SS LARGS BAY of Adelaide leaving for London on Saturday 29 December 1923

Photographer Frederick Garner Wilkinson (1901-1975)

Date29 December 1923

Object number00041531

NameGlass plate negative

MediumEmulsion on glass

Dimensions83 x 108 x 2 mm

ClassificationsPhotographs

Credit LineAustralian National Maritime Museum collection

Terms

DescriptionSS LARGS BAY was photographed leaving Sydney Harbour for London on Saturday 29 December 1923. This picture was taken from Dawes Point. At the time LARGS BAY was used for transporting passengers between Australia and Britain.HistorySS LARGS BAY was built by Wm Beardmore and Company Dalmuir and launched on 20 June 1921. It was built to service the London-Australia passenger route and its maiden voyage commenced on 4 January 1922. It was sold to the White Star Line in 1928 and then to the Aberdeen and Commonwealth Line in 1933. A 1930s Aberdeen Line promotional brochure detailed how the vessel had caught up with the 'modern' age: 'The passenger to England of yesteryear who could not afford to pay for a saloon passage had to be prepared to undergo the trial of indifferent food, poor and draughty accommodation and a tedious voyage. What a change has been wrought by the modern "Bay" Liners! ... At a coast that is within the reach of all, a passage to England or Italy may be booked in an Aberdeen & Commonwealth Liner ... A cabin which is spacious, nicely furnished and well ventilated makes sleeping a pleasure. Spacious and airy public rooms are for the use of one and all.' [Source: http://www.timetableimages.com/maritime/images/acl30si.htm, accessed 24 July 2013] During World War II the vessel was requisitioned as a troopship and then returned to the Aberdeen Line to be refitted between 1948 and 1949. The LARGS BAY was scrapped at Barrow-in-Furness, England in 1957, one of the last Aberdeen Line vessels in service before the company was dissolved.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.