Part of the Acorn Archive

Hearts of Oak

 

 

Temperley Steam

Shipping Co Ltd

 

TROWBRIDGE, NEWBRIDGE and REDBRIDGE

 

TROWBRIDGE
3,712 grt; 342.3 ft x 46.6 ft

Turret hull

Built 1904 W. Doxford & Sons Ltd, Sunderland (Yard Nr 320)

J Temperley & Co
11th April 1907 Ashore on the Komariya Ridge Ceylon, reported holds full of water. She was on her way from Calcutta to bombay with coal. She was insured for £36,000.

14th November 1917 torpedoed and sunk by U-63 while 12 miles SE from Cabo de Gata, Spain on voyage Blyth to Alexandria with coal.

 

Board of Trade v Temperley Steam Shipping Company Ltd

(The "TROWBRIDGE) [1917]  The vessel suffered damage in an accident in 1917 while under time charter to The Crown. At that time, repair materials were classified as munitions of war and the local Board of Trade surveyor, acting under the Munitions Act, restricted the work. Soon after her departure, the ship broke down again and was properly brought back for complete repairs; and the Charterer paced the vessel off-hire for the time so lost. The Owner's claim was that the action of the Charterer's servant could not properly trigger the clause. Upholding the umpire and the judgment of Roche J at first instance, the Court of Appeal agreed with the Charterer: per Scrutton LJ  "Now that stopping of him making his ship efficient was the action of an officer of the State fulfilling his statutory duty of a semi-judicial character and making an error of judgement in it. I am quite unable to find any case or any principle which will bring an action of that sort within the principle, which is sometimes expressed, that a man cannot take advantage of his own wrong."

 

NEWBRIDGE
3,737 grt; 342.1 ft x 46.6 ft;  9 knots

Built 1906 W. Doxford & Sons Ltd, Sunderland (Yard Nr 358)

For Temperley
10th November1914 Scuttled under Admiralty Orders, in the Rufidji Estuary, German East Africa, in order to bottle up the German cruiser

SMS KONIGSBERG.
 

REDBRIDGE
3,834 grt; 350 ft x 50.2 ft

Turret hull

Built 1907 W. Doxford & Sons Ltd, Sunderland (Yard Nr 385)

For Temperley
1923 Sold Atlas Reederei A.G., Emden (Schulte & Bruns); Renamed AMERIKA
1934 Scrapped, Vegesack by Bremer Vulkan.

 

REDBRIDGE assisted in the aftermath of the earthquake, which hit Messina 5:20am 28th December 1908, and the tsunami (of forty feet) that followed it. This, most powerful and destructive European earthquake (7.5 Richter scale and centred in the Messina Strait), shook southern Italy.  Most of southern Italy's cities lost half their population. Cities were engulfed in the waves, destroying houses, and many people lost their lives. Messina was totally demolished and lost nearly all of the 150,000 population.

 

 

 

Raymond Forward