Still one of my favourite ships! PINJARRA sailing from the Tees. (WSS Teesside Branch Albert Weller Collection)
PINJARRA (5154129): P&O Steam Nav. Co. Ltd., 9892gt. 25.2.1944 launched by Sir J. Laing & Sons Ltd., Sunderland, as EMPIRE PARAGON for Ministry of War Transport (Ellerman's Wilson Line Ltd. - managers), 7.1944 completed, 3.7.1946 purchased by P&O and renamed PINJARRA, 22.6.1962 sold and renamed HONGKONG IMPORTER (Bahamas), 26.12.1969 arrived at Kaohsiung, Taiwan, to be broken up.
She, too, had the misfortune to run aground in the Tees, in January 1962. An Evening Gazette photo:
Perhaps I will always remember her because of an early success in ship recognition: It must have been the summer holidays of 1961, a glorious sunny day on Redcar beach (remember them, George?). Busy building sandcastles with my younger siblings (there were three of them!) when shining brightly in the sunlight along came a ship heading north to enter the Tees. Although she would be a few miles off I said to myself - that's the PINJARRA. She really was so distinctive as, in a way, were her P&O colours. That talent (?!) then faded rapidly!!!!! My own first sighting was in Middlesbrough Dock on 16 March 1961.
Ron
