MARITIME

Signed limited edition hardback of ‘Looking For The Silver Lining: A British Family’s Shipowning Century 1875-1975’. Flat-signed to title page and hand numbered #625 / 1000. Colour and black and white illustrations. pp. 363. First Edition. #020125

This is a fascinating story of British family ship-owning – the owners, the seafarers, the ships and their businesses. It starts in 1875 when Thomas Barraclough of West Hartlepool entered into partnership with the Webster family who owned the West Hartlepool Steam Navigation Company. When the line was sold he formed the partnership of Webster and Barraclough to own and operate tramp ships until the middle of the First World War. The story continues with the history of Dene Shipping which was started in 1929 by the sons of West Hartlepool ship-owners and was latterly controlled by two of Thomas’s sons, Henry and Willie Barraclough. In the 1950s Dene took over Silver Line which the author traces from its origins in 1908 as the ship-owning empire of the Thompson family of Sunderland shipbuilders and their American partners, through Barraclough family control, to its ultimate absorption into the Vlasov Group in 1974. He details the war years that saw the devastation by U-boats of both Dene and Silver line’s fleets and the history of the Seabridge Shipping consortium, the last occasion on which British flag ships carried a significant tonnage of the world’s bulk cargoes. The history gives a graphic account of ship-owning in the 1960s and 1970s and is illustrated with over 150 photographs of owners, ships, masters, chief engineers and employees as well as ships’ plans and a liberal sprinkling of sea-faring anecdotes. The appendix lists the details of 165 ships either owned or managed by the companies involved.