SS KURSK
Photographer
Frederick Garner Wilkinson
(1901-1975)
Date15 May 1919
Object number00040974
NameGlass plate negative
MediumEmulsion on glass
Dimensions83 x 108 x 2 mm
ClassificationsPhotographs
Credit LineAustralian National Maritime Museum collection
DescriptionSS KURSK arrived from England on Friday 9 May 1919 and moored at Farm Cove No 1 Naval Buoy on Saturday 10 May 1919. This image was captured on 12 May 1919. At that time the vessel was operating for the Cunard Line and transporting passengers to Australia.HistorySS KURSK was a steel twin-screw passenger steamer of 7869 ton built in 1910 by Barclay, Curle & Co Ld at Glasgow. In 1910 it was owned by the Russian American Line and then sold in 1917 to the Cunard Steam Ship Co Ld who registered KURSK in the port of London under a British flag. In 1921 it was purchased by the East Asiatic Company and renamed POLONIA, then sold again in 1930 to the Gdynia American Line. POLONIA was scrapped in 1938.
SignificanceThis photograph represents SS KURSK and the passenger trade to Australia during the first half of the 20th century.
It is part of the F G Wilkinson Photograph Collection, comprising more than 700 glass plate negatives of ships in Sydney Harbour between 1919 and 1936. The collection provides an extensive and well-documented coverage of the changing styles of shipping in the port of Sydney before the gradual decline of the coastal trade, and in a period which was probably the peak reached by commercial shipping in Australia. The backgrounds also reveal the changing face of the city and harbour foreshores.
