By Eric Longo
In Memory of Mrs. Florence Oxley Robson (neé Baker), 1903–2005
Revised with additional information and unpublished photographs.
Just one year after being launched into the Tyne on September 20, 1906, the Cunard express liner Mauretania was nearing completion in the fitting-out basin of the Swan, Hunter and Wigham Richardson yards at Wallsend. All manner of work had been carried out in the twelve months since her christening. Twenty-five massive “Scotch” boilers were dropped into her hull by the 140-ton German crane Titan. Her superstructure was built, her four huge funnels fixed, her trademark cowl ventilators installed, and her interiors were completed and fashioned from rich woods and adorned with the finest furnishings. During the fitting-out one Swan employee working on the Mauretania selected a printed card showing her immediately after launch and sent it from Wallsend to his parents in Clacton-on-Sea, Essex, on February 8, 1907. The message is reproduced below without correction. (Printed postcard by Andrew Reid & Co., Ltd, Newcastle-on-Tyne. Author’s collection.)
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"Dear M & F, just a line hoping you are well. I make a start Monday morn 6 o'c on the ship all being well at S&H's. Will take some good time to finish her now. Tis a 4 funnel boat, these are fixed now, since this view. Your L.S. P" |
Throughout the year the local ferry services between Wallsend and Shields offered stops at both bow and stern for passengers to see this tremendous liner being finished. Local photographers took full advantage of the opportunities provided by this period as well, producing large numbers of postcards which now record the progress of her fitting-out. The watercolor rendering shown below was probably printed just after her boilers were dropped in. This advert card bears a message briefly describing a visit to the area to see the liner and was posted on April 24, 1907, to East Sutton, Maidstone. It is reproduced in part below without correction. (Author’s Collection)
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“Dearest, have just returned from north shields and saw this steamer. Liverpool river is not on it with the ‘Tyne’ I never saw as many steamers in my life. new castle is a great ship building place.…” |
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Figure 1. The Tyne General Ferry Company scheduled short stops every half-hour to afford a view of “the largest vessel in the world” under construction. The sender of this card visited South Shields, stopped to see the Mauretania, sent this card, and then went on to North Shields and family before returning home. (Tyne General Ferry Co. printed advertising card. Author’s collection.) |
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Figure 2. In this scarce port side photograph, taken in late August or early September from atop her launch cradle at a height of 130 feet, the Mauretania lies in the fitting-out basin on the north side of the river, 100 feet from the shore. The basin and the ship occupied nearly one quarter of the river’s width. Access was gained by the large custom gangway amidships. On either side two specially constructed mooring dolphins can be seen. Lifeboats are aboard; funnels, deckhouses, and cowl vents are painted; and she is nearly ready for her preliminary trials. (Detail from a real-photograph postcard by A. B. of Newcastle. Author’s collection. |
The Mauretania underwent two sets of trials before delivery to Cunard. On both occasions, thousands of locals and many photographers gathered along the river's edge to witness and photograph the world’s largest liner traverse the ten miles from Wallsend to Tynemouth and enter the North Sea. It was common for early photographers to self-publish postcards, especially those featuring subjects with local interest. These cards were produced in small quantities and were usually of the real-photograph or printed variety. The many black-and-white cards that mark the September 17 departure, such as the beautiful real-photograph example below from a series by Frank and Sons, show the Mauretania with a primed unpainted hull.
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Figure 3. A scarce postcard of the Mauretania on September 17 nearing Tynemouth being towed by two Dutch tugs, the Poolzee and Oceaan, which can be seen in the title image. People on the aft docking bridge and in the accompanying small craft provide a sense of the liner’s great size. The unpainted hull is easily visible on this postcard. (Real-photograph postcard by Frank & Sons, 81 West Street, Gateshead, Co. Durham. Author’s collection.) |
Color-tinted cards and prints of this event, such as the title image of this article, usually depict her with a black hull although she was still primed in September. Souvenir postcards were being prepared in advance of her formal departure in October. Photographs taken in September were tinted to show her in complete Cunard livery. Most cards that purport to show the October departure actually depict the September event. Even if the tugs accompanying her are not visible and the hull is too dark to discern, careful examination of the positions of the cowl vents and other details will reveal which event is actually depicted. An example of one of the most visible clues is shown below.
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Figure 4. Perhaps the easiest way to distinguish photographs taken on September 17 from those taken on October 22, apart from the hull, is the position of several cowl vents near her second-class deck house and behind No. 4 funnel (see Figure 3). (Detail left is from a real-photograph builder’s advert postcard by J. Taylor, 31 Carrick Street, Byker, Newcastle. Detail right is from a previously unpublished anonymous private photograph. Both graciously lent from the Collection of David Hutchings.) |
Portrait photographer Gladstone Adams, whose local nickname was “Glady Adams of Whitley Bay,” captured the well-known image of the Mauretania passing the North Pier and entering the North Sea for her preliminary trials. Adams self published both black-and-white real-photograph and color-tinted printed versions of his image to celebrate the event. The scarce tinted version of Adams's photograph shown below is unusually accurate in that the Mauretania's hull is still unpainted. It is interesting to note that her funnels have been rendered in red-orange instead of the usual bright crimson, a testament to Adams’s keen observation.
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Figure 5. A signed color example of Gladstone Adams's self-published postcard of the Mauretania entering the North Sea at Shields for the first time. The original photograph was taken from a small foy boat near the South Pier. Adams’s signature in ink as “Professional Photographer” is from the reverse message concerning his portraiture work. (Unpublished color-tinted printed postcard by Gladstone Adams of 18 Station Road, Whitley Bay, Northumberland. Author’s collection.) |
Perhaps something of the skill and pride of Gladstone Adams can be gleaned from his choice to utilize costly photomechanical color reproduction for some of his cards at a time when it was not often employed on private issues. Indeed, most surviving examples of the Adams card are slightly cropped black-and-white real-photograph cards. The example reproduced above, although originally printed in 1907, was signed and posted to nearby Coronation Crescent by Adams himself in 1920. Born on May 16, 1880, at 4 St. Anne's Row, Newcastle, Gladstone Adams was a gentleman of wide interests and broad experience. By age 21, he was studying photography, the 1901 census lists him as a photographer’s apprentice. Adams opened his first studio in 1907 at Station Road, the same year he was invited to photograph the Mauretania leaving the Tyne.
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Figure 6. Gladstone Adams's studio and photographic supply shop in Whitley Bay was near Albany Gardens at 18 Station Road, shown here looking west away from the Bay towards the new Station Clock, which was completed in 1910. His establishment, on the extreme left, is just outside of the photographer’s frame. (Original anonymous printed postcard. Collection of Melvin Studdy.) |
Adams undertook an auto trip to London in a Daracq-Caron during an April, 1908, snowstorm. He was going in support of his beloved Newcastle United against the Wolverhampton Wanderers in the Football Association Cup Final (Wolverhampton 3-1). On the way, as the passenger bearing responsibility for keeping the windshield clear, he conceived a hand-operated windscreen wiper which he later developed and patented in April, 1911, with the firm of Sloan and Lloyd Barnes of Liverpool. The original wiper is in the collection of the Discovery Museum in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, where the first turbine driven vessel Turbinia resides along with many items from the Mauretania herself. Adams, along with his brother, also invented the sliding rowing seat and the trafficator, forerunner of the indicator light. In 1918, while a Captain in the British Royal Flying Corps and providing photo reconnaissance, he furnished the photographic proof of the death of "Red Baron" Captain Manfred Freiherr von Richthofen in addition to organizing his burial. In World War II, too old for active service, he joined the Whitley Bay Army Training Corps. The Gladstone Adams Cup, given to him by cadets, is still presented each year. In addition to his photography studios in Barras Bridge, Newcastle and Station Road, Whitley Bay, he served as official photographer for the Newcastle United Football Club. In his later years, he served as Chairman of the Whitley Bay Urban District Council. Adams died in 1966 at the age of 86.
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Figure 7. Merchant Naval Officer Melvin Studdy as photographed by Gladstone Adams, c. 1957. (Courtesy of Melvin Studdy.) |
As a young boy in the 1940’s, Merchant Navy Officer Melvin Studdy befriended Gladstone Adams. The Studdy families were long established residents of both Whitley Bay and Newcastle with ancestry dating back to around 1780. One of Mr. Studdy's relatives, Robert Studdy, worked on the Mauretania at the Neptune Boiler Shop. Mr. Studdy, whose family was often photographed by Adams, fondly remembers him as "a kindly, tweedy type of Englishman who sadly has all but vanished now." The photographer once related the story of how he managed to catch his remarkable photograph of the Mauretania to the boy. Apparently, Adams had overslept and missed the boats arranged for the invited press. Quickly improvising, he rented a small foy boat (used to tie up ships and propelled and steered by one oar at the stern - a near impossible task) and took that out onto the Tyne. This afforded him a different vantage than most others that day who were limited to views from the press boats, allowing him to capture her starboard side. He remained very proud of his photograph, hanging a large color reproduction on the staircase leading to his second floor rooms at Station Road a half century after taking it.
Another photographer from Whitely Bay, B. Graham, recorded the September 17 departure in a series of sequential real-photograph postcards. The example shown below depicts the Mauretania nearing the port turn at the North Pier. As is often found on post cards of popular local events, there is a written description on the reverse even though the card was never posted. This postcard, like so many very early postcards of the Mauretania, seems to have been bound for Australia. It has been reproduced in part without correction.
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“Dear Bill, This is her leaving the Tyne on her first trials. On the right hand side is the old and new lighthouses. We live about just 2 miles along the coast on the same side. The boat is just entering the North Sea in the photo. All those tugs are the ones that helped her out & you can compare her size by them. I might say they are larger tugs than the Melbourne ones.” |
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Figure 8. A detail of the Mauretania at Tynemouth rounding the North Pier and Head light on her first trip out. The original North Pier was breached during the Great Storm of 1897. The old Light is still visible on the extreme left. The new 2,400-foot-long North Pier and its larger Head Light were commissioned in 1898, and the lighthouse was opened just three months after this photograph was taken. The steam crane used during construction of the new Head Light is visible between the two Lights. Graham captured this image from near the Black Middens rocks, south of the Norman Priory and Benebal Crag. (Detail from an unpublished real-photograph postcard by B. Graham of Whitley Bay. Author’s collection.) |
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Figure 9. The “new” lone North Pier and Head Light in North Shields as they appear today, looking much as they did when the Mauretania steamed past a century ago. (Courtesy of FREEFOTO.com) |
The Mauretania returned to the Swan yards on September 21 after the completion of her first speed trials off the coast of Scotland and maneuvers off Whitley Bay. She achieved 25.73 knots on the St. Abbs Head Mile although she vibrated badly. During one run, while working up considerable speed, an order was received in the engine room for “…a considerable and immediate reduction in revolutions.” Captain Pritchard made his request because he was, in his words, “…being shaken of my bridge.” She was replaced in the fitting-out-basin for weight redistribution and had additional bracing added to her stern to resolve the problem. She was painted into full Cunard livery upon her completion and final furnishing and prepared for her first voyage to Liverpool. Shortly before her departure, confectioner John Crape visited the Tyne and took the photograph below, showing her freshly painted and awaiting her departure on October 22.
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Figure 10. This candid photo card shows the completed Mauretania at the fitting-out basin at Swan in early October. The roof of her custom 750 foot glazed launch cradle can be seen behind her, and another set of covered building sheds are near her bow. Behind her superstructure, between the two covered berths, are the Neptune Joiners Sheds and the Platers Sheds. Perhaps two weeks after this photograph was taken the Mauretania left for Liverpool. (Unique unpublished private photocard by John Crape of Sunderland Street, Houghton-le-Spring. Author’s collection.) |
On the morning of October 22, the Mauretania, the world’s newest and largest turbine driven vessel, was joined by the first and smallest, Charles Parsons’ Turbinia of 1894. She was to accompany the Mauretania on her way down to Shields, but the last minute failure of an often-temperamental air valve prevented this. Interestingly, both vessels were built at Wallsend. Eight months before, on January 11, the Turbinia was nearly cut in half during the launch of the Crosby. She was repaired, but it was decided to remove her from the water and place her on the banks of the Tyne. In 1926 she was cut in two, and her aft section, with propellers and engines, was displayed at the South Kensington Museum in London. In 1959 she was removed from display and, with a reconstructed midsection, was restored and put on exhibit at the Municipal Science Museum in Newcastle. She underwent a total restoration in 1983 and has been on permanent display at the Discovery Museum in Newcastle-on-Tyne since 1996 along with a scale model of her beside the starboard bow of a 1:48 builder’s model of the Mauretania lent by Swan, much as the two appeared together in 1907.
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Figure 11. (Above left) Charles Parsons’ 100-foot Turbinia, star of Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee Fleet Review of 1897 at Spithead where she astonished onlookers by racing at 34 knots, is dwarfed just 10 years later by the immense Mauretania on the morning of October 22, 1907, at Wallsend. (Detail from an unpublished real-photograph postcard by J. Taylor, 31 Carrick Street, Byker, Newcastle. Author’s collection.) Figure 12. (Above right) The 1:48 scale model of the Turbinia alongside the builder’s model of the Mauretania at the Discovery Museum in Newcastle-on-Tyne. This display recreates the historic meeting of the two turbine vessels on October 22, 1907. (Courtesy of Jim McGinlay.) |
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Figure 13. The Turbinia fully restored at the Discovery Museum in Newcastle-upon-Tyne in 2006. (Courtesy of Kyle Johnstone.) |
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Figure 14. Published here for the first time, this dynamic, candid snapshot of the Mauretania was taken October 22 from a tug tied to her immense stern just moments after parting from her gangway and mooring dolphins at the fitting-out basin. The churning water of her wake gives an impression of the power of her four massive seventeen-foot three-bladed propellers. Signs on her stern rails warn of their strength. The men in the foreground and those on the aft docking bridge provide a sense of scale. After more than three years of construction, fitting out, and intricate decoration, she was finally leaving the Swan yards for Liverpool and Cunard. (Unique unpublished anonymous private photograph. Author’s collection.) |
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Figure 15. The Mauretania, surrounded by numerous small craft and thousands of spectators onshore, starting down the Tyne late in the afternoon on October 22, 1907. She arrived at Liverpool for the first time two days later on the morning of October 24. (Unique unpublished anonymous private photograph. Author’s collection.) |
The Mauretania entered Tynemouth as evening fell and now faced the open North Sea. She completed the ten mile journey about eighty minutes after pulling away from her mooring dolphins at Wallsend. The Mauretania now paused to adjust her compasses. Lady Inverclyde was on the bridge as the tugs departed and to her went the honor of ordering the Mauretania on her first official voyage north. To mark this occasion, Thomas Bell (Chairman of the Wallsend Slipway Company) presented Lady Inverclyde with a delicate diamond bracelet. Among the dignitaries aboard for this historic journey were Lord Inverclyde (Chairman of the Cunard Line), G.B. Hunter and Wigham Richardson (of Swan, Hunter and Wigham Richardson), Leonard Peskett (Cunard naval architect, designer of the Mauretania, Lusitania, and Aquitania), and C.G. Hill (representing the Admiralty). On the second day of this “jolly trip” a group of about forty men assembled between the first and second funnels for a group portrait.
Massive crowds once again lined both sides of the river to see the Mauretania finally leave the place of her birth. One spectator wrote home to Manchester the next day to relate his experience. (Title image. Color-tinted, printed postcard showing a black-hulled Mauretania, actually taken on September 17, posted at 3:15 P.M. on October 23. Auty Series G.H. N/C 6037. Author’s collection.)
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“Dear Mother, I went to Tynemouth yesterday to see the Mauretania leave the Tyne. It was well worth seeing. I wish you had been there. There were thousands present.” |
As she entered Tynemouth and prepared to enter the North Sea, the Mauretania was accompanied by a great many small craft. In one such small boat was Florence Oxley Robson (neé Baker) of East Percy Street, North Shields.
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Figure 16. (Above left) Florence Oxley Robson at age five with her mother Emily and brother Lance, age three, circa 1908. (Courtesy of the Robson Family.) |
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Figure 17. (Above right) Florence Oxley Robson in December, 2003, at the age of 100. (Courtesy of the Robson Family.) |
Mrs. Oxley Robson witnessed this event as a small child from a rowboat with her father, Henry Baker, a well regarded gentleman who was a Quartermaster Sergeant in the Tynemouth Volunteer Artillery and an early member of the Tynemouth Volunteer Life Brigade (which was founded in 1864 after the passenger steamer SS Stanley was wrecked on the Black Middens, a large rock formation off the north bank of the Tyne), serving from 1883 until his retirement in 1927. Seeing the tremendous Mauretania pass from such a small boat left a very strong impression on the young girl:
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"My earliest memory is of seeing a great big ship go past. My father had a little boat, a rowing boat that he kept on the river, and my earliest remembrance is of being in this little boat with father on the river. There was this great big thing went past and he said to me: 'Now, remember this, it's very important.' When I asked him afterwards and I said, 'I was sick on my bonnet strings,' he said, 'Yes, you were.' I was no good on the sea, and he said it was the Mauretania going out - but I didn't realize it at the time. He just told me to remember it, and I did remember it. When I asked him after, that's what it was - the Mauretania leaving the Tyne for the maiden voyage in 1907." |
An anonymous photographer captured the scene at Tynemouth on September 17, very much as Mrs. Oxley Robson and her father would have seen it just one month later.
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Figure 18. The Mauretania leaving Tynemouth. Snapped by a photographer on September 17, possibly using an early Kodak No. 2 camera, this photograph was taken from southeast of East Percy Street near the area of Black Middens and closely matches the view Mrs. Robson had from her father’s rowboat the following month. The South Pier and Headlight can just be seen about a mile in the distance on the left. A September 17 image is once again substituted for October 22. (Unique unpublished anonymous private photograph. Author’s collection.) |
Mrs. Robson was born in North Shields and lived there for over 100 years, very close to the locations shown in these photographs. Although unable to interview Mrs. Robson directly, I was informed that when told of this article, she expressed delight that people were interested in her memories of these events. Mrs. Robson was a remarkable woman with a very keen mind who lived a very full and varied life. She was a founding member of the East End Sunbeams, a girls concert party that staged shows around North Shields and served as secretary of the East End Carnival in the 1920’s and 1930’s. Both organization raised funds for the Royal Jubilee Infirmary. An Associate of the London School of Music, she continued to teach piano locally until the age of 84. Mrs. Robson often remarked "No one can say I have had a dull life." Sadly, Mrs. Robson passed away in August of 2005 at the age of 102.
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Figure 19. No longer being towed, the Mauretania completes a turn at speed on October 22 or 23 in the North Sea during her trip to Liverpool. Not yet provisioned for her first crossing, she is riding high. The performance of her boilers, turbines, and several other measurements were informally recorded. On October 23, it was entered into the log that she had reached a maximum of 21.9 knots. (Unique unpublished anonymous private photograph. Author’s collection.) |
The Mauretania averaged 22.5 knots to Liverpool with ideal weather and reached the Bar Lightship at 6 a.m. on October 24. She entered the Canada Dry Dock by 9:30 a.m. and was fully dry docked by that evening. Her hull was cleaned, and she was given a general grooming along with some repainting. She remained in dry dock until October 30 when she was made ready for her formal trials in the north.
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Figure 20. Having completed her voyage and after her early-morning maiden arrival at the Liverpool Docks on October 24, the Mauretania awaits placement in the Canada Dry Dock where she would remain until October 30. Her “B” Deck promenades are covered with canvas awnings. (Unpublished anonymous real-photograph postcard. Author’s collection.) |
After being coaled, she left for her formal trials on the morning of November 3. On the evening of November 6, under Chief Engineer John Currie, the Mauretania averaged 26.75 knots during the last run of the Measured Mile at Skelmorlie in the Firth of Clyde.
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Figure 21. The Mauretania on the Measured Mile passing the Cloch Lighthouse at Gourock, November 6. (Detail from an unpublished bas-relief color-tinted printed postcard from the Alliance Series, 115, Newgate Street, London, E.C., published by Taber from a Davidson Bros. Real Photographic Series postcard. Author’s collection.) |
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Figure 22. Captain John T. Pritchard looking out to sea on the port bridge wing, likely photographed during her formal trials in November. (Detail from a real-photograph postcard by Davidson Bros. Real Photographic Series, London and New York. Author’s collection.) |
With approximately 50,000 onlookers present, the Mauretania left the Prince’s Landing Stage in Liverpool for her maiden voyage to New York at 7:30 p.m. on November 16, 1907. Despite extreme weather, she set a daily distance record of 624 miles in 25 hours. During the return voyage, which began on November 30, she averaged 23.69 knots despite initial fog and took the Eastbound Ribband from her sister. The Mauretania continued to improve her speed, beating her own records and providing vital wartime service as transport, hospital ship, and a dazzle-painted, armed troopship. During this period she carried 78,363 troops, wounded, and medical staff without the loss of a single life. After conversion to fuel oil and several refits in the 1920’s, she finally surrendered the Blue Ribband to the new German liner Bremen on July 22, 1929, by a margin of just .61 knots after 22 years of design improvements. She spent her last years as a cruise liner. The Mauretania returned to the Tyne in 1921 for conversion to oil fuel and made a final visit in 1935 while on her way to the breaker’s yard at Rosyth. With horns blaring, she fired rockets from her bridge in a last gesture. She then signalled a final, simple, and poignant message to the town of her birth and men who built her so many years before. “Goodbye, Tyneside. This is my last radio. Closing down forever, Mauretania.”
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Figure 23. Heading for the breaker’s yard, the Mauretania stopped for a final farewell at Tynemouth, at 10 a.m. on July 3, 1935. A last message was radioed to the town that built her 30 years before. She had been painted white for cruising two years earlier, and her masts had just been clipped at Southampton so she would pass under the Firth of Forth Railway Bridge. Her aft lifeboats and docking bridge equipment are now gone, sold in May at the auction of her fittings in Southampton. She flew a twenty-foot blue ribbon on her foremast, which read simply “1907-1929”. (Unique unpublished anonymous photograph. Author’s collection.) |