A house clearance find has vividly illustrated the prodigious output of a Tyneside shipbuilder during the First World War.
The photographic montage of more than 40 ships built by Palmers of Jarrow and Hebburn was found in a box in a house in the Morpeth area. Under the image of the vessels arranged in a fleet-style formation are the names of the ships.
The item is being sold by Wooler auctioneer Jim Railton. “This striking depiction shows the immense capacity of Palmers for ship production at a time of war when the nation’s need was great for both warships and cargo vessels,” said Mr Railton.
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“The Palmers yards must have been working non-stop and they underpinned the economy of the towns of Jarrow and Hebburn. It is probable that this historic image belonged to someone with a close connection with Palmers.”
The ships which are illustrated include the battleship HMS Resolution, launched by Palmers in 1915 and which served in the Second World War as an Atlantic troopship escort. She also took part in the destruction of the French fleet in 1940 to prevent it being used by Germany.
Another Palmers warship was the light cruiser HMS Dauntless, launched in 1918 and which also served in the Second World War. The current Type 45 destroyer HMS Dauntless is Newcastle’s adopted warship. One of two submarines built by Palmers was at the centre of a dramatic First World War incident.
While operating in Scandinavian waters, submarine E40 encountered a U-boat and her conning tower was hit by a shell. The captain was wounded and was dragged into the submarine but the hatch stuck and the vessel dived rapidly as it took on water.
After an hour as the air worsened and with the captain unconscious, the first lieutenant gambled and used the remaining air to resurface and return to the North East to find that the submarine had been posted as missing, presumed sunk. Two cargo ships built by Palmers for the Prince Line – Gothic Prince and Slavic Prince – were sold to Germany in the 1920s. Both were sunk by the British during the Second World War.
Ten of the pictured Palmers ships were destroyers. HMS Wryneck was sunk in 1941 by German aircraft off South Africa. She had picked up survivors from a Dutch troopship, and 600 crew and soldiers were lost in the destroyer’s sinking.
Also in 1941, the destroyer HMS Waterhen was sunk by bombing off Tobruk. The destroyers Northesk, Nugent, Oriole, Urchin, Ursa, Steadfast, Stonehenge and Stormcloud survived the First World War.
This was not the case with the Palmers cargo ships Croxteth Hall, mined and sunk in 1917; City of Florence, torpedoed in 1917; City of Winchester, torpedoed in 1941 and the tanker Cadillac, also torpedoed in 1941. The picture find comes, coincidentally, after other Palmers-linked items were sold by Newcastle auctioneers Anderson and Garland last week.
They included an album contained invites and memorabilia to events such as the Jarrow town hall opening in 1904, warship launches and the unveiling of the statue to company founder Sir Charles Mark Palmer in 1903. Also in the sale was an oak cigarette box, which was a fixture in the luncheon room at Palmers works – where it was made – for more than 70 years until the firm’s closure in 1932.
Sir Charles extended his shipbuilding enterprise into an industrial complex with blast furnaces, steelworks, rolling-mills and engine works.
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