Collier SS Upminster. This shipyard model of a single-hull steam freighter was acquired in Great Britain in the mid-1970s for the Peter Tamm collection and was almost certainly built in 1916 or 1917. It is a 1:100 scale representation of the coal freighter SS „Upminster“.
This shipyard model of a single-hull steam freighter was acquired in Great Britain in the mid-1970s for the Peter Tamm collection and was almost certainly built in 1916 or 1917. It is a 1:100 scale representation of the coal freighter SS „Upminster“.
The SS „Upminster“ was built in 1917 at the shipyard of Osbourne, Graham & Co. Ltd. in North Hylton, Sunderland. She had been commissioned by John Hudson & Co. who had been trading in coal since 1905. The company relied on its own ships for its business from 1915. Its first ship was the smaller freighter SS „Oxhott“, built in the same year. In the following two years, two larger sister ships were commissioned to expand the fleet. The SS „Hornchurch“ was built in 1916 and had a dramatically short life: she was sunk by a sea mine laid by the German submarine UC-29 on 3 August 1917 during a coal transport from Methil to London, killing two people. Her sister, the 1917 SS „Upminster“, had a longer career, but it also ended tragically. Fate struck on 5 May 1928 when the ship was on the same route as the SS „Hornchurch“ when she was sunk. It happened off Flamborough Head, on the Yorkshire coast, when SS „Upminster“ collided with SS „Lanrick“. The „Upminster“ sank. The data we have does not mention that any lives were lost. Interestingly, this was not the first collision the „Upminster“ had in this area. The first occurred back in 1917 with another coal carrier, the SS „Dryade“. In this earlier accident, however, the „Dryade“ sank.