Ship wreck

18 06 2009

More photos from my great-grandfather’s WWI archive … this time a couple of the ‘dieing’ ships that he obtained and took photographs of while he was on active service.

SS City of Birmingham, torpedoed on Nov 27, 1916

SS City of Birmingham, torpedoed on Nov 27, 1916

The SS City of Birmingham sank in the Mediterranean. This photo was taken by an unknown seaman who survived the Birmingham’s sinking and managed to photograph the ship going down.  He was picked up alone on a raft making his way to shore, and my great-grandfather developed his photos for him, and made a copy of this one for his own records.

The German 'Emden', ashore on the Cocos Islands

The German 'Emden', ashore on the Cocos Islands





Family archive

18 06 2009

Once you look at these photos it’ll be pretty obvious that I didn’t take them myself. However, I can lay some sort of claim to them, after a fashion, because my great-grandfather (also a very keen amateur photographer) took them during his WWI service with the British merchant navy. I was flicking through the few photos of his that I have to hand (his overall archive is huge, and only partly digitised so far), and I thought I’d share a some of them.

This series comprises of some of the photos taken during my great-grandfather’s training and service in the Kite Balloon section of the Royal Naval Air Service – both in London and at sea.

Balloon training, Hurlingham, London

Balloon training, Hurlingham, S-W London

Launching a weather balloon from the ship deck

Launching a weather balloon from the ship deck

Balloon, mid-burst

Balloon, mid-burst

Holding on

Holding on to the ripped balloon

Balloon launch

Balloon launch

Balloon - underbelly and basket

Balloon - underbelly and basket








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