This item is a marvellously evocative volume of photographs of some of the steamers owned by William Robertson’s Gem Line (ref: GB 249 T-GEM 3/2). The Gem Line, as the company became known from the 1950s because of its practice of naming its ships after minerals and semi-precious stones, was founded in 1852 by William Robertson and grew to be the most important Scottish fleet of ships engaged in the coastal bulk trades, trading commodities such as coal, ore and bricks among the ports of Great Britain, Ireland, France, the Netherlands and the Baltic.
The photographs bring the history of the company vividly to life. The coastal trade was very tough and demanding and incidents at sea were common. This photograph of the SS Coral, for example, shows the damage it received after a collision with the SS Starley Hall off Whitby in 1927.
The company also suffered significantly during the two world wars, losing many men and ships to enemy action. The SS Obsidian, for example, was requisitioned by the British Government during the First World War. In 1918, it got caught up in the Russian Civil War and, as the caption so graphically states, was deliberately ‘blown up … to avoid capture by Bolsheviks’.
One of the company’s few steamers to survive both world wars unscathed was the SS Pearl, built in 1896 by John Shearer and Sons of Glasgow. It gave an unmatched 54 years of continuous service before being broken up by the Rees Shipbreaking Co in Llanelly in 1950.
This volume of photographs is part of a much larger collection of records of the Gem Line held here in the Archives. Other records include freight books, voyage books and steamer logs. Studied together, these records give a fascinating picture of the activities of each of the company’s ships. It is the photographs, though, that really help capture the romance of the steamer era.
Victoria Peters, University Archivist
