Bow damage

Jack Willis
Jack Willis

Can anyone identify the badly damaged vessel. I took this photo in about 1970. She was an all aft bulker.

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  • Relatively easy when I have the name, but takes a bit longer when there is no name. This is the Greek bulk carrier HOMER (13,461 tons gross, 21,745 deadweight), which left Quebec on 7 November 1969 with a full cargo of Canadian wheat for Tilbury. It was in collision in fog in the Thames estuary on 22 November and later berthed at Tilbury Grain Terminal jetty, where cargo, much of it water damaged, was discharged. The vessel with which it collided was the Italian bulk carrier ELISA F (46,350 tons deadweight), which had completed discharge of a US grain cargo at Tilbury and was proceeding to sea. ELISA F suffered a large hole in the hull, but did not sink, and went to the Continent for repairs. In the investigation that followed, it was found that HOMER was travelling too fast in the fog. HOMER was owned by a Panamanian company called Doric Shipping Corporation, it was registered in Greece, and was managed by the London Greek outfit Lyras Brothers Ltd. In 1970, after it had completed repairs at North Shields, and to get the iffy name HOMER out of the way, the vessel was renamed ASSIOS. It had two more changes of owner and name before being scrapped in 1985. Before it became HOMER in 1969, the vessel was named MIDDLESEX TRADER (built at Sunderland in 1963) and was owned by Trader Navigation Co Ltd, of London. It had made a visit under that name to Tilbury Grain Terminal in 1967.

    By Roger Jordan (17/06/2014)

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