go to the Maritime Museum in Greenwich," Rosamund Hattey recalls, "but they turned it down."

Various other museums and galleries in seaside towns showed interest, before the pictures ended on Mr Hopkins' own doorstep.

"The Beecroft is the right place for a series of paddle-steamer paintings,' says Claire Hunt.

"We already have an extensive collection of maritime paintings and the Hopkins bequest ideally complements the existing range. The paddle steamers are an important part of Southend's social history. They are intimately tied up with the whole history of the town. Southend Pier would not exist without them."

It would not be unkind to Mr Hopkins' memory to refer to him as a paddle-steamer geek, but in the end, he seems to have had a higher purpose in mind.

"His father was one of the people who founded Southend Hospital," Rosamund Hattey recalls.

"There is a ward in the hospital named after him. I think Uncle Bill also wanted to leave behind a legacy. And now he has. He may never have hung them at home, but he would be proud to see them displayed in his home town."