That car

I don't know what make it is, but it has an Isle of Wight number plate! Perhaps the Internet can advise us what year it was first registered. Then we will have to calculate how old it was when Sep bought it.

by the car

New post

Mysterious shots on land

I wonder if this is Cowes? There is a grassy slope there by the seafront. I had to darken the picture to bring out as many as possible of its wonderful details.

This one had a pinkish negative. Is this the bonnet of a car or a bus? Is it a puppy or a soft toy sitting on it?

MV Athelprince

I’m most grateful to Raymond Forward for his archive of ships of the Athel Line. This has provided information about the Athelprince, in which Sep served as an engineer for at least one voyage, recorded in this newly discovered box of 100 negatives, taken in 1929. Here are some details of the ship and its service in WWII:

Built 1926 Furness SB. Co, Haverton Hill-on-Tees.
8782 grt
471ft 3ins x 62ft 5ins
Twin screw, 10½ knots "an old ship engaged in the trans-Atlantic trade, which was fitted out to refuel convoy escorts, while underway, and also replenish their depth charges".
1940 2304 hrs 11th June, U-46 reported torpedo hit on Athelprince; damaged position 43.42N 13.20W.
1941 06.27hrs 29th March U-48 attacked convoy HX-115 off Cape Finisterre - Schultze claimed a tanker sunk. The Athelprince was not, in fact, hit.
In June 1942, the Athelprince picked up 23 survivors from the HARDWICKE GRANGE, which had been sunk by U-129 12th June north of Puerto Rico, and landed them at Nuevitas, Cuba.
1954 scrapped at Faslane.

Using the photo of the Athelprince as reference, this shot was taken from the starboard side looking aft, at a level lower than the bridge.

And here is a similar shot from the same day.

Another shot of the stormy sea, taken on the same day, possibly on the port side looking aft.

This must be the Athelprince. Note the diamond-shaped logo on the funnel.

This photo is from http://www.photoship.co.uk/.

The box of negatives Part 5

A whale? This is a detail taken from a photo showing a wide expanse of ocean.

"Hell's Gates" was written in ink on the negative. I have not been able to trace the location.

The photo was a little bleached-out, so I tried to get better contrast. I tried twice to get rid of what looks like dirty marks but they seem to be embedded in the negative.

The Box of negatives Part 4

This one appeared earlier, scanned from a print, which was a little clearer.

Another interesting picture of the Panama Canal. This time he spelt it Gatum Locks.

The box of negatives Part 3

If you click to enlarge the above negatives, you’ll see an apparent flaw in the developing process, whether with the chemicals used or the length of soaking in chemicals I don't know. Instead of a gradual change of tone, it goes in stripes.

This one is intriguing! The man standing at the back, smoking a pipe, whose shadow appears more clearly than the pipe itself, is holding the model of a ship. Is it the same ship whose deck they are on? Presumably these are some of Sep’s shipmates.

The box of negatives Part 2

This one already appeared before, scanned from a print. See this post. There is a slight quality difference: prints often seem to have survived a little better than negatives, but in this case the scan from the negative is clearer.

There is a scan from a print here, where it says on the back "Just off watch Oct 1929".

The box of 100 negatives (from 1929 till c. 1939)

Mary was clearing out dusty old things in the house and found a little box, as in the shots below. She was about to throw it away but from curiosity opened it up and found a hundred negatives, with a faint grey bloom of dust or mould on them. She thought to take them to be developed but first suggested I have a look and see if they can be scanned.

I’ve been using methylated spirits on cotton wool to remove the mould and dust, and have started to scan them.

The earliest seem to be from 1929. Sep must have had quite a good camera that took 71mm x 117mm film, as it says on the box; which he developed himself---for he has inked a description on some of them, which comes out white when you make a positive from them.

So I have started scanning them. A few correspond to prints I've already scanned on this blog: sadly the comparison shows that the (positive) prints have survived better than the negatives.

As you might expect from photos from Sep’s camera, he appears only occasionally. As you might also expect from an amateur, the photography and processing may have not been optimum. Add to this deterioration over a period of 84 years ago, and you get what I shall reveal over the next week or so.

The box of negatives Part 1

The photos look bluish because the negatives had gone yellowish, and when you use a graphics package to give you the “negative” of an image it reverses colour, not just light and dark. I could show them in “greyscale” but the blue looks quite good.

This is my favourite photo so far, showing Sep as a hands-on junior engineer, dangling a spanner from his strong right arm, whilst his colleague, one imagines a lot more junior than he, holds an oilcan. Beside them is a basket, perhaps used to carry tools around.

Sep wrote in ink on the negative. I’ve printed it also for clarity. At bottom right seems to be a large electric lamp. On the left seems to be a strange shaped wagon on rails, perhaps electric-powered. It is a “donkey”---see Michael’s comment below.