If you’d wandered down to Newcastle Quayside 50 years ago, this is the sight you would have been confronted with.
A Royal Navy warship, it turns out, had had a bit of a bump. Minesweeper HMS Northumbria was based on the River Tyne between 1960 and 1972 at Gateshead’s HMS Calliope. Not long before she was decommissioned, the vessel collided with the Swing Bridge. It happened on the afternoon of October 6, 1972 , when the 450-tonne ship was en route from North Shields to its berth at the Quayside.
The Northumbria was coming in with the tide and was negotiating towards the berth when she swung broadside and drifted upstream into the bridge. Eventually, it took a team of Royal Navy officials, armed with ropes, to pull the minesweeper away from the bridge to safety.
