SS Chester (1884)

History
Name: SS Chester
Operator:
Port of registry: United Kingdom
Builder: Edward Withy and Company, Hartlepool
Launched: 29 April 1884
Fate: Sunk in collision 28 September 1910
General characteristics
Tonnage: 1,010 gross register tons (GRT)
Length: 238.6 feet (72.7 m)
Beam: 32.2 feet (9.8 m)
Depth: 14.1 feet (4.3 m)

SS Chester was a passenger and cargo vessel built for the Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire Railway in 1884.[1]

History

Chester was built by Edward Withy and Company in their Middleton Yard at Hartlepool and launched on 29 April 1884, sponsored by Miss Florence Withy.[2] She was designed for the passenger and cargo service between Grimsby, England, and Hamburg, Germany. She had a long poop deck, a long bridge house, and a long topgallant forecastle. The bridge house was fitted up for the accommodation of thirty first-class passengers (including ladies’ cabin), the captain, and so on. There was accommodation in the forecastle for second-class passengers, and in the poop aft for officers and crew. In the ‘tween decks were fittings for 100 emigrants.

On 4 December 1885, Chester was involved in a collision with her sister ship Wakefield, which resulted in the sinking of Wakefield and the drowning of her stewardess.[3]

In 1897, Chester passed to the Great Central Railway. On 28 September 1910 she was in a collision in the River Elbe with a Swedish steamer which resulted in her being badly damaged. She was beached to prevent sinking.[4] However, she sank quickly into the soft moving sand and became a total wreck, the water having flooded her holds.[5]

References

  1. ↑ Duckworth, Christian Leslie Dyce; Langmuir, Graham Easton (1968). Railway and other Steamers. Prescot, Lancashire: T. Stephenson and Sons.
  2. ↑ "Launch of a Steamer at West Hartlepool". Daily Gazette for Middlesbrough. England. 30 April 1884. Retrieved 11 November 2015 – via British Newspaper Archive. (subscription required (help)).
  3. ↑ "Steamer Sunk". Aberdeen Evening Express. Scotland. 4 December 1885. Retrieved 11 November 2015 – via British Newspaper Archive. (subscription required (help)).
  4. ↑ "The Great Central Railway Company's steamer Chester…". Aberdeen Journal. Scotland. 30 September 1910. Retrieved 11 November 2015 – via British Newspaper Archive. (subscription required (help)).
  5. ↑ "Grimsby Steamer wrecked in the Elbe". Yorkshire Post and Leeds Intelligencer. England. 3 October 1910. Retrieved 11 November 2015 – via British Newspaper Archive. (subscription required (help)).
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