Ships gallery

I took these shots back in the late eighties when we were doing a Greek Island cruise. The sail boat was timeless in its design,it could have been at sea any time in the last thousand years; the ferry,so sleek ,looks like a blade cutting through silk. These were the wine dark seas that Homer wrote of,intoxicating in their beauty, BrianD

Nice one Brian.

Looks like the Greek ferry could do with some paint...:)

This was the scene at the docks in Piraeus as we went to join our cruise,it was January and the sun was just rising in the east giving us a moody view of the harbour,wish I was there now,
BrianD

Nice photo Brian. I got some of photos of Piraeus Harbour, I'll root them out.

What was the cruise Ship Brian?

Hi Brian
The Aegean Glory, it was not an overnight job,just a trip for the day. It was lovely ,when we got back to Athens( we were stopping at the Hilton)we spent the night up the Little Acropolis and got a good look at the city. Only had a week there,I was on business,promised ourselves we would go back someday,never have,
BrianD

This is another of Charles Dixons paintings and it shows a beautiful old cargo /passenger liner ,the City Of Rome,outward bound from New York. She looks so gracious, almost like a royal yacht,
BrianD

Here is a photo of the Gas Loading port of Doha in Qatar, where the worlds largest gas field is. It just arrived in the shareholder magazine of Exxon. last time I was there it was just sand and one pipeline to load oil.
My step son in law is working there, four weeks on four weeks off.
There are a few very large Liquid Gas tankers, a couple of Maerk containor ships and two bulk carriers.

I bet there is not one British Seafarer on any of those ships.

Hi Brian
It looks extremely busy,would'nt like to work on them though,you'd never really see the world and they are not like those cargo boat that we started out on,
BrianD

Here are some ships that I saw when I was in Malta 16 years ago, the first is a Radisson sailing liner,cost an arm and a leg to cruise on her,she looked beautiful under full sail.
The second ship is the M.V. Doulos,built in 1910 and still sailing in the 21st,the 2007 Guinness book of records ranked her as the oldest working passenger liner in the world.
The ketch in the third picture was built for the Royal Navy in 1942 and now earns a living giving cruises around the island,very relaxing !
And then there is the Gozo ferry, a lovely old boat going to a beautiful island. Would recommend a holiday on Malta to anyone,the place is so rich in history,
BrianD

I will now post a series of fishing boats,some people would call the men who sailed in the "real" sailors because of the harsh conditions they endured. The first one up is a Buckie steam drifter Rochome BCK62,built in Middlesborough in 1910 and typical of hundres of such vessels from ports on Britains east coast which engaged in the North Sea herring fishery in the early part of the 20 th century.
This study was by Peter frederick Anson,a marine artist,author and sociologist of the fishing community and co-founder of the Apostleship of the Sea.
BrianD

The Steam Trawler `VIOLA` was built in Beverley on the Humber in 1906 for Hellyar and sailed for them until being sold to the Norwegians after WW1. She was renamed `KAPDUEN`and converted to a whale catcher. In 1927 she was sold to Argentina and renamed `DIAZ`and used as a Sealer out of Grytviken in South Georgia.
She lay in Grytviken for many years half sunk. she was recently pumped out and hauled up the beach alongside another sealer, the Albatros.
Efforts to salvage her and return her to the Humber have been going on a while now. I met the team last year when I was there.
The ship model is on show in the Museum in Grytviken.
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Almost 100 years to the day that Viola sailed on her first
voyage from Hull, her bell was located on a farm near
Sandefjord. Robb Robinson, who is planning to bring Dias back
to Hull, has been able to buy the bell for Hull Maritime Museum.

The wooden steam drifter GIRL EVA YH346 is shown here entering Gorleston Harbour, was built at Oulton Broad in 1913 for Messrs. J. Pitcher Jnr.& Rogers of Yarmouth. In 1915 she was hired by the Admiralty for war purposes and on 2nd. of October the following year was destroyed by a mine off the Elbow Life Buoy. This study was by the Yarmouth artist Kenneth luck who produced many such paintingg of fishing boats of every description.
BrianD

For all those who sailed through the Suez Canal in the old days, here are a few photos of it now.
There is a giant bridge half way through, built by the Japanese, going right over the Canal. in the old days there was a swing bridge at El Firdan, that is still there on the photo. one shows the Farouk By Pass, its name has been changed since the revolution in the 50s.
and the WAR MEMORIAL is still there, two columns . I sailed through the Canal for the first time since the 1960s about four years ago on the Portugese ship, `FUNCHAL` on my way home from Freemantle with Joe Finnegan, a Liverpool lad I sailed with on the Empress of Scotland in 1955 and on the Franconia in 1956. The last photo is a suction dredger keeping the Canal deeper and wider.
The third photo is at Ismalia where in the old days we could see British Army ladies swimming on that point and lusty shouting at them. El Firdan Bridge is the fourth photo. Last time I saw that an Onassis `Olympic` Tanker was impaled upon it. The first photo is at the junction or the By Pass for south bound ships, we were north bound at the time.