SS LARGS BAY leaving Sydney for London via Portsmouth
Photographer
Frederick Garner Wilkinson
(1901-1975)
Date27 May 1930
Object number00042047
NameGlass plate negative
MediumEmulsion on glass
Dimensions83 x 108 x 2 mm
ClassificationsPhotographs
Credit LineAustralian National Maritime Museum collection
DescriptionFrederick Wilkinson took this photograph of SS LARGS BAY departing Sydney for London at 12:15pm on Tuesday 27 May 1930 aboard a punt from Fort Macquarie (Bennelong Point) to Milsons Point. The south-east pylon of the Sydney Harbour Bridge can be seen under construction in the background.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.
Frederick Garner Wilkinson
10 December 1923
Frederick Garner Wilkinson
29 December 1923
Frederick Garner Wilkinson
20 November 1923
Frederick Garner Wilkinson
1931
Frederick Garner Wilkinson
1919
Aberdeen and Commonwealth Line
1940
Frederick Garner Wilkinson
1935