This 50 centimetres tall copper and glass, oil-burning, masthead (steaming) lamp, manufactured by C.M. Hammar of Goteborg, was, up until 1970, on display in scrap metal merchant Paul D. Alderton’s Printing House office on Duddell Street, where he worked as founder and Managing Director of Secondary Raw Materials (SRM) Ltd. This salvaged old ship’s lamp was a memento of the times, during the early 1960’s, when Paul D. Alderton was negotiating with Hong Kong shipbreakers on behalf of Hong Kong registered Hang Fung Shipping & Trading Company Limited (恒豐有限公司), a wholly owned subsidiary of the Sydney scrap metal merchants, Albert G. Sims Ltd.
Hand engraved on the glass of the Fresnel lens of this old ship’s lamp are the letter and numbers: G. 45939. I’m guessing that this might be the manufacturer’s number, or perhaps some other registration number that could possibly be of help in identifying the subsequently scrapped vessel on which the lamp was originally mounted.