The Great Western Railway (GWR) was a British railway company that linked London with the southwest, west and West Midlands of England and most of Wales. It was founded in 1833, received its enabling act of Parliament on 31 August 1835 and ran its first trains in 1838 with the initial route completed between London and Bristol in 1841. It was engineered by Isambard Kingdom Brunel, who chose a broad gauge of 7 ft —later slightly widened to 7 ft 1⁄4 in —but, from 1854, a series of amalgamations saw it also operate 4 ft 8+1⁄2 in standard-gauge trains; the last broad-gauge services were operated in 1892.
A ghost ship, also known as a phantom ship, is a vessel with no living crew aboard; it may be a fictional ghostly vessel, such as the Flying Dutchman, or a physical derelict found adrift with its crew missing or dead, like the Mary Celeste. The term is sometimes used for ships that have been decommissioned but not yet scrapped, as well as drifting boats that have been found after breaking loose of their ropes and being carried away by the wind or the waves.
Irene Handl was a British character actress who appeared in more than 100 British films; she also wrote novels.
Jamie St John Bamber Griffith, known professionally as Jamie Bamber, is a British actor, known for his roles as Lee Adama in Battlestar Galactica and Detective Sergeant Matt Devlin in the ITV series Law & Order: UK. He also had a supporting role as 2nd Lt. Jack Foley in the HBO miniseries Band of Brothers, as Lieutenant Archie Kennedy in the Hornblower series and was a regular on the British series Ultimate Force and Peak Practice. In 2013, Bamber starred in the TNT medical drama Monday Mornings, and in 2014, in the Sky 1 drama The Smoke.
Hazel Court was an English actress. She is known for her roles in British and American horror films during the 1950s and early 1960s, including Terence Fisher's The Curse of Frankenstein (1957) and The Man Who Could Cheat Death (1959) for Hammer Film Productions, and three of Roger Corman's adaptations of Edgar Allan Poe stories for American International Pictures: The Premature Burial (1962), The Raven (1963) and The Masque of the Red Death (1964).
John Brown and Company of Clydebank was a Scottish marine engineering and shipbuilding firm. It built many notable and world-famous ships including RMS Lusitania, RMS Aquitania, HMS Hood, HMS Repulse, RMS Queen Mary, RMS Queen Elizabeth and Queen Elizabeth 2.
1408 is a 2007 American psychological horror film based on Stephen King's 1999 short story of the same name. It was directed by Mikael Håfström, written by Matt Greenberg, Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski, and stars John Cusack and Samuel L. Jackson.
Horrors of the Black Museum is a 1959 British horror film directed by Arthur Crabtree and starring Michael Gough, June Cunningham, Graham Curnow and Shirley Anne Field.
Victoria Harbour is a harbour, seaport, and seaplane airport in the Canadian city of Victoria, British Columbia. It serves as a cruise ship and ferry destination for tourists and visitors to the city and Vancouver Island. It is both a port of entry and an airport of entry for general aviation. Historically it was a shipbuilding and commercial fishing centre. While the Inner Harbour is fully within the City of Victoria, separating the city's downtown on its east side from the Victoria West neighbourhood, the Upper Harbour serves as the boundary between the City of Victoria and the district municipality of Esquimalt. The inner reaches are also bordered by the district of Saanich and the town of View Royal. Victoria is a federal "public harbour" as defined by Transport Canada. Several port facilities in the harbour are overseen and developed by the Greater Victoria Harbour Authority, however the harbour master's position is with Transport Canada.
Sir Edward James Harland, 1st Baronet, was an Ireland-based English shipbuilder and politician. Born in Scarborough in the North Riding of Yorkshire, he was educated at Edinburgh Academy. In 1846, aged 15, he took an apprenticeship at the engineering works of Robert Stephenson and Company in Newcastle upon Tyne. Afterwards he was employed in jobs in Glasgow and again in Newcastle, before moving to Belfast in 1854 to manage Robert Hickson's shipyard at Queen's Island. Four years later he bought the yard and renamed the business Edward James Harland and Company. In 1861 he formed a business partnership with Gustav Wilhelm Wolff, his former personal assistant, creating Harland and Wolff. Later, Harland recruited William James Pirrie as another partner. Edward Harland, Gustav Wolff and William James Pirrie maintained a successful business, receiving regular orders from the White Star Line, before Harland's retirement in 1889, leaving Wolff and Pirrie to manage the shipyard.
Dermot Walsh was an Irish stage, film and television actor, known for portraying King Richard the Lionheart in the 1962 television series Richard the Lionheart.
Ronald George Hinings Adams,, known professionally as Ronald Adam, was a British officer of the Royal Flying Corps and Royal Air Force, an actor on stage and screen, and a successful theatre manager.
Frederick George Merritt was an English theatre, film and television actor, often in authoritarian roles. He studied German theatre in Magdeburg, Germany, and taught at the Berlitz School at the outbreak of the First World War, when he was held as a British Civil Prisoner of War, and interned at Ruhleben, 1914–1918. He was involved in over 50 plays at Ruhleben. He lived for many years in Lissenden Gardens, Parliament Hill, north west London.
The Floating Dutchman is a 1954 British second feature crime film directed by Vernon Sewell and starring Dermot Walsh, Sydney Tafler and Mary Germaine. It is based on a 1950 novel The Floating Dutchman by Nicholas Bentley. A Scotland Yard detective goes undercover amongst jewel thieves after a dead Dutchman is found floating in the river.
Philip and Son was a shipbuilder in Kingswear, near Dartmouth, Devon, England. Operating from 1858 until the late 1990s, the company provided employment opportunities for nearly 141 years for many people of Dartmouth. It was Dartmouth's last industrial shipyard. A documentary film, Philip and Son, A Living Memory, presents the story of the industrial shipyard from its beginning to its eventual closure.
Eastbourne Lifeboat Station is a Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI) lifeboat station in the town of Eastbourne in East Sussex. Founded two years before the RNLI was established, the station has operated continuously since 1822, and its lifeboats have been responsible for saving over 700 lives.
Camper and Nicholson is a yacht design and manufacturing company based in Gosport, England, for over two hundred years, constructing many significant vessels, such as Gipsy Moth IV and Prince Philip's yacht Bloodhound. Its customers included Thomas Sopwith, William Kissam Vanderbilt II and George Spencer-Churchill, 6th Duke of Marlborough. Its yachts competed in The America's Cup, The Fastnet Race, the Olympics, the Ocean Race and many other yacht races. It also built a number of small warships, notably during the two World Wars, and some as late as the 1950s.
Naval Operating Base Terminal Island, was United States Navy base founded on 25 September 1941 to support the World War II efforts in the Pacific War. Naval Operating Base Terminal Island was founded by combining Naval Facilities in cities of San Pedro, Long Beach and Wilmington, California under one command. Much of the base was on the man-made Terminal Island, and harbor in San Pedro Bay. The harbor was made through the construction of a large breakwater system.
