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SWMHS new website - the photographs: episode 1. Neil Hawke
from South West Soundings
by SWMHS
Lundy South Light from the sea High Light close up North Light South Light
Mike Bender, Kay and Jo Harding
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SWMHS new website - the photographs
At the top of various pages on the new website there are photographs submitted by members; details of these were promised and here is the first.
The photograph was taken by Neil Hawke on 1st September 2018 at Bristol Docks and is an image of the Bristol tug John King. The vessel was built by Charles Hill and Sons Ltd in their Bristol shipyard in 1935 for John King Tugs Ltd. She is of steel construction and 68.5 feet long with a beam of 17 feet and a depth of 8.5 feet; her gross tonnage is 49.
Until 1970 the tug was used for ship towage on the river Avon. Her last assignment was manoeuvring the SS Great Britain into Bristol’s Great Western Dock.
She was purchased by the Bristol Industrial Museum in 1995 and is currently used to take passengers on trips around Bristol Harbour. For further information and dates of trips see here: https://www.bristolmuseums.org.uk/m-shed/whats-on/john-king-trips/ John King is listed by National Historic Ships UK: www.nationalhistoricships.org.uk/register/1003/ john-king
For further reading try Brown, Paul (2010) Historic Ships: the Survivors, Amberley Press
Neil Hawke
A snippet: Mayflower memories in a Plymouth suburb
Some way inland from its well-known waterfront, Plymouth has a little known ‘Mayflower Quarter’. In the suburb of Egg Buckland is a housing estate built in the early 1970s. Its main avenue commemorates not the Mayflower but the Speedwell, whose serious deficiencies forced the Pilgrims to turn back to Plymouth - and thus accidentally gave the city its much-celebrated claim to fame. Speedwell Crescent links a set of cul-de-sacs that are all named after Mayflower passengers. But they are a distinctly ‘random’ selection. Some bear the names of individuals who
