Escrick Gallery

LAUNCH AT WEST HARTLEPOOL

Northern Daily Mail, Oct 21/10

Yesterday, Messrs. William Gray and Co., Limited launched the handsome steel screw steamer, Escrick, which they have built for the London and Northern Steamship Company Limited, Messrs. Pyman Brothers, London, managers.

The vessel is of the shelter deck type, and will take the highest class in Lloyd’s Register her dimensions are: Length over all, 395ft.; breadth, 53ft. 6in.; and depth, 25ft. 5in., with long bridge,
poop, and top-gallant forecastle.

The saloon, staterooms, captain’s, officers, and engineers’ rooms, etc., are in houses on the bridge deck, and the crew’s accommodation forward. The hull is built with deep bulb frames, dispensing with hold beams, and leaving large clear holds, cellular double bottom, and fore and aft peak ballast tanks. Ten steam winches are provided, as well as derrick tables and out riggers and double derricks, steam steering gear amidships, hand screw gear aft, patent direct steam windlass, large horizontal multitubular donkey boiler, fresh water distiller, steel grain divisions, stockless anchors, telescopic masts, boats on deck overhead, and all requirements for a first class cargo steamer.

Triple-expansion engines are being supplied by the Central Marine Engineering Works of the builders, having cylinders 25in., 41in., and 68in. diameter, with a piston stroke of 48in., and two large steel boilers for a working pressure of 180lbs. per square inch.

The ship and machinery have been constructed under the superintendence of Messrs. R. T. Rutherford, on behalf of the owners, and the ceremony of naming the steamer Escrick was gracefully
performed by Miss Joyce Pyman daughter of Mr. F. H. Pyman, J. P., London.



In this section you will find information, photographs and stories relating to more than 260 Hartlepool seamen who lost their lives during during the First World War, and of the ships they served on.
To find a particular crewman, simply type his Surname in the Search Box at the top of the page.

This section will, in time, contain the stories of more than 450 merchant ships built or owned in the Hartlepools, and which were lost during the First World War. As an illustration of the truly global nature of shipbuilding, these ships were owned by companies from 22 different countries, including more than 30 sailing under the German flag at the outbreak of war.

George Pyman was born in May 1822 in Sandsend, North Yorkshire. He went to sea as an apprentice and by 1843 he was Master of the vessel Nameless.

He married Elizabeth English in 1843 and they had two daughters and seven sons.

In 1850 he left the sea and the family settled in West Hartlepool where he went into partnership with his brother-in-law Francis English, as grocers and ship chandlers. In about 1854 he changed direction and went into partnership with Thomas Scurr as shipbrokers for the local collieries. They owned shares in a number of sailing vessels. Other shareholders included Francis English, John Smurthwaite, Thomas Wood & Ralph Ward Jackson.

Thomas Scurr died in 1861 and George then formed his own company as George Pyman & Co. In 1865 he purchased his first steamship, the George Pyman, and gradually shares in the brigs were sold off. Eventually the company became the largest owners of steamships in the north of the U.K.

In 1873 Thomas Bell of Newcastle joined as a partner in the firm. From 1879 the company opened branches in Hull, Grimsby, Immingham and Glasgow. When George retired in 1882 the Bell family took over the running of the company.

Pyman, Watson & Co. was set up in Cardiff in 1874 by John, one of George’s sons along with Thomas Edward Watson and Francis and Frederick, another two of his sons, set up Pyman Bros. in London in 1903. Some of these companies ships were registered in West Hartlepool.

George was elected a Poor Law Guardian in 1861, an Improvement Commissioner in 1868, and was sitting on the Durham County Bench from 1872. In 1879 he was appointed Vice Consul for Belgium and in 1888 was elected the second Mayor of West Hartlepool. In 1895 he received the honour of being made a Freeman of the Borough. George died in November 1900 at his home, Raithwaite Hall.

There is a wealth of further information in Peter Hogg’s book ‘The Pyman Story’.