The brigantine-rigged, iron steamship CONDOR was built in 1875 by
Gourlay Bros. & Co. of Dundee for the General Steam Navigation Co. of
London, popularly known as ‘The Navvies’, whose distinctive house-flag
she is wearing at the mainmast in this portrait. Also characteristic of the
GSN Co. are the vessel’s name, that of a species of bird, and her bluepainted
lifeboats.
Employed throughout her life in coastal and ‘short seas’
trading - i.e. to ports on the European continent between Brest and the
Elbe - CONDOR was sold for scrap in 1906.
By Charles C. Hyatt, of whom no biographical details are known, but who
was one of a number of ship-portrait artists who lived and worked in the
docklands area of London in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
The Irish Sea passenger ferry ST. DAVID was built in 1932 by Cammell,
Laird & Co. of Birkenhead for the Fishguard & Rosslare Railway & Harbour
Co., she being the second of what were to become three successive ships
of the company to bear that name.
At the outbreak of World War II she was
converted into a Hospital Carrier and in that capacity took part in the
evacuation of the British Expeditionary Force from Dunkirk in May, 1940,
when she was damaged by a near miss by a bomb. In 1943 she and her
sister-ship ST. ANDREW, also serving as a Hospital Carrier, were transferred
to the Mediterranean theatre, where in January of the following year she
was bombed and sunk while supporting the landings at Anzio. Many of her
survivors were picked up by St. ANDREW, which herself was attacked and
damaged.
The sloop-rigged, wooden paddle-tug BLUE BELL was built at North
Shields in 1862 for M. Thurlbeck & Partners of Sunderland. In 1873 she
passed to new owners on the Tyne and two years later she was sold
foreign, whereupon records cease. Of particular interest are her steering,
not by wheel amidships but by tiller aft, which would have made for
difficulties and for hazards when towing, and the Merchant/Pilot Jack on her
forestay, signifying that she is certificated to offer pilotage as well as towage
services. The hoist inferior to BLUE BELL’s name pennant at the masthead
is indecipherable for, although the two lower flags clearly denote the letters
L and T respectively in the Commercial Code of Signals then in force, the
uppermost one is unknown other than as the house-flag of the shipowners
George Warren & Co. of Liverpool.
By John A. Hudson (1829-1897) of Sunderland, one of a number of
ship-portrait artists active in that important shipping and shipbuilding centre
in the latter part of the 19th century.
By the time that the steam coaster KILWORTH acquired that name she had
undergone four changes of ownership and had survived both World
Wars. Built in Middlesbrough in 1911 as ESKWOOD for the Meteor
Steamship Co. of that port, she was renamed KILWORTH in 1946, two
years after having passed into the hands of Grand Union (Shipping) Ltd. of
London. She was to undergo two more changes of ownership and two
more renamings before finally, as late as 1956, being sold as
HOLDERNOLL to be broken up in Gateshead.
By H. Hangen of Copenhagen, of whom no biographical details and no
other works are known, but who presumably either had some association
with KILWORTH or encountered her when she was trading to the Baltic.
The passenger steamship ANSELM of the Booth Line of Liverpool, the
second of what were to become four successive vessels of the company
to bear that name, shown on the 1,000-mile passage up the Amazon to
Manaus. Built by Workman, Clark & Co. in Belfast in 1905, ANSELM was
sold in 1922 to owners in Argentina, who renamed her COMMODORO
RIVADAVIA, and she was eventually broken up in Rio de Janeiro in 1959.
By D.W.E. Gutman, who is thought to have been Brazilian, all of whose
known paintings are portraits of ships of the Booth Line. In at least four
such portraits he depicted his subjects in similar Amazonian settings.
The tanker LACKAWANNA was built in 1894 by D.J. Dunlop & Co. of Port
Glasgow for the Anglo-American Oil Co. of London, in whose ownership
she remained until 1910, when she was exchanged for a larger ship from
a German company. She is shown in this portrait wearing a courtesy US
ensign at the fore and the Anglo-American house-flag at the main as she
passes the Statue of Liberty in the Upper Bay of New York harbour while
outward bound towards the Narrows and the Ambrose Channel. After no
fewer than six changes of hands and three of name, she became in 1928
the Italian-owned MAYA, as which she was torpedoed and sunk off the
Dardanelles during World War II by the British submarine HMS PERSEUS.
By Richard Henry Neville-Cumming (1843-1920), who painted shipportraits
in gouache and watercolours for many of the leading shipping
companies and for the popular ‘Celebrated Liners’ series of postcards
published by Raphael Tuck.
The clipper-stemmed, Bermuda-rigged steamship PINTA was built in Port
Glasgow in 1898 for Robert MacAndrew & Co. of London, a family firm,
originally based in Liverpool, which had been trading with Spain, primarily
in the importation of fruit, since the late 1830s. Hence both the
incorporation of the Spanish national colours of red and yellow in the
MacAndrew house-flag, shown in this portrait at PINTA’s mainmast, and the
Spanish ensign itself at her foremast, worn in the traditional courtesy to the
country to which the ship is bound on this passage as she steams down-
Channel with a Dover pilot cutter abeam.
By John Henry Mohrmann (1857-1916), a San Franciscan by birth who
went to sea at the age of 13 and travelled extensively before settling in
Antwerp in the 1880s to specialise in painting ship-portraits.
The steam coaster HULL TRADER was built in 1917 by J.P. Rennoldson &
Sons of South Shields for Free Trade Wharf Co. of Stepney, the Londonbased
subsidiary of the prominent Tyne-Tees Shipping Co. of Newcastle.
On 6th October, 1940, a month into the London Blitz, she was damaged by
bombs in her home dock and on 23rd June of the following year, while on
passage from London to Hull, she struck a mine off Cromer and sank with
the loss of eleven of her crew of fourteen.
By Reuben Chappell (1870-1940), originally of Goole on the Humber and
later of Par in Cornwall, the most prolific of the so-called ‘pierhead painters’
who chronicled the teeming coastal shipping of their day.
The tug SLOYNE was built in 1928 by J. Chrichton of Saltney for the
Alexandra Towing Co., she being the second successive such vessel to be
named after the anchorage in the Mersey near Birkenhead. Despite her
name, she was originally employed in Southampton, but following the fall of
France in 1940 she was transferred to Liverpool to assist in the handling of
convoys and at the height of the blitz on Merseyside in the first week of
May, 1941 she was badly damaged when a bomb hit Gladstone Dock.
After the war she returned to Southampton where, in April, 1947 she was
one of no fewer than 18 tugs involved in refloating the Cunard liner QUEEN
ELIZABETH when she grounded on the Brambles in Southampton Water.
By an artist who is unknown but who was presumably associated with
SLOYNE during her years on the Mersey, as the tug is shown here against
the background of the Liver Building and the Liverpool waterfront.
The turbo-electric passenger liner MONARCH OF BERMUDA was built in
1931 by Vickers-Armstrong Ltd. of Newcastle for the New York-Bermuda
service of the shipping conglomerate Furness, Withy & Co. During World
War II she served first as a troopship and then as a Landing Craft Infantry,
taking part in the invasions of both North Africa and Sicily. In 1947, despite
being severely damaged by fire while undergoing conversion, she was
rebuilt as an emigrant carrier and was renamed NEW AUSTRALIA. In 1958
she was sold to owners in Greece, becoming ARKADIA, and she was
eventually broken up in Valencia in 1967.
By M. Ross, of whom no biographical details and no other works are known.
The steam trawler GENERAL JOFFRE SN123 was built in 1914 at Willington
Quay on the Tyne for owners in North Shields. During the First World War
she was requisitioned by the Admiralty, as were many hundreds of trawlers
and drifters, in her case as a minesweeper, following which she resumed
fishing out of North Shields until 1951, when she was transferred to Milford
Haven and renamed and re-registered as SOUTHLEIGH M158.
By Alexander Harwood (1874-1943), a ‘lumper’, or porter, on the fish dock
in Aberdeen, who himself served during the First World War in a trawler
converted for minesweeping. He painted portraits of a great many of the
fishing vessels he encountered, often in ‘fair weather/foul weather’ pairs,
and this is the ‘foul weather’ constituent of just such a pair of portraits.
The barquentine-rigged, iron steam coaster WILLIAM CONNAL was built in
1862 by William Simons & Co. of Renfrew and is shown in this portrait
wearing the house-flag of the brothers J. & P. Hutchison of Glasgow, who
went into partnership in 1868 to operate initially in the coastal and ‘short
seas’ trades – i.e. to ports on the European continent between Brest and
the Elbe - and later to both the Mediterranean and the Baltic. The WILLIAM
CONNAL met her end on 14th February, 1899 when she was abandoned 60
miles off Start Point, Devon, while on passage from Swansea to Bordeaux
carrying general cargo.
The artist of this accomplished and evocative portrait is unknown and
signed the work only with the initials O.C. Perhaps it is not altogether
fanciful to suppose that he or she might have been a member of the family
of the William Connal after whom the ship was named.