SS UNDEN

Photographer Frederick Garner Wilkinson (1901-1975)

Date9 March 1924

Object number00040987

NameGlass plate negative

MediumEmulsion on glass

Dimensions83 x 108 x 2 mm

ClassificationsPhotographs

Credit LineAustralian National Maritime Museum collection

Terms

DescriptionSS UNDEN is shown anchored in Snails Bay, Sydney on Sunday morning 9 March 1924. This image was captured from a ferry travelling on the harbour.HistoryUNDEN was a Swedish steel-screw cargo vessel of 4253 ton. It was built in 1920 by J Priestman & Co at Sunderland, England. In 1924 it was owned by the Anglo-Saxon Petroleum Company Ld and used for transporting oil. It was registered under a British flag in the port of London. In 1938 it was purchased by The Brovig Farsund Line, renamed CATE B. and then scuttled in April 1940.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.