turned up on the Museum piers one day ... " I next visited Southampton, where the Wavertree was launched in 1885 . Oswald Mordaunt's yard was in Woolston, across the ltchen River, and its site was reached by a chain ferry which, aside from conversion from steam to diesel power, had not changed in over JOO years (since I 973 this has been replaced by a bridge) . The yard was now Vosper-Thorneycroft, building high-speed gunboats for the Brazilian Navy. Their records and photos had recently been boxed up and shipped to the National Maritime Museum at Greenwich. Outside the shipyard gates was a street that had probably changed little since Wavertree's launching. A Victorian pub stood next door to serve the shipwrights, and down the block were the modest brick row houses in which they lived . The local history files of the Southampton City Library yielded a newspaper account of the recollections of a man who had worked in the Oswald Mordaunt yard during the period of Waverlree's construction, and a brief history of the yard with an incomplete list of ships built there. I went on to Brixham, where Captain Adrian Small had found a model of the Wavertree in the nearby town ofTeignmouth. It was a crude seaman's model by a man, no longer living, who had sailed in her. I examined a half model of the Bactria in Liverpool, and recorded its measurements, and dug out more photos of Oswald Mordaunt ships at the National Maritime Museum. The Museum expected to take a decade or more to index the Vosper-Thorneycroft collection, which might or might not include valuable items on the predecessor yard. A trip to the West Coast in the summer of 1975 yielded more photos of Oswald Mordaunt ships from the invaluable files of the San Francisco Maritime Museum (now National Maritime Museum, SF), an excellent painting of the near-sistership Leyland Brothers at the Columbia River Maritime Museum at Astoria, Oregon, and a lead from the marine historian Harold Huycke in Seattle on two men who had sailed in the near-sister Milverton, who were still living in British Columbia. One of them turned out to have a crew picture taken aboard the ship . This success prompted me to do some more checking on the Milverton in Finland, where she had been owned until the mid-1920s. The sailing ship historian Lars Gronstrand found two veterans of the ship, both of whom had taken snapshots on board: the result was 29 additional views aboard a ship very close to the Waver/reef While these efforts were afoot in 1975, the British shipwright H(lton Matthews, whom Peter Stanford had interviewed in EngIa11d and hired to work on the ship, had returned to England and there turned up a photograph of the Oswald Mordaunt shipyard in ¡wavertree's period, a photo showing two big sailing ships on th~ ways, one in frame and one fully plated. Dr. Masson had told us of a brother living in Edinburgh, Scotland, W.J.L. Masson. Stephen Canright, who was designing an exhibit on the ship, and I corresponded with him and eventually two photos were forwarded to us: one, our first interior shot of Waverlree, showed Captain and Mrs. Masson and the two boys in the saloon; the second showed Captain Masson and T .C. standing beside the wheelbox. In I 976 the Museum heard from a retired barik employee living in Punta Arenas, named Rafael Cabrera. He has seen Oswaldo Wegmann 's copy of the Wavertree book and wanted one for himself. In the late I 920s he had belonged to a rowing club which made frequent visits to the ship-and he had snapshots taken on board on one such visit in I 929. One, showing club members pretending to dance the Chilean "cueca" on the foredeck, was our first closeup view of this part of the ship . In 1977 I flew to the British Isles again, landing at Prestwick, Scotland. I went straight to Edinburgh to see W .J .L. Masson and phtotgraph what he had from the ship, and then on to Anstruther, Scotland which had been mentioned as the family's summer home, and the home of some of Wavertree'screw members. I inquired around, but found nothing relating to the ship. After SEA HISTORY, WINTER 1982/ 83
The Cabrera photos of his rowing club friends on theforecastle head gave invaluable new detail on how things were rigged on this ship-as distinct from "a typical ship of the period. "
Rafael Cabrera (second from right, kneeling) in 1929 provides a stirring contrast, with his rowing club pals, to Captain Masson and his son the future Dr. Masson, aboard the ship as she's laid up in Ellesmere Port 21 years earlier.
visiting museums in northern France and Holland , and revisiting the National Maritime Museum and Liverpool, I caught the ferry to Belfast, northern Ireland, where we had heard rumors of a Wavertree half model. At Tedford's Ship Chandlery I found three fine half models, one of a bark owned by the firm, and two recently bought by a member-one of these being labeled Toxteth, a big Leyland Bros. full rigger, the other a full rigger labeled Wavertree. The Wavertree model did not match our photos, and her hull no. given on a brass plate was that of the later Leyland II