I’m remastering and researching two collections of black and white photographs for Broadland Memories at the moment, both sets of which I had originally bookmarked as being early 1960s and filed away for further study once I was able to start work on them. An afternoon spent trawling the internet for some answers this week led me off on a tangent, but ultimately solved a puzzle and provided me with an earlier date for at least one of the sets.
I sometimes find myself researching subjects which often bear little relevance to the Norfolk Broads but are important in gathering further information on the history of some of the photographs within the archive. One set of photos, all from the same roll of film and seemingly taken during a holiday on the Norfolk Broads around 1960, have proved to be a perfect example this week. It’s also an illustration of how much time can be spent working on just a small batch of images. Around half of the 20 photographs and negatives were obviously attributable to Broadland – a number of shots of the boat the photographer hired (more on that later), and a few landscape scenes which were unmistakably taken during the same trip. There were also some photographs of large ships and a couple of USS destroyers at port, a couple of images of Scottish fishing boats and one shot of a lifeboat being pushed up from the beach.
The ships and navy boats could possibly have been Great Yarmouth, or maybe Lowestoft at first glance, the fishing boats too. The lifeboat (above) was a different matter as it didn’t look like any location in Norfolk or Suffolk that I knew. Zooming in, the lettering on the hull read “North Sunderland Life Boat” which gave me a good starting point. I quickly found that this was likely to have been taken at Seahouses, on the North Northumberland coast. It’s a fabulous photo and will either have been the lifeboat “W.R.A.” (1936-54) or “Grace Darling” which came into operation in 1954. Perhaps someone out there with a little more knowledge might be able to provide an answer.
Now, I realise that I’m moving a good way beyond my Norfolk and Suffolk Broads remit here, but felt these really ought to be published somewhere. It also possibly helped me to push the date of the photographs back in to the 1950s, maybe even the first half of the decade going by the clothes and hairstyles seen above. It perhaps gave a clue as to where the holiday party had travelled from too.
There were two photographs of fishing vessels, some registered to Leith and one to Berwick. Whilst it certainly would have been possible that they were fishing off the Norfolk or Suffolk coast, I wondered whether these were actually photographed at the same time as the lifeboat above. A bit more trawling (pun intended) of the internet revealed that the image above does indeed feature the harbour mouth at Seahouses.
Moving on to the large ships. Most were slightly fuzzy and I was unable to read any names, apart from one. Once again, on closer study, the background of these ships in port just didn’t look quite like any photographs I’d seen of either Great Yarmouth or Lowestoft. An online search for the name “Recorder”, seen on the bow of the ship above, eventually resulted in the discovery that she was a cable ship, built by the Swan Hunter shipyard at Wallsend on the River Tyne, and was launched in 1954. Further searches uncovered an almost identical photo which was labelled as having been taken at Swan Hunter in 1954. Bingo! More evidence too that our Broadland holidaymakers may have travelled to the area from north east of the country.
I’m guessing that the photos of the two US Navy Destroyers were also taken on the River Tyne. DD-890 “Meredith” and DD-821 “Johnston” were both launched in 1945 and were part of Destroyer Squadron 6. Online sources indicate they were deployed for operations in the Mediterranean and the coast of Northern Europe (the British Isles, Scandinavia and the Baltic) during the early to mid 1950s. “Johnston” went to the assistance of the Dutch in 1953 after the catastrophic floods which also hit the East Coast of Britain, the crew donating warm clothing and over $1200 for the storm victims.
Having been distracted for almost an entire afternoon, I got very little work done on the actual Broads photographs. They were now whittled down to just eleven, mostly featuring the motor cruiser B478 “Vesta 9” which had been hired from E.C. Landamore’s boatyard at Wroxham. The first Vestas were built c1934 and, at the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939, there were four in the class. Once hostilities ceased in 1945 and the hire fleets got going again, the fleet of Vestas was increased over the next few years to a total of twelve by the early 1950s. The original four Vestas were also replaced by new craft bearing the same numbers. Sleeping four in two cabins, both with adjoining W.C.’s, the wheelhouse had a collapsible canopy and folding windscreen to enable it to pass beneath the Broadland bridges. The galley was originally equipped with a paraffin cooker but this had been replaced with a gas stove by 1954. A week’s hire cost between £26 and £41 depending on the time of year. A deposit of £6 10 shillings was required when booking, with the remaining balance payable on arrival at the boatyard at the start of your holiday. The entry for the Vesta class from the 1954 edition of Blake’s “Holiday’s Afloat” brochure can be seen on the left.
I can now finish working on remastering the Broads photos and will get them online very soon. I’m fairly confident that the second set of photographs, bought from a different source, are definitely 1960s ….. at the moment!
