A river view of Stockton seen from Victoria Bridge c1977. I watched this boat being fitted out at Thornaby riverside, I never knew what happened to it when it was finished. Does anyone know?
Photograph and details courtesy of Tom McGowan.
Picture Stockton Archive
A Pictorial History of Stockton-on-Tees
The vessel Sea Wolf left the Tees with a number of unpaid bills for items purchased in the locale. Many small local businesses were scammed. The vessel appeared in Granton docks near Edinburgh and that is where the fire took place. After that, I’m not sure of its next port of call or future.
Certainly a very different Riverside from the south side, to today. The north side is, however, recognisable.
I remember this too. Boat was owned ( commissioned the build ) by a guy called Bloom. He was a business guy with a lot of money in the 70’s.
Sorry Ed this is not the Clive Bloom (Rolls washing machine fame) boat. His boat was only 45ft in Length. You are on the right track though as both Boats were designed and built by the same man Alec Briggs who part owned the CEBEC boatbuilding outfit at Darlington, completed boats were then launched into the River Tees including the Bloom boat. Alec Briggs left CEBEC after a Mangement “shuffle” and built this vessel on the River Tees some time afterwards.
I think that this boat was called SEA WOLF. It was built on the Tees slightly down stream of where this picture was taken, somewhere between here and where the Millennium bridge is now. The foreman of the job was a guy called Jack Mucklin, he lived in Elmtree in Stockton and used to drink in The Thirsty Senator pub on White House Farm. He was a nice guy and we would often chat about the progress of the boat. This would have been early eighties around 83>84,sadly Jack passed away in the early nineties. I never knew what became of the SEA WOLF though I did hear a few years later that the boat was dogged with problems of one kind and another.
Andrew, the location you mention is about right where she was built, just past where the Flour Mill and Oil Jetty once stood, a slipway was cut into the river bank and she was launched the normal way Stern first first into the river. Like yourself I heard she had problems which included a fire onboard when she was moored somewhere in Scotland.
Hi,
Charles I worked for cebec when John Bloom bought a boat there so did Rodger Moore and many other well known people at the time.
How do you know about the company.
Regards Peter Burton from Darlington.