Aberdeen-merchant ship moored

It's a fascinating image. The ship is either a Liberty or Victory ship with a three element name - first name, initial, second name. Alongside her on her starboard side are two smaller coasters, possibly unloading her (?), with outboard of the aft one what looks like it may be an ocean going salvage tug, bow in the opposite direction to all the rest.

I can find nothing in the newspapers about so dramatic a moment (relatively speaking!) in Aberdeen in June 1947. Somehow I can't believe there would be no mention of any sort. Usually any ship in Aberdeen would be listed in the shipping news section of the SCMP and, at this time, so would the location of any of the tugs in port. 

The salvage tug, if that's what it is, appears to be in full civilian livery, so it isn't one of the Admiralty's large rescue tugs unless it was one of them out on charter.

Very puzzling.

StephenD

Victory-class ships had higher bulwarks in the bow. Liberty ships didn't, and the ship in the photo doesn't.

This ship looks like it's in civilian service as the anti-submarine deck gun and turret have been removed. A large number of Liberty ships were sold to private owners in 1947.

Thanks - I think I'd have got there once I got stuck in to trying to pin down the ship - the flush deck is the giveaway.

What was puzzling me in particular, apart from the very odd disposition of the vessels roughly across the entrances to the docks (which were often in use in c.1947 (HMS Comet was docked there in January 1947, and HMS Contest in February, for example)), is the lay of the horizon. If we were looking out of Aberdeen westwards, I'm puzzled by the long, low stretch of flattish land rising slightly to the right on the horizon. So, for all that lots of the foreground detail fits well, I was actually wondering whether this is indeed of Aberdeen...or even HK. (I'm sure one or more of Gwulo's many commentators, far, far better versed in HK, its topography and the fine detail of the history and ownership of its buildings than I am, will clarify.)

The regular shipping news of 1947 seems to have no ship calling in HK in June (or in the preceding or succeeding months) with a name that meets the 'name, initial, name' pattern on the ship's bow. Equally, there's no stry of a salvage operation, or of a long tow either arriving or departing. So, although clearly the ship is no longer in wartime condition (apart from the absence of the forward gun sponson, it is evidently not painted grey), it may well not have been in commission, so never hit the newspaper's regular shipping movements column.

Indeed, postwar, 1200 Liberty ships (of the 2,718 built in the USA) were sold off into the private sector. For example, by mid-1946 100 had been bought by Greek interests and in August 1946 134 were sold to French, Norwegian and Dutch interests. In October 1946 414 Liberty (and Victory) ships (of 6,000 of all types up for disposal) were auctioned off in the US. And in February 1947 50 or more were bought by the British. Most of the HK shipping companies that acquired Liberty ships seem to have done so later than 1947.

StephenD

It's definitely Aberdeen, but by the looks of it the ship is berthed at the waterfront immediately west of the dry dock - there was an angled bit of waterfront here that followed a line matching the position of the ship.

Thanks - there was a wall, but there was a small jetty sticking out about two thirds of the way along and, marked on a 1947 chart, still there in 1949, there was an unsalvaged wreck along the entire length of that bit of wall, angling in towards the dry docks from the end of the small jetty. In short, even though, as you note, there was a relevant bit of wall, it was not usable.

No question the two blocks of buildings seem to be those on Wu Nam St. And of course it does say "Aberdeen H.K." in white lettering in the bottom left corner (I'd missed that!).

It's possible the Liberty ship was berthed alongside the much heftier outer end of a government jetty, at the western boundary to the HWD's Aberdeen Docks premises. The angle is about right. The 1947 chart gives about 15' at chart datum, with a mooring buoy somewhere not far from the tug's transom.

The cluster of the Liberty ship, coasters and ocean going tug along with the complete absence of any news story remains a puzzle.

StephenD