The Allen Collection

From SN Guides

Introduction

The Allen Collection consists of over 6,000 photographs of mainly merchant navy ships.

It first came to the attention of Ships Nostalgia member Ian Brazendale through the curator of the Martello Tower/Museum at Pembroke Dock. Two elderly ladies had been clearing the house of their late brother and wanted to find a good home for his collection of shipping photographs. The museum accepted them out of courtesy, but they had nowhere to display them. A number of nautical museums were approached about the collection but showed little interest.

On first inspection, the collection was found to consist of several boxes of photographs - mainly British merchant ships - going back over 60 years. They were indexed and listed by company, and included ships from both well-known and lesser-known shipping companies. Each photo had hand-written notes on the back giving the ship’s name and other information. There was also a boxed collection of Sea Breeze magazines going back 20 years, and an HMSO gazette listing the names of every merchant ship lost in World War 2. On further investigation, more boxes of photographs were discovered at another location taking the total number to over 6,000.

It took a father and son took over 60 years to gather and catalogue these photographs. The Allens were clearly dedicated and knowledgeable people. Sadly we have been unable to find out more than the sketchiest details of the collectors. We know that Mr. W Allen was a merchant seaman, and that his son Frank helped his father with the collection but had not been a seaman himself.

The collection was saved from obscurity by members of the Ships Nostalgia website. We wanted to make it available to the many people who share the Allens' passionate interest in the Merchant Navy.

Nearly all of the items in the collection are original photographs; just a few are postcards. The Allens had catalogued most of the photographs, and recorded details of the ships on the back. 

How did the Website come about?

On hearing of this collection, Ships Nostalgia members were extremely enthusiastic about saving it for posterity and making it available for research and educational purposes. We launched a project to scan the photos to make them available on-line, and hopefully at a later date on DVD.

Scanning was done at 600dpi to preserve the quality of the pictures though they are only available in medium resolution online for performance reasons. Information recorded on the back of the photos by the Allens was transcribed into a spreadsheet and added to each page as a table. Scanning and data compilation took many weeks of effort by the indefatigable Barrie Rees.

We decided to add background information about the shipping companies represented in the collection as, in many cases, this is not readily available. This added many weeks of research effort using extensive Internet searches and visits to the Caird Library at the National Maritime Museum at Greenwich.

Access to the Allen Collection

Initially the collection is available online at the website below in medium resolution format:

The Allen Collection

It is hoped to make the high resolution versions of the collection available on DVD at a later date.

Contributors to the Website

• Project initiator: Ian Brazendale (SN Member Scooby Doo)
• Photograph scans/data compilation: Barrie Rees
• Shipping company research: Brian Watson, Neville Young (SN Member Gdynia), with individual contributions by many other Ships Nostalgia members
• Website Design and Development: Brian Watson