Details gleaned from the internet: GSF BRITANNIA (8750560), drilling rig, completed Norsmec, Redcar, 1968
1968 NORSMEC I - 1970(?) GSF BRITANNIA.
Seaton Channel, River Tees, 20 July 2011. Now come on, George, you're slipping! I searched in vain for the sub-forum Shipbuilding at Redcar!! Surely your home town deserves a mention in dispatches??
Thinking back (very hard to do so!!) when this rig was completed we were still North Yorkshire, Teesside came in around that same year, and the county of Cleveland later came and went, leaving us nowhere (still Cleveland according to Royal Mail!!). But we were all proud to then be able to reclaim our North Yorkshire heritage!
It may be that where she was constructed was technically within Redcar, but if memory serves (no confirming entry in my notebook of the time!) she is shown here, as NORSMEC I, in the background of the NORFOLK FERRY sailing from the Tees from Smith's Docks on 25 July 1967. If my memory is accurate that, to my mind, calls into question a 1968 completion date, she was already well advanced by the middle of the previous year.
As to actual location, it was on the stretch of river seaward of Tees Dock, and also beyond what would then, I think, be the recently commissioned Shell Jetty. However, not as far as the Redcar Ore Terminal which at that time did not have the massive gantries now visible. She was put together, I think, roughly in the vicinity of Dabholm Beck, not quite opposite where I was to see her again 44 years later!
It has been interesting putting this little tale together, even if some of my "facts" are wrong!
Ron