SS CANADIAN INVENTOR

Photographer Frederick Garner Wilkinson (1901-1975)

Date27 October 1923

Object number00040984

NameGlass plate negative

MediumEmulsion on glass

Dimensions83 x 108 x 2 mm

ClassificationsPhotographs

Credit LineAustralian National Maritime Museum collection

Terms

DescriptionSS CANADIAN INVENTOR is shown leaving wharf no 3 Walsh Bay, Sydney to moorings above Longnose Point on the afternoon of Saturday 27 October 1923. This image was captured from Blues Point by Frederick Wilkinson.HistorySS CANADIAN INVENTOR was a steel screw 5465 ton vessel built in 1920 by J Coughlan & Sons at Vancouver, Canada. It was owned by the Canadian Importer Ld in 1923 and registered in the port of Montreal under a British flag.SignificanceThis photograph represents CANADIAN INVENTOR and commercial trade between Canada and 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.