SS CAPTAIN COOK pilot steamer anchored to buoy, Watsons Bay, 9 March 1924

Photographer Frederick Garner Wilkinson (1901-1975)

Date1924

Object number00040988

NameGlass plate negative

MediumEmulsion on glass

Dimensions83 x 108 x 2 mm

ClassificationsPhotographs

Credit LineAustralian National Maritime Museum collection

Terms

DescriptionSS CAPTAIN COOK is shown anchored at buoy in Watsons Bay on Sunday afternoon on 9 March 1924. The vessel was a pilot ship and the second to bear the name Captain Cook. This vessel was used to guide vessel's when entering and leaving Sydney Harbour between 1893 and 1938. HistorySS CAPTAIN COOK was a 524 ton pilot vessel built in Sydney in 1893. It operated as a Sydney Pilot ship for the NSW Government between 1893 and 1938. The iron hulled clipper bowed ship with a single mast was operated out of Watson's Bay. The vessel was used by the Royal Australian Navy during World War II and scrapped off the coast of Port Jackson in 1949.SignificanceThis photograph 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.