Readheads South Shields YN 622 1968/4034



Parkeston Quay May 1983

Went to see one of this pair launched when I was at South Shields Marine Tech. Cannot now remember which one, but I'm sure she started down the ways and then stopped. Don't know how long she stayed there.

Was it before or after Santa had been??????????????

SF 1 was launched on the 2nd December 1967 and SF 2 on the 15th March 1968.

SEA FREIGHTLINER II

Readhead's for British Railways Board.
Completed June 1968.
4,034 Gross. 3,265 Dwt.
Two 6cy Mirrlees National Ltd diesels of 4,200 bhp (Total) giving a speed of 13.5 Knots.
Built for a daily Harwich to Zeebrugge service with a turn round time of 5 Hours.
Both had two holds but SF2 had 10 Hatches to SF1's 8.

They were transferred to Sealink (UK) Ltd on the 1st January 1979 and lasted to 1987 when they were scrapped at Gadani Beach, Pakistan according to Miramar, however Duncan Haws has then broken up at Kaohsiung which is in Taiwan.

In Simons picture she looks in urgent need of some TLC but she is in British Rail Colours so presumably this was before 1979.
Heaven knows what they looked like 8 years later when they were scrapped!

It was a year or two ago, I can remember that much. It was all an alchoholic haze.

magoonigal wrote:Was it before or after Santa had been??????????????

They were transferred to Sealink (UK) Ltd on the 1st January 1979 and lasted to 1987 when they were scrapped at Gadani Beach, Pakistan according to Miramar, however Duncan Haws has then broken up at Kaohsiung which is in Taiwan.

In Simons picture she looks in urgent need of some TLC but she is in British Rail Colours so presumably this was before 1979.
Heaven knows what they looked like 8 years later when they were scrapped!

Hi Paul,

Photo was in May 1983, I was on a Thames Ship Society trip to Hamburg.

I lived in Dover at the time, and most of the Sealink fleet retained the blue hull and red funnel at the time, with the more freight orientated fleet members retaining these colours longer. My work at Dover was in connection with the train ferry, so I took an interest in the more offbeat members of the Sealink fleet.

I have a vauge memory as well that at the start of the privatisation of BR and its subsidiaries, SF1 and SF2, were chartered/costed to the Freightliner side of BR so were retained in the BR house colours.

Regards
Simon

Mmmmmmmmm. Bearing in mind that they were sold for scrapping late 1986 they probably never bothered to repaint them.

Simon
Think I was on the same trip to Hamburg as you

Graham

Sea Freightliner ll at Smith's Docks on 27 August 1977, looking quite tidy. SFI & SF II were amongst the first fully cellular container ships built in the UK - 148 30' containers - about 220TEU.

Container Ships recently in the news and it's not good news either not if you are sailing around in your Yacht or Trawler, one of the super size Box Boats has lost around 1,816 containers when the stacks collapsed in Far East waters, closer to home in the North Sea the Munich Mearsk lost around 200, from reports it appears that the vessel did not report the loss to the relevant Coastguard the reporting was done by Fishermen who found the the containers.
It does not surprise me that Mearsk are being less than honest after they were found out using the "secret pipes"