FEARLESS S.T. Fearless stands alone on the bank of the Port River adjacent to the Birkenhead Bridge. She has stood here since 1982 as a memorial to the tugs working the Port River. Tugs are the unglamorous workhorses of the Port. When entering a Port, large vessels first call upon the Pilot, who goes out in his Pilot boat and takes charge of the ship. The Tugs come alongside, make fast their rope cables and haul, push and nudge the big vessel to berth at the Wharf – swinging past many obstacles such as other shipping, wharves and restricted dredged channels, where the larger vessels could not easily manoeuvre under their own power. Fearless was the first of 18 sister Tugs built by Midlands Shipyards Ltd in Canada during World War Two. Fearless was completed in May 1945 under the name Rockwing. Her name was later changed to Tapline 2 and then Abqaiq 3 before ending her working life as Fearless. She was a deep-sea salvage Tug that in her latter days of service worked on the Brisbane River before being retired by her owners, the Queensland Tug Company. Fearless was put up for sale in 1972 and Mr Keith LeLeu, a retired merchant seaman, offered to buy her for the scrap value, however, the owners asked him for the token amount of one dollar. Mr LeLeu assembled a crew of volunteers who sailed Fearless from Brisbane to Adelaide, taking nine days and enduring some rough weather. They had four overnight stops and at each town along the way, the ship with the dollar sign on her funnel attracted quite a lot of attention. On December 10th 1972, Fearless and her crew reached Port Adelaide. Keith LeLeu decided four months later to donate his museum including the Fearless to the National Trust. The condition was that they buy the Tug for a dollar. The National Trust’s collection including Fearless was later handed over to the History Trust, of which the South Australian Maritime Museum is a division. Fearless lay alongside the Sugar Company at Glanville for 10 years before the current site at Cruickshank’s Corner became available. The simplest and cheapest way to bring her ashore was to float the vessel into position. The operation involved many people working long and hard to achieve the final outcome of settling Fearless into the position where she rests today. Specifications Dimensions: length 36m x breadth 10m Tonnage: approx. 500tonnes Machinery: Triple Expansion steam engine cylinders Sources South Australian Maritime Museum. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.
Posted on: Sun, 25 Jan 2015 06:53:21 +0000
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