| History | |
|---|---|
| Name |
|
| Owner |
|
| Operator | (owners) |
| Port of registry |  |
| Builder | MacIlwaine, Lewis and Company, Belfast |
| Launched | 1886 |
| Out of service | 1974 |
| Identification |
|
| Fate | Scrapped 1974 |
| General characteristics | |
| Tonnage | 460 gross register tons (GRT) |
| Length | 174 ft (53 m) |
| Beam | 26.1 ft (8.0 m) |
| Draught | 12.6 ft (3.8 m) |
| Installed power | 80 ihp |
| Speed | 8 knots |
The SS Clyde Valley was a steamship which achieved notoriety for its role in the Larne gun-running in Ireland in April 1914.
The ship was built by MacIlwaine, Lewis and Company Ltd; Belfast and launched in 1886 as the SS Balniel for the Wigan Coal and Iron Company. She was named after Lord Balniel, the owner of Wigan Mines. She was sold in 1909 to the Clydeside Steamship Company in Glasgow and in 1910 renamed SS Londoner, and in 1912 renamed again as SS ClydeValley.
In 1914 she was sold to Hugh Crawford and acquired in April of the same year by Major Frederick Crawford on behalf of the Ulster Volunteers [1] she was briefly renamed Mountjoy II and on 24 April 1914 she rendezvoused with the coaster SS Fanny at sea as part of the Larne gun-running operation. [2]
By 1916 she was operating as a German Army Transport but was repatriated in January 1919 by Richard Cowser of Glasgow. She remained in the Glasgow area until 1928 when she was sold to Colonial Shippers of Guysborough, Nova Scotia and used to run coal to Trinidad and bring salt back. In 1934 she was abandoned and left on a sandbank until 1940 when she was acquired by A.S. Publicover of Lunenburg, Nova Scotia. In 1942 her steam propulsion was removed and she was converted to a motor vessel.
Further changes of ownership occurred in Canada, with her passing to Halifax Fisheries in 1943, Riverport Steamship Company in 1946 and Lake Shipping Company in 1955.
In 1969 she was acquired by Samuel Campbell of Whitehead, County Antrim with the aim of preserving her. She was moved to Carrickfergus but the project was unsuccessful and she went to Lancaster to be broken up in 1974.
The Larne gun-running was a major gun smuggling operation organised in April 1914 in Ireland by Major Frederick H. Crawford and Captain Wilfrid Spender for the Ulster Unionist Council to equip the Ulster Volunteer Force. The operation involved the smuggling of almost 25,000 rifles and between 3 and 5 million rounds of ammunition from the German Empire, with the shipments landing in Larne, Donaghadee, and Bangor in the early hours between Friday 24 and Saturday 25 April 1914. The Larne gun-running may have been the first time in history that motor-vehicles were used "on a large scale for a military-purpose, and with striking success".
SS Sagona was a passenger and freight ferry used in ferry service on the northern coastal routes between the island of Newfoundland and the coast of Labrador in Canada. In winter, Sagona was primarily a sealing vessel, bringing in a total of 165,599 seals from 1912 until 1938 under captains Job Knee, Jack Randell, Lewis Little and Jacob Kean.
.
The Alphabet Fleet was a fleet of vessels owned and operated by the Reid Newfoundland Company as part of the provisioning of the 1898 Railway contract between the Dominion of Newfoundland and the Reid Newfoundland Company. The vessels were named after places in Scotland, the native homeland of Sir Robert Gillespie Reid, founder of the Reid Newfoundland Company.
SS Georgia was a German passenger ship in service from 1890 until 1914. Interned in the United States during World War I she was sold to an American company, converted to a cargo ship, renamed Housatonic, and was sunk by a German submarine on February 3, 1917.
Empire Balfour was a 7,201 ton refrigerated cargo ship which was built by Lithgows Ltd, Port Glasgow in 1944 for the Ministry of War Transport (MoWT). She was sold to her managers in 1949 and renamed Barton Grange. In 1958 she was sold to the Western Steamship Co Ltd, Hong Kong and renamed Sunlight. In 1962, she was sold to the Pan-Norse Steamship Co SA, Panama, serving for a further five years until scrapped in 1967.
USS Howick Hall (ID-1303) was a cargo steamship that was built in Scotland in 1910 and served in the merchant fleets of the United Kingdom, United States, Italy and Panama. She served in the United States Army in 1917–18 and then the United States Navy in 1918–19. The United States Maritime Commission bought her in 1941, and a German air attack sank her in 1942.
SS Letitia was an ocean liner built in Scotland for service with the Anchor-Donaldson Line. She continued to serve with its successor company Donaldson Atlantic Line. At the start of the Second World War in September 1939, the British Admiralty requisitioned the ship for service and had it converted to serve as an armed merchant cruiser. She was withdrawn from this service in 1941 to become a troop ship.
SS Wandilla was a steamship built in 1912 for the Adelaide Steamship Company. The ship operated on the Fremantle to Sydney run until 1915, when she was acquired for military service and redesignated HMAT Wandilla. Initially used as a troop transport, the vessel was converted to a hospital ship in 1916. Wandilla was returned to her owners at the end of the war, then was sold to the Bermuda & West Indies SS Company and renamed Fort St. George in 1921. She was sold in 1935 to Lloyd Triestino and renamed Cesarea before being renamed Arno in 1938. At the start of World War II, the ship was acquired by the Regia Marina for use as a hospital ship. She was sunk by British aircraft on 10 September 1942.
USS West Mead (ID-3548), also spelled Westmead, was a United States Navy cargo ship in commission from 1918 to 1919.
The SS Silesia was a late 19th-century Hamburg America Line passenger and cargo ship that ran between the European ports of Hamburg, Germany and Le Havre, France to Castle Garden and later Ellis Island, New York transporting European immigrants, primarily Russian, Prussian, Hungarian, German, Austrian, Italian, and Danish individuals and families. Most passengers on this route were manual laborers, including stonecutters, locksmiths, farmers, millers, upholsterers, confectioners, and tailors, though physicians and other professionals also bought passage on her.
SS Creekirk was a cargo steamship that was built in Scotland in 1912 and sunk with all hands by a German submarine in 1940. At her launch in 1912 she was named SS Mariston. In her 28-year career she was renamed SS Milcovul in 1913, SS Hyphaestos in 1933 and SS Creekirk in 1938.
SS Parthia (1870–1956) was an iron-hulled transatlantic ocean liner built for the Cunard Line by William Denny and Brothers in Dumbarton, Scotland. Her sister ships were the Abyssinia and Algeria. Unlike her two sisters, Parthia was smaller, built in a different shipyard and had a slightly different funnel arrangement. The Parthia was retired by Cunard in 1883 and sold to John Elder & Co., who subsequently transferred her to the Guion Line. After serving with the Guion Line and operating on trans-Pacific routes with the Canadian Pacific Railway Company, she was refitted and renamed Victoria.
SS Heliopolis was a Clyde-built British passenger ship. She was subsequently renamed in 1910 SS Royal George, and served as a troop ship for the Canadian Expeditionary Force during the First World War.
SS Cyclops was a British cargo steamship of Alfred Holt and Company. She was built in Glasgow in 1906, served in both the First and Second World Wars and survived two German submarine attacks in 1917. A German submarine sank her in January 1942 off the coast of Nova Scotia, killing 87 of the men aboard her. This was the first attack of the Kriegsmarine's Unternehmen Paukenschlag to destroy Allied merchant shipping in the Western Atlantic.
SS Rosalind was a passenger and cargo carrying ship that was operated by the Red Cross Line between New York and St John's, sailing along the northeast coast of North America, in the early part of the twentieth century. Originally named Tosari when she was launched in 1890, she was renamed Admiral after a year when she was bought by Deutsche Ost-Afrika Linie. She joined the Red Cross Line in 1902 and worked the route for twelve years, with a short break in 1912 working in Australia when she was renamed City of Sydney, finally colliding with Shag Rock off the coast of Nova Scotia and sinking on 17 March 1914. She is known as the ship after which Rosalind Russell is named.
SS Tregarthen was a cargo steamship that was built in Scotland for the Hain Steam Ship Co in 1936. She was sunk with all hands by a U-boat in 1941 in the Battle of the Atlantic.
SS Verdala was a cargo and passenger steamship that was built in Scotland in 1913. Several times she changed owners and was renamed: as Mongolian Prince in 1917, Istok in 1928 and finally Maycrest in 1940.
SS Samara was a British Liberty ship built in the United States during 1943 for service in World War II. The ship was bareboat chartered to the British Ministry of War Transport, with Ellerman and Papayanni as managers. When her keel was laid, she held the name of SS Emma Lazarus. Later that year, the ship was renamed SS Samshire while under the same management. In 1947, the ship was used by Ellerman Lines as SS City of Doncaster until 1961, when she was sold to Trader Line, Bermuda, as SS Pembroke Trader. Her final management was Doreen Steamship Corp. in Panama, as SS Galleta until she ran aground off Calcutta on 10 April 1970. She was finally scrapped in Hong Kong during July of the same year. Her namesake was Samara, a Russian city in Samara Oblast.
A. H. Bull Steamship Company was a shipping company and passenger liner service founded in New York City in 1902 by Archibald H. Bull (1848-1920). Service started with shipping between New York and Florida. His fleet of ships then added service to other Eastcoast ports. The company is also often called the Bull Lines and the Bull Steamship Line or A. H. Bull & Company. While founded in New York, Bull soon move its headquarter to Peir 5 in Baltimore, Maryland. Bull Lines main Eastcoast ports were: Baltimore, Charleston, Philadelphia, Tampa and Norfolk, Virginia. Oversea ports: Porto Rico, Antwerp, Bordeaux, Hamburg, Bremen, Copenhagen, and West Africa. Bull Steamship Line supported the US war effort for both World War I and World War II, including the loss of ships.