New 28 December 2005
(at bottom of page)
TEESSHIPS
A FAVOURITE
SHIP
CITY OF CHESTER
(Scanned from a small 6x6cm contact print)
Middlesbrough Dock - 6 August 1962
A run of the mill view, for those days, of ships at no. 10 quay in Middlesbrough Dock but significant to me because this was the first ship photo I took with my then brand new Box Brownie camera! A great improvement, pending acquisition of a 35mm camera in 1966, on my dad's old (out of focus) bellows camera!
CITY OF CHESTER (5073583), The City Line Ltd., Glasgow (Ellerman Group), 8380gt, completed Barclay, Curle & Co. Ltd., Glasgow, 3-1944. 1971 CHESTER (Greek), 1971 broken up.
In those days I had to eke out the use of film according
to the constraints of my limited pocket money by concentrating on what I thought
were the most interesting of the ships sighted. Thus, I otherwise ignored the
ship astern of the CITY OF CHESTER!
She was the KWONG CHEUNG, Panama, 3775gt, built 1947. If, on that day, I had
known she was built only a couple of miles away at Smith's Dock Co. Ltd., South
Bank, Middlesbrough, my ship photography recording history may have been
different!! She was launched as LIEUTENANT PIERRE MERIC, promoted before
completion to CAPITAINE PIERRE MERIC, which name she carried right through to
1962, the year of this photo. She became STEPHANIE (Panama) in 1971 but was
damaged by collision in August 1971 and broken up later that year.