The twin-funnelled iron paddle-tug VIGILANT was built in 1874 by John Redhead & Co. of South Shields for Dr. M. Brownfield of Poplar, but in 1894 she was re-acquired by her builders for their own shipyard purposes, albeit registered in the name of a local tug operator George Brown, who in 1923 reconstituted his business as the Brown Tug Co. Ltd. VIGILANT was broken up only in 1930 after a working life of no fewer than 56 years.

By the unrecorded artist S. Cummings, who shows VIGILANT, in George Brown’s livery, entering the Tyne, behind her the river mouth’s nearly completed northern protective pier still mounting one of the block-setting cranes employed in its construction throughout almost half a century.

The barquentine-rigged iron screw steamship AJAX of 1865 which, with her sisters AGAMEMNON and ACHILLES, inaugurated the pioneering Far Eastern service of the Ocean Steam Ship Co. of Alfred Holt of Liverpool, immortalised in mercantile maritime history as the Blue Funnel – or Blue Flue! - Line.

Depicted, unusually, from the more demanding windward rather than leeward viewpoint, this Chinese portrait shows AJAX wearing not only Alfred Holt’s house-flag at the main but also, at the mizzen, that of the Shanghai merchants Butterfield & Swire, who in 1867 became Holt’s agents in China and who, five years later, founded their own China Navigation Co. to develop commerce up the River Yangtse and along the China coast.

The tanker LARISTAN was built in 1927 by Short Brothers of Sunderland for the Hindustan Steam Shipping Co. of Common Brothers of Newcastle. In 1942 she stranded on Tiree and was declared a constructive total loss, but due to the pressing shortage of tank tonnage she was taken over by the Ministry of War Transport, repaired and returned to service as EMPIRE GULF. Repurchased by Common Brothers in 1946 and again named LARISTAN, she subsequently changed hands – and names – three more times before being broken up in Turkey in 1960.

By the unrecorded artist E. Archer, whose only other known work is a portrait of another British tanker of the period.

The passenger liner KAISAR-I-HIND was built in 1914 by Caird & Co. of Greenock for the Bombay service of the Peninsular & Oriental Steam Navigation Co., she being the second successive ship of the company to bear her name, which derives from the Sanskrit for ‘Empress of India’. During the First World War she survived no fewer than five attacks by submarine torpedo, one of which actually struck her but failed to explode and, following a brief charter to the Cunard Line in 1921 under the name EMPEROR OF INDIA, she returned to P. & O. service until 1938, when she was sold for breaking up at Blyth.

By Charles Edward Dixon (1872-1934), one of the foremost marine artists of his day, whose extensive and varied output is perhaps best exemplified by his atmospheric scenes of shipping in London River.

Once the transformation of the historic east coast coal trade by the introduction of steam propulsion had been established by the JOHN BOWES of 1852, the WILLIAM HUTT of the following year was the first of eleven barquentine-rigged, engines-aft sister-ships built by Charles Mark Palmer at Jarrow for the newly-formed General Iron Screw Collier Co. of London. Barely a year in service before she was requisitioned as a supply ship for the Crimean War, she is shown here approaching the port of Naples with Mount Vesuvius distant to starboard. Subsequently reverting to her original traffic, she was lost in 1864, with all but a single member of her crew, when she sank off Lowestoft while on passage from Sunderland to London with coal.

Attributed to Michele Funno, a ship-portrait artist active in Naples in the middle of the 19th century, who will no doubt have executed this commission when WILLIAM HUTT called at that port in the course of her deployment in the Mediterranean.

Laid down by J.L. Thompson & Sons of Sunderland in 1949 as SILVERYEW for the Silver Line of London, the freighter EASTERN GLORY was purchased on the stocks and so renamed by the Indo-China Steam Navigation Co. of Jardine, Matheson & Co., ‘The Princely Hong’, whose emblem of the St. Andrew’s saltire she is wearing as both house-flag and stem crest. Briefly chartered by H.M. Government as a transport during the Suez crisis of 1956, EASTERN GLORY was sold ten years later to the Ben Line of Wm. Thomson & Co. of Leith, who renamed her BENNACHIE, and she was broken up at Kaohsiung in 1971.

This portrait, by an otherwise unrecorded artist who signed himself simply as Ling, shows EASTERN GLORY flying a pilot flag and her International Code of Signals identification hoist V.R.L.L. as she heads seaward out of Victoria Harbour against the background of the Hong Kong waterfront and the cloud-shrouded heights of the island.

Built by Harland & Wolff in Belfast in 1922 as DIOGENES for the Aberdeen White Star Line, MATAROA was so renamed by Shaw, Savill & Albion when they took her on long-term charter in 1926; they subsequently acquired her outright in 1932 as an upshot of the farreaching collapse of Lord Kylsant’s shipping conglomerate. Employed during the Second World War both as a troopship and as a food carrier, MATAROA resumed commercial service to New Zealand in 1948 and was broken up at Faslane in 1957.

By Colin Verity, who was born in Darwen, Lancashire in 1924 and proved himself to be an accomplished artist and model-maker at an early age. After wartime service in the Royal Air Force he qualified and practised as an architect on Humberside, but his paintings became increasingly sought after both in the U.K. and overseas and in 1984 he retired to work as an artist full time.

The trawler CAPE TOWN H998 was built in 1908 by Cook, Welton & Gemmell in Beverley for the Hull Steam Fishing & Ice Co., in whose livery and in company with other vessels of whose extensive fleet she is shown here. Requisitioned by the Royal Navy in both World Wars, from 1917-19 for the Fishery Reserve and from 1939-40 as a minesweeper under the name STORMCOCK, she subsequently worked out of first Milford Haven and then Lowestoft before being broken up in Belgium in 1956.

By Joseph Arnold of Hull, who himself may have been a trawlerman and whose few but productive years as a marine artist appear to have been confined within the second decade of the 20th century.

The Federal Steam Navigation Co’s cargo liner NORFOLK of 1947, the third successive vessel of the company to bear that name, passing inbound under Sydney Harbour Bridge as the passenger ferry DEE-WHY of 1928 – which preceded by four years the opening of the bridge – clears Circular Quay on her run down the harbour to Manly.

By H. Stanley Pellett, a commercial artist and illustrator who worked for several shipping companies but of whom no biographical details are known.

The barque-rigged steamship MASSILIA was built by Caird & Co. of Greenock in 1884 for the Australian and Far Eastern service of the Peninsular & Oriental Steam Navigation Co., her name reflecting the ancient Greek for what is now Marseilles, a port of call important to P. & O. as that at which connection was made with the express mails to and from the U.K. which were despatched overland through France. In 1897 MASSILIA was transferred to P. & O’s Calcutta service and in 1903 she was broken up in Genoa.

Whether or not the artist of this forceful portrait was the unrecorded J.W. Holmes whose signature appears on the reverse, his detailed rendering of MASSILIA includes not only her P. & O. house-flag at the main but also, at the mizzen, the flag hoist B.N.C.J. which, in the Commercial Code of Signals then in force, proclaimed her destination as Sydney.

The passenger liner COLUMBIA was built in 1902 by D. & W. Henderson Ltd. of Partick for the North Atlantic service of the Anchor Line of Glasgow, she being the second successive vessel of the line to bear her name. At the outset of the First World War she was converted into an Armed Merchant Cruiser, she was renamed COLUMBELLA to obviate confusion with the U.S.S. COLUMBIA of the U.S. Navy’s Atlantic Squadron and she served in the Northern Patrol which effected the crucial blockade of Germany’s seaborne resources. In 1919 she resumed her original name and service, but in 1926 she was sold to owners in Greece, renamed MOREAS, and in 1929 she was broken up in Venice.

This dramatic study of COLUMBIA by moonlight is by Douglas Napier Anderson (1884-1952), one of several poster artists and illustrators who produced promotional material for the Anchor Line.

Although owned by David MacIver’s City of Glasgow Steam Packet Co., for whom she was built by John Wood & Co. of Port Glasgow in 1835, the brigantine-rigged, wooden paddle-steamer CITY OF GLASGOW is shown here wearing at the fore the twin pennants of the Glasgow & Liverpool Shipping Co. of Robert Gilchrist & Co., to whom she was presumably on charter. Seen inbound to the Clyde with a consort and Ailsa Craig to starboard, CITY OF GLASGOW was transferred in 1842 to owners in London and in 1854 was sold foreign.

By John Livingstone, of whom no biographical details are known. However, in his scholarly publication ‘Marine Art & The Clyde’, Mr. A.S. Davidson, the foremost authority on ship-portrait painting, reproduces and discusses six other high quality works by this artist, all from the later 1840s; perhaps indicatively, one of these, dated 1848, is of the iron screw steamship BRIGAND, which was built in Govan in that year as the first steamer actually to be owned by Robert Gilchrist & Co.