This stamp shows 5 identifiable vessels. To the left of Boxer Bridge and behind an army truck are two hulks and behind them 3 accommodation barges. There appears to be a vessel at the pier in the background but it is too indistinct to safely identify.
The hulks are GENTOO on the left and GOLDEN CHANCE on the right.
The accommodation barge behind the hulks is the SAFE DOMINIA. Behind her is the PERSUIVANT and the final barge is the SAFE ESPERIA.
The GENTOO, originally a steam drifter named "Nancy", was said to have been built in the "North East of England." She was refitted with a Kromhout marine engine in 1926 by the Medway Slipway Company and registered in London. She arrived in the Falkland Islands in 1927, bought by the Dean Brothers who operated her until 1965.
GENTOO was based at Pebble Island until 1965. It was then used for a variety of cargoes before being used as a vessel for a firm of treasure hunters scavenging for anything valuables among the local wrecks.
She was to have been converted to a houseboat but, before the owners could move in, the Argentine invasion of 1982 intervened and she mysteriously sank in The Canache near Port Stanley Airport.
The GOLDEN CHANCE was a wooden drifter, 25.50 x 5.80 m, displacement 90 tons and built in 1914 (or 1904??) in Chambers Shipyard on Lake Lothing, Oulton Broad near Lowestoft, England. It was driven by a type 3-cylinder compound inverted steam engine.
She left Wivenhoe in Essex in 1949 and took 63 days to reach the Falkland Islands where she worked as sealer for the South Atlantic Sealing Co. of Port Albemarle until 1952.
On 20 August 1952 GOLDEN CHANCE was salvaged by the frigate HMS ST AUSTELL BAY (South Georgia SG384) in Falkland Sound.
There is not a lot of Information about these two vessels on the internet.
Links:- http://www.naval-history.net/xGM-Chrono ... ellBay.htm
http://herringdrifters.proboards.com/in ... &thread=43
http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=LBSz ... CBgQ6AEwAA#
http://en.mercopress.com/2008/04/11/tou ... me-history
http://www.histarmar.com.ar/InfGral-2/L ... entino.htm
http://www.submerged.co.uk/gentoo-golden-chance.php
Due to a shortage of accommodation for the troops in the Falklands after the 1982 war the SAFE ESPERIA was chartered by the Ministry of Defence (MOD) and shipped to Port Stanley by the semi-submersible vessel DAN LIFTER. However, the SAFE ESPERIA did not have enough space to house the all the garrison so the PERSUVIANT was chartered by the MOD and shipped on another semi-submersible ship – DYVI SWAN. Finally the SAFE DOMINIA was also chartered and shipped south to the Falklands.
Both SAFE ESPERIA and SAFE DOMINIA ended their charter to the MOD in 1987.
SAFE DOMINIA was built by Gotaverken Finnboda A/B – Göteborg in Sweden.
Dimensions: 325.5 x 93.5 x 20.0
GRT: 9818.
A 4 deck accommodation unit, nicknamed a `floatel'.
Capacity – 934 in 2 berth cabins.
1 x 13.5 ton crane.
Integral sewage disposal systems and maintenance workshops.
1981 Built as SAFE DOMINIA for Consafe Offshore A/B.
1982 Bibby Line took a 50% interest in the barge.
1985 Consafe went into liquidation and Bibby Line took over the barge and renamed it BIBBY VENTURE.
1987. Chartered to New York Department of Correction as a floating detention centre and transported on Wijsmuller's SUPER SERVANT to New York.
1992 Closed.
No further information found regarding BIBBY VENTURE after it's sale in 1994.
SAFE ESPERIA
IMO: 8636180
Build: 1979 by Gotaverken Finnboda A/B – Göteborg in Sweden, nr 409 as Balder Scapa
GRT: 13512
Dimensions: 339 x 84.6 x 20.
1979 - 1980 Balder Scapa
1980 - 1981 Finnboda 12
1981 - 1986 Safe Esperia
1986 - 1994 Bibby Resolution – in 1988 she was delivered to Emden, in Germany, to house 450 Volkswagen workers.
1994 - 1997 Resolution
1997 - 2006 HM Prison WEARE and berthed in Portland Harbour, Dorset.
2007 - Renamed JASCON 27.
21 December 2009. JASCON 27 was towed out of Portland Harbour by the tug INDEPENDENCE.
26 December 2009 JASCON 27, under the flag of St Vincent and Grenadines, was berthed at the Spanish port of La Corunna to shelter from the weather. She was heading to Nigeria to act as an accommodation barge for oil workers. Arrived at Onne, Nigeria, in February 2010.
Prison Accommodation Barges
More than four years after they opened as a temporary measure, two jail barges docked off Lower Manhattan will be removed, city officials announced, in response to a threat of a lawsuit by Federal authorities.
The two barges, the BIBBY VENTURE and the BIBBY RESOLUTION, will be sold or leased, said Milton Mollen, the Deputy Mayor for Public Safety.
The floating jails were highly unpopular with their neighbours in Greenwich Village and the Lower East Side since plans for docking them there were first announced in the late 1980's. The Army Corps of Engineers, which has jurisdiction over use of the nation's rivers, had not thought highly of them either.
The Corps never issued the city a permanent mooring permit and had been prodding officials for two years to remove the barges.
Mr. Mollen announced the decision to remove the barges after United States Representative Ted Weiss and State Senator Manfred Ohrenstein disclosed that the Corps of Engineers was preparing a suit to compel the removal of the vessels.
Col. R. M. Danielson, the Corps's commander in the New York District, said in a letter to Mayor David N. Dinkins that he would ask the Justice Department to begin legal proceedings unless the barges were removed. He said he regretted having to take "such extreme action" as a suit but added that the city had "broken commitments" to move the barges.
Peter H. Shugert, a spokesman for Colonel Danielson, said that the moorings had been approved only as temporary measure because of overcrowding in city jails in the 1980's.
One barge, the BIBBY VENTURE, was berthed in the Hudson River at Houston Street and the second, the BIBBY RESOLUTION, was docked in the East River at Montgomery Street. Each housed 380 inmates but all prisoners aboard the BIBBY VENTURE were transferred because the barge was in need of repairs.
Thomas M. Antenen, a spokesman for the Correction Department, which runs the city's jail system, said prison space was available in other facilities for inmates in the BIBBY RESOLUTION when it closed.
The prison that had been floating empty in New York Harbor for two years and cost New York City more than $1 million a year to maintain were sold for $1.8 million, Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani announced in July 1994.
The winning bid was twice the price the city expected to get for the barges. But the bid was far short of the $41 million that it cost the city to acquire and renovate the barges in the late 1980's as a stopgap solution to overcrowded jails.
The city had also passed up a $3.2 million offer two years before when the barges were emptied because of a dwindling need for space and complaints that they were difficult and expensive to keep secure.
The barges were bought by an unidentified European company through A. L. Burbank Ship Brokers, a brokerage firm in Fort Lee, N.J. Tom Roberts, a vice president for the firm, declined to name the company or discuss any details of the agreement. He said he had not received written confirmation of the sale from city officials.
RIFLEMAN (2) / BARGEMAN (2) / PURSUIVANT (1977 – )
O.N. 376857. 4,763g. 3,861n. 91.98 x 27.97 x 4.846 metres. Deck cargo pontoon.
1976: Ordered as RIFLEMAN from Dredge & Marine Ltd., Penryn, Cornwall, England (Yard No. S. 71), jointly by Star Offshore Services (Tugs) Ltd., and United Towing (Rifleman) Ltd.
23.9.1976: After half launched. Builders into Receivership.
21.3.1977: Forward half launched.
1977: United Towing (Rifleman) Ltd., restyled as United Towing (Duncan) Ltd.
12.5.1977: Completed as BARGEMAN.
1981: Converted into a jacket-launching pontoon.
1981: Reverted to a deck cargo pontoon.
1983: Converted into a military accommodation barge for use in the Falkland Islands and renamed PURSUIVANT.
No further information found.
LINKS:- Merchant Fleets No 29 – The Burma Boats, Henderson & Bibby by Duncan Haws. Jane's Merchant Shipping Review 1984 – A J Ambrose (Editor). Various Internet sites.
https://exchange-staging.dnv.com/Exchan ... elID=12173
http://www.shipspotting.com/gallery/pho ... id=1048563
http://www.shipspotting.com/gallery/pho ... id=1047506
http://www.shipspotting.com/gallery/pho ... id=1050009
http://www.shipspotting.com/gallery/pho ... id=1047505
http://www.flickr.com/photos/33657226@N ... otostream/
http://www.seatrucksgroup.com/l/library/download/374
https://picasaweb.google.com/eggshelluk ... 8613733858
https://picasaweb.google.com/eggshelluk/Falklands02#
http://v6.cache5.c.bigcache.googleapis. ... _counter=2
http://www.shipsnostalgia.com/archive/i ... 27562.html
Falkland Island 1987 29p sg541, scott?
Peter Crichton
