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[Baldrick]

[jaymac]

[jaymac]

[Colin Bishop]

Baldrick's initial photo is stunning. I wonder which carrier that is, looks like it could be an Implacable class.

Photo below is my current paddler project. Bilsdale was an excursion steamer based on a paddle tug design and had independent paddles as has my model. An article and plan by P N Thomas was featured in the December 1972 issue of Model Boats. My model is semi scale for certain practical reasons and because it is really an experiment in paddle propulsion.

Colin

[ScottW]

Baldrick's initial photo is stunning. I wonder which carrier that is, looks like it could be an Implacable class.

I played with Google's image search and found, https://www.ntprints.com/image/346044/the-birth-of-the-ark-royal

Photograph of the HMS Ark Royal, taken from the top of Holt Hill in Birkenhead, by Chambré Hardman. The ship had just been painted white, as part of preparations for its launch from the Cammell Laird shipyard by the Queen Mother. This is one of Hardman's most famous photographs, which was retouched in order to create such an impressive picture. For example; the white washed gable end nearest the camera was eliminated by the application of coccine nouvelle (a red dye) to the positive transparency, as it detracted from the contrast of the ship - "I was trying to recreate what I had seen, to produce an effect, and anything that goes against the effect I want, I rule out." E. Chambré Hardman, 1983.  In 1958 the image was acquired by the trustees of the American Stephen Tyng Collection. In 1959 it was published in the British Journal of Photography under the title "Where Great Ships are Built" rather than "The Birth of the Ark Royal". The photograph was taken using a 3½ x 4¼ " revolving back Auto Graflex with a Teleros 13" focal length lens on Kodak XX film. (Rob Powell, Photographers Gallery Exhibition 'Photographs in Context' 1983) Exhibited at the Open Eye Gallery in 1980. Displayed in the "Behind the Lens" Exhibition at the Picton Library, Central Library, Liverpool March-May 2004. Taken April 1950

[Colin Bishop]

Thanks for that ScottW, really interesting. Looks like they anticipated Photoshop!

I wondered about Ark Royal but thought the carrier in the photo had rather a low hull whereas the Ark with her double hangers was very high in the water. Still a great photo though.

They say the camera cannot lie - but it does, and did!

Colin

[Baldrick]

  Aye . taken in 1950, at that time I would have been a few years older than the young lad in the photograph in short trousers and with his school bag over his shoulder


  I think the photograph is after the launch and the Ark is up against the dock wall so it does not show the bottom 3yd or so of the hull


       

[Colin Bishop]

Yes, that make sense when you look at it again.

Colin

[ScottW]

and the Ark is up against the dock wall so it does not show the bottom 3yd or so of the hull   

I think it is less dock wall and more that there are the roofs of warehouses between viewer and ship ...
https://www.ntprints.com/image/376481/ark-royal

There are warehouses in the foreground of the image. This is a different view of the ship as seen in one of Hardman's best known images The Birth of the Ark Royal""

[ScottW]

And while we're on the topic, this was among the finds, https://www.birkenhead.news/national-trust-conservators-reveal-edward-chambre-hardman-photographs/

National Trust conservators reveal Edward Chambré Hardman photographs
August 19, 2022

A significant conservation project by the National Trust has saved around 16,000 photographic prints and negatives by renowned Liverpool photographer Edward Chambré Hardman and his wife Margaret, most of which have been hidden from public view for decades.
In 1950. Hardman took what was to become the most reproduced photograph “illustrating an era of Liverpool’s commerce”: Birth of the Ark Royal (pictured above.) The photograph was taken from Holt Hill, Tranmere, looking towards the Cammell Laird shipyard.
The collection is the only known 20th-century collection where a photographer’s entire output has been preserved intact.
Lindsey Sutton, archivist at the National Trust, said, “Edward Chambré Hardman rarely threw anything away, so the collection we have represents nearly the entirety of the life and work he and his wife Margaret built.
“The vast size of the collection, previous storage methods and a lack of resource in the past has meant much of it hasn’t had the attention it needed.”

[kinmel]

When that photo was taken the hull was still on the slipway.
The cranes are all on the same level and the hull is below on it's inclined slipway.
After launch, hulls are towed into the fitting out basin which is further north and is not visible from the top of Holt Hill.
Many of my family worked on the 1937 and 1950 Ark Royals and so I was in the yard watching that launch in May 1950, I was 5 years old.

[derekwarner]

So....kinmel says ......

"I was in the yard watching that launch in May 1950, I was 5 years old"

From this, I can only guess that this Day when model boats were indelibly set into your mind

I must agree......that image of the Aircraft Carrier in the last stages of build, in the Dock, and so close to the Homes of many who would have heard the clanging, banging and riveting...maybe 24/7 is amazing

Derek

[kinmel]

Model yachts were our toy of choice,  the Star Yachts factory was a short walk away and my aunty worked there       The huge Gautby Road boating lake is still thriving today.

Until the 1980s about 40% of the working population of birkenhead were employed in the shipyard.Foremen wore bowler hats and if a relative wore the hat, you could seamlessly move from school into an apprenticeship there.

Whole strings of my relatives were tradesmen there and since everything except the guns were manufactured in the yard, there were 100s of trades.

It all crashed when Thatcher took the political decision that large warships would only be built in Devon and Scotland - 18,000 redundent tradesmen in 2 years.
The yard is now building again; recently the Sir Richard Attenborough was built there.

[Baldrick]

    Now I see the it !    the Arc now out of the slipway (empty)  and over in the fitting out basin. 

[warspite]

the title picture - i had that hovis tune playing in my mind, before that lad were just missed by the bloody bread lad on his bike with legs outstretched 

[kinmel]

Gold Hill...   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJi_5T0jSnA