Casgliadau Arlein

3/4 Port bow view of S.S. DARTFORD (with watermans boat), arriving at Cardiff, about 1936.

The 4,093 gross ton steamer Dartford, built at Middlesbrough in 1930, arriving at Cardiff, c.1936. This vessel was owned by the London-based company of Watts, Watts & Co. which had its origins in a shipping agency stablished at Blyth in 1851. All their vessels were named after London suburbs; the Dartford had two identical sisters named Deptford and Dulwich. The Dartford was torpedoed and sunk in the north Atlantic on 12 June 1942, Watts, Watts & Co. were taken over by the Liverpool-based Bibby Line in 1968. (Source: Shipping at Cardiff: Photographs from the Hansen Collection 1920-1975 by David Jenkins, 1993).

S.S. DARTFORD (4093 gt). Built 1930 by Smith's Dock, South Shields and owned by British Steamship Company (Watts, Watts & Co. Ltd., London). On the 12 June 1942 when en route from Oban for Sydney in ballast in Convoy ONS-100 she was torpedoed by U-124 and sunk south of Cape Race. Thirty crew were lost from a total of forty seven.