Tuesday 18 March 2008

A second chance

Wreck of the Tanker BP Driver off Nash Point
I recently came across a pile of aerial photographs I bought as a job lot years ago, all taken around our locality. One that stuck out was the picture above, of a wrecked tanker. It was marked "Tanker at Nash - 1956".

Curious to find out what had happened, I eventually found information regarding wrecks in the Bristol Channel. There were none in '56. But I found a small amount of information regarding the BP Explorer.
"In Feb. 1961 she capsized and was lost with all hands while on passage from Swansea to Sharpness, she was discovered the next day by the old Severn Railway Bridge. The BP Explorer was salvaged and rebuilt as the BP Driver and in Jan 1962, in severe weather she too was wrecked on Nash Point, this time, thankfully, no lives were lost."

So this could be the BP Driver, there is no other mention of a tanker wreck off Nash Point that I can find. She didn't have much luck.

BP Driver off Nash Point
Click on the smaller picture above to see some detail, and you will see a lifeboat remaining on the deck. I assume that there was a second lifeboat used to save the crew. The open wooden boat isn't the sort of thing I'd like to be climbing into in a storm, but then again if your mothership is on the way down you make your choice.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Eurion,

I have scanned photograph of another tanker taken at the bottom of Nash Point taken by my grandfather. It looks like the tanker in the photograph but this ship is called the " WIDDALE H " ?

I cant seem to attach it to this email, whats your email address to forward it over.

Would like to start up sea kayaking any pointers would be great.

Thanks

Marcus Francis
mhfrancis100@aol.com

Unknown said...

hiya, you mentioned you had a pile of aerial photos, im trying to get a low tide shot of tusker rock to have a model made up to go into a glass display coffee table for my house and wondered if you had anything like that.
great shot of the tanker, had never heard about that. it seems a very unlucky vessel!
alex

eurion said...

Hi bashmentist - I don't have an aerial photo of Tusker - but I do have other photos of Tusker as I often paddle out to it - I will be taking an elevated photograph of it in the near future from about 20 feet up as a 360 panorama - but as you can see my blog has not been updated lately as I have about 40 + trips backlogged to enter - Facebook seemed to take over - but I hope to be returning to bring this blog up date as it's my paddling visual diary
Eurion

Unknown said...

Thanks Eurion, it would be great if I could look useat the panoramic shot when you take it and possibly use it for the model.
I spend a lot of time fishing over the rock and would love to be able to have a detailed model made for my house, how would you take the shots? With a drone?