Crescent Shipping Ltd. 

Rochester and Chatham have a very long maritime history dating back over five hundred years to the time of Henry VIII. Rochester has a Norman castle and cathedral standing side by side above the Medway, with its Limehouse reach and Bridge reach below, and was also where Charles Dickens spent his childhood. Moving forward in time, the Thames and Medway Canal was dug between 1804 and 1824 to provide a safe route between the rivers Medway and Thames. Barges were thus able to avoid the long passage round into the Thames estuary, and at the Strood (Rochester) end the canal was entered through a lock into Frindsbury basin. The canal opened on 4th October 1824 but proved to be a commercial failure and it was filled in by the South Eastern railway in 1845. 

George William Gill was a ship surveyor and was also building and repairing barges and small craft on a slipway at Chatham in 1858. This business built wooden Thames spritsail barges, wooden river and estuarial barges, paddle steamers and yachts at his Lower yard in Chatham. He had his grand residence behind the slipways, and he expanded in 1878 by purchasing the Upper yard at Frindsbury (Strood). This canal yard of Gill at Frindsbury lay on a bend of the north bank of the Medway between Limehouse reach and Bridge reach. George William Gill died in 1888, and his sons took over the businesses, with John Edwin Gill taking the Lower yard at Chatham, and George William Gill and Ernest Albert Gill the Frindsbury yard. The London & Rochester Barge Co. Ltd. was formed on 24th May 1900 with a capital of £30,000 and several shareholders in the oilcake and seed businesses, beginning with a fleet of 25 Thames spritsail barges and 22 lighters, and with the first motor barge purchased in 1907.

Ernest Albert Gill purchased the shares of his brother George William Gill in 1915, and developed the company by trading his own coastal sailing barges to small ports in Essex and Kent e.g. the East Mill at Colchester and to the isle of Sheppey and Whitstable in Kent with grain, animal feed, timer and other bulk cargoes. The loading and unloading of cargoes in London Docks using barges to and from deep sea ships was also a mainstay of their business e.g. grain and animal feedstuffs from the Victoria and Millwall Docks consigned to Ipswich merchants, Canadian and American wood pulp consigned to Thames paper mills, and sawn timber from the Baltic consigned for Maldon in Essex.

Thames spritsail barges formed this fleet for many years with names such as Alfred, Alan, Albert, Clara, Edmund, Edward, Eugenie, Frank, George, Gladys, Louise, Maria, Maysie, Mollie, Sirdar and Willie. They traded mainly in the Thames estuary and as far north as great Yarmouth and the Humber, as far west as Penzance and Charlestown, and to Continental ports such as St. Valery sur Somme, Le Treport, Boulogne, Calais, Gravelines, Zeebrugge and Antwerp. Cargoes included grain, coal, cotton seed, cement and oil cake, with many loaded or unloaded at their home port of Rochester above Rochester Bridge or at Bellamy’s Wharf on the south bank of the Thames. Thames spritsail barges made as many as forty voyages per year, and the London & Rochester Trading Co. Ltd. usually entered one Thames spritsail barge and two river barges in the annual Medway Barge Sailing Match in June each year. The course was 35 miles in length from Gillingham to the West Oaze Buoy and back, the time taken by the winner was five to six hours. The Thames and Medway Barge Matches were always fiercely contested by the Gills, Everards, Goldsmiths, Horlocks and the other barge owners, with the barges slipped for cleaning and painting before every race. The Gill Yule Cup is still awarded today in barge matches for the best achievement by a young crew member of a participating Thames spritsail barge.

The owned Thames spritsail barge Crouch Belle was built at Hull Bridge in 1901 and could carry 150 tonnes of cargo. On one occasion she took four months to take a cargo of oil cake from Strood on the Medway to Truro and return with china clay from Fowey. She sailed from Strood on 31st July 1920, however the winds in the English Channel were so strong that she was anchored in Dover harbour for the whole of the month of August. The sheltered route was then taken inside the Solent via Ryde roads, Cowes roads, and Yarmouth roads to Portland. Strong winds again at Portland Bill forced a retreat until a second attempt succeeded and she ran down to Plymouth, Falmouth and up the Fal to Truro in a Matter of a few days. She then loaded white china clay at Fowey and retraced her route via Plymouth, Portland and the Solent to Stokes Bay, Gosport. Two days later she was in Newhaven harbour where a prolonged stay of over three weeks lasted into October 1920 before she reached her destination of Queenborough for discharge. A full clean of her bottom of weed and barnacles was made before she resumed trading to Ipswich and Yarmouth. She was in collision a few months later with the Thames spritsail barge Bride near Sheerness at night with damage to her port quarter, which took several weeks to repair.

London & Rochester Trading Co. Ltd. 

The London & Rochester Trading Co. Ltd. was formed on 28th August 1924 with a fleet of sixty Thames spritsail barges, and then began to own auxiliary engined small coastal sailing barges such as Seine of 179 grt with dimensions of 106.6 feet by 19.0 feet with a depth of 7.9 feet. She was built by J. Koster at his yard at Groningen in Holland in 1926 and was purchased three years later from the shipbuilder, and was powered by a four cylinder two stroke Goedkoop oil engine. In 1929, the coal and barge business of Albert Hutson of Maidstone was purchased, adding twenty Thames spritsail barges and fifty lighters to the Rochester fleet, as well as the transhipment of wood pulp from Rochester to Aylesford during that year. This included the wooden Thames spritsail barge Marie May of 106 grt built at Maidstone in 1920 by Albert Hutson, and fitted with a two cylinder four stroke Kelvin oil engine, and she survived World War II and was still trading for the company until sold in 1968.

The Thames spritsail barge Wyvenhoe was built in 1898 and was purchased by the London & Rochester Barge Co. Ltd. in 1916 and worked the East Coast as far north as Goole. She had her rigging removed and was fitted with a Hamworthy diesel engine in 1923, continuing as a motor barge for the company until 1970, and then retired in 1983 after a working life of over eighty years. Pudge was built by Gill at Rochester in 1922 as a Thames spritsail barge and was fitted with a two cylinder Kelvin oil engine in 1931. She was present at the Dunkirk evacuation in May 1940 along with Cabby and Seine, all owned by the company. Pudge was one of three barges being towed across to Dunkirk by the naval tug St. Fagan, however the tug hit a mine and sank along with two of the barges, leaving Pudge afloat. After pausing to pick up survivors, Pudge carried on to Dunkirk and rescued three hundred troops and took them safely home to Kent. Thistle was built by William Hamilton & Co. Ltd. at Port Glasgow in 1895 and was probably the only Thames spritsail barge built in Scotland. She was purchased by the London & Rochester Trading Co. Ltd. in 1940 and requisitioned during the war. Her steel sprit was damaged in heavy weather in 1948 and she was towed to Rochester, where she was reduced to a motor barge in 1949 and continued to trade for the company until retired in 1972.

New Motor Coasters 

The company owned around ninety Thames spritsail barges and four motor barges in 1936, when the company was then able to make their entry into the British coastal trades with new motor powered coasters without ever owning steam coasters. The first new motor coaster in the fleet was Crescence of 255 grt and 300 dwt on dimensions of length 114 feet, beam of 25 feet, and depth of ten feet. She was launched in September 1936 and completed during the following month by the Goole Shipbuilding and repairing Co. Ltd. She was followed by Dominence of 281 grt and 320 dwt in 1940 from the Faversham yard of James Pollock Sons & Co. Ltd., and Eminence of 555 grt and 740 dwt in 1945 from the yard of John Lewis & Sons Ltd. at Aberdeen. The company wooden motor barges were requisitioned for use as minesweepers during WWII, with Crescence and Dominence also requisitioned for various duties throughout the war.

Faience of 552 grt and 703 dwt was completed in January 1948 and was followed by her sister Gardience three months later from the Wallsend yard of Clelands. A much larger coaster of dimensions 219.5 feet in length and 32.7 feet in the beam and a depth of 11.6 feet was then launched at Clelands and completed in December 1949 as Halcience of 994 grt and 1,238 dwt. She was of the raised quarterdeck design with the quarterdeck of length 134 feet and a fo’c’stle of length twenty feet. After 1959, spectacular sideways launches of small coasters were a feature of the Wallsend yard of Clelands.

Jubilence and Kindrence of 790 dwt followed in 1953/54 from Dutch owners three years after they were completed by the J. Pattje yard at Waterhuizen in Holland. Sisters Luminence, Militence and Nascence of 735 dwt followed in the mid 1950s from the Clelands yard, which also completed the sisters Pertinence and Quiescence of 1,130 dwt in 1958. Two second hand former ‘Empire’ coasters, Empire Tulip and Empire Kyle, joined the fleet in 1952 and 1956 as Insistence and Ordinence. The company also operated much smaller ‘intermediate’ coasters of up to 300 dwt, and a dozen of these were completed in the 1950s as action, Bastion, Cecil Gilders, Josh Francis, gold, Silver, Knox (laid down as VIC 59), Nervo (laid down as VIC 58), Malloney, Milligan, Naughton, Nicola Dawn, and Pepita. Most of these vessels were twin screw for easier manoeuvrability on short voyages e.g. with grain up the shallow roach river to Rochford in Essex to supply the Stambridge Mills. They also delivered cargoes to upriver wharves in the upper reaches of the Thames above Blackfriars Bridge. Cecil gilders was one of the vessels of the fleet of Francis and gilders Ltd. of Colchester that was taken over in 1951, and the fleet of Whiting Brothers of Rochester was also taken over at this time.

Maurice Owen Gill, son of Ernest Albert Gill, was Chairman of the company in post-war years, and he kindly donated and transported ballast and sand for the Eastchurch Memorial to Pioneer airmen on the isle of Sheppey, which was unveiled on 25th July 1955. His father had retired as Chairman of the company in 1941 and had died in 1953. Another director was one of the Everard family, showing a connection between the fleets of the ‘yellow perils’ and the ‘red devils’ as some seafarers nicknamed the coasters of the two companies. Two second hand sand carriers of 150 dwt had been purchased in 1951/52 from J. r. Piper Ltd. of Woolwich in the twin screw Peter Piper and Wilfred and were renamed Saltpan and Stargate and had been completed in 1931 and 1926 respectively. Six auxiliary Thames spritsail barges were also still operated in Alan, Cabby, Marie May, Pudge, Scone and Thyra, and the company also operated forty small river barges, one hundred lighters and six tugs in the 1950s. Otterham Quay brick works of the company, purchased in 1919 near Rainham, to London by barge more cheaply than by rail or road transport.

Rapid Growth 

Eminence under Capt. Cogger sailed from Blyth on 8th August 1960 loaded with coal for Coleraine and set a course from the Farne Islands to clear Buchan Ness. However, at 0135 hours during the night she was in collision with and sank the motor fishing vessel Beryl 23 miles south east of Aberdeen, the fishermen fortunately being rescued by the coaster. At the subsequent enquiry, the skipper of the fishing boat was found to be to blame in that he failed to keep a proper watch during the time his boat was proceeding across a main shipping lane.

By the mid 1960s, the fleet had reached forty coasters with fifteen larger coasters with names ending in ‘ence’, and twenty five ‘intermediate’ coasters of up to 300 dwt. The larger coasters were Crescence of 1965, Eminence of 1945, Faience of 1948, Gardience of 1948, Halcience of 1949, insistence of 1939, Jubilence of 1950, Kindrence of 1950, Luminence of 1954, Militence of 1956, Nascence of 1956, Ordinence of 1941, Pertinence of 1958, Quiescence of 1959, and resurgence of 1958 and purchased in 1962.

Over twenty new ‘intermediate’ coasters of up to 300 dwt had been completed throughout the 1960s by several British and Dutch yards as Andescol, Bencol, Caption, Diction, Elation, Function, Horation, Gillation, Ignition, Jubilation, Kiption, Loach, Lobe, Locator, Lodella, Maguda, Roan, Rock, Rogul, Rohoy, Roffen and Roina. Some of these were twin screw for easier manoeuvring on short voyages, the ‘ro’ prefix of some of these coasters showed their relationship with Rochester.

The company suffered a marine loss on 1st March 1967 when Luminence sank during a storm to the west of Skomer Island in Pembrokeshire, while on a voyage from East Yelland to Ayr in ballast, the crew being rescued by helicopter. The wreck lies on the Hats and Barrels rocks near to the Smalls Lighthouse. Militence capsized alongside at Antwerp while loading on 14th November 1967 and was then raised and broken up at Hendrik Ido Ambacht. Some vessels were used on longer runs e.g. Halcience carried timber from the White Sea ports of Northern Russia to Wisbech, and other vessels were sent south to Biscay ports for more cargoes. The older coasters were now sold off, with sisters Gardience and Faience sold in March 1967 for service in the Persian Gulf, and Halcience sold in May 1968 to Uruguay owners and renamed Nobleza, continuing in service for forty years until scrapped at Montevideo.

The London & Rochester Trading Co. Ltd. had formed an offshore subsidiary in 1964 as offshore Marine Ltd. offshore supply vessels such as South Shore of 448 grt were completed in 1965 at Cowes, but four years later this offshore subsidiary was sold to Cunard Line. The funnel marking and houseflag worn by this fleet featured a white oil derrick next to the white ‘crescent’ on the central red band of the funnel, but this was changed after the takeover with the Cunard lion and globe replacing the Rochester ‘crescent’.

The fleet in the 1975 was a big one of fifty coasters engaged in the Continental and home trades, together with twenty estuarial barges, eighty lighters, six tugs and ten motor river barges. The container trades were entered between Tilbury and Rotterdam with Fallow Deer of 497 grt and 106 TEU capacity, when completed in 1972 by Appledore Shipbuilders in Devon. She was on charter to European Unit Routes (EUR) for ten years in this trade, and had a blue funnel and blue hull with ‘EUR’ in large white capital letters, except for a one year charter to Federal of Canada as Federal Bermuda in 1976 between Halifax and Bermuda.

Another company service had been operated under the ‘Crescent Shipping’ banner from Whitstable to Esbjerg from 1959, using two hold ships with side doors to facilitate the handling of pallets by fork lift trucks. Luminence of 1954 was the coaster first used on the service, with Resurgence of 820 dwt, completed at Naples in 1958, purchased at the end of 1962 to replace her. The vessel on the service after 1969 was the owned coaster Dangeld of 684 grt built that year with a white hull of dimensions 247 feet by 41 feet and with a service speed of fourteen knots, the same as that of Fallow Deer. Resurgence was transferred in 1969 to a Lowestoft to Esbjerg service and then sold off in 1971. Services from Otterham Quay near Rainham to Dieppe and Ostend had also begun in the mid 1960s.

Sentence of 1,630 dwt was built at Goole in 1974 and was very similar to the Goole built Eminence of 1969, except Sentence had a lower poop and pole masts while Eminence had tripod masts. The big Rochester fleet then continued expanding with the fleet making the following voyages in May 1984:-

Otterham Quay was owned by the London & Rochester Trading Co. Ltd. as its brick works, supplying London construction projects. It was located near Rainham in Kent on the Medway, and had an overhead pipe discharging facility for the starch potato tankers Resilience and Resurgence (2). They discharged these bulk powder cargoes, grown in Holland and loaded there, at Otterham Quay and at the Tate & Lyle glucose factory of 60,000 square feet completed during 1974/76 at Howdendyke near Goole. A serious fire destroyed part of the accommodation of Resurgence (2), built in 1967 as Petro Queen in Hungary and purchased in 1974 and converted in 1976 with a large housing in her well, on 14th August 1980 at Howdendyke with the loss of life of the Second Mate. Resurgence (2) was laid up and then arrived at Rainham for breaking up on 27th March 1982. Resilience had been built in Holland in 1969 and was sold in 1987 and converted to the effluent tanker Kielder for use on the Tyne.

Otterham Quay was accessed from Otterham Creek and one hundred years ago it was busy with a dozen Thames spritsail barges coming and going on each high tide. A quay length of 630 feet enabled three Crescent Shipping coasters to be worked simultaneously as well as acting as a reception area for many of the ‘Lash’ barges towed upriver by the tug Lashette. The London & Rochester Trading Co. Ltd. had been taken over by the Hay’s Group in May 1964 for around £1.3 million, and the Hays Marine Services Ltd. head office in 1985 became Hays House, Otterham Quay Lane near Rainham. Hay’s had begun operating wharf facilities on the Thames in 1867, receiving dairy products from New Zealand and other British colonies at the eponymous Hay’s Wharf on the south bank of the Pool of London. Hay’s then developed into a prominent cold storage provider especially of dairy products. Many more London wharves were purchased, and after the 1964 merger with the London & Rochester Trading Co. Ltd., Hay’s went on to expand into more shipping and distribution services.

The coal trade was important with coal shipped from Goole to London, Blyth to Northern Irish ports, and to East Yelland power station at Bideford in North Devon from Barry and Ayr. Another cargo carried along the Humber in Crescent Shipping coasters was dolomite (magnesium limestone). This useful commodity is mined in South Yorkshire, Derbyshire and Durham and is used in refractory processes in the export market on the Continent, and as an additive to agricultural land. However, its main use is to burn the limestone with coal to extract the magnesium, which is then sold to the steel industry as the material of choice used in the desulphurisation of hot metal during the steel making processes.

Crescent Shipping Ltd. 

The London and Rochester Trading Co. Ltd. had always used Crescent Shipping as a trade name, and continued using it until March 1986 when it was officially renamed as Crescent Shipping Ltd. The large fleet at this time of forty owned and managed coasters included the bigger coasters ambience of 1983, Boisterence of 1983, Crescence of 1982, Faience of 1969, Halcience of 1970, insistence of 1975, Jubilence of 1975, Kindrence of 1976, Luminence of 1977, Militence of 1978, Nascence of 1978, Ordinence of 1978, Piquence of 1979, Quiescence of 1979, bulk starch tanker resilience of 1969, Stridence of 1983, Tarquence of 1980, Turbulence of 1983, Urgence of 1981, Vibrence of 1981, Westerence of 1977, Yulence of 1979 and Zealence of 1979.

The fleet had thus alphabetically worked its way from ‘a’ to ‘Z’ in its nomenclature. Xanthence, Westerence, Yulence and Zealence had been managed between 1977 and 1981, and then purchased from Channel Coasters Ltd. in 1981 as Hull Miller, Gainsborough Miller, London Miller and Birkenhead Miller. However, Xanthence was then lost on 21st May 1985 by collision when 7.5 nautical miles north of Calais while on a voyage from Calais to Howdendyke with ferro silicon. Her three sisters were sold off in 1987, Westerence to Irish owners, and Yulence and Zealence were sold to associates of Charles M. Willie & Co. Ltd. Managed coasters included Andescol, Bencol, Contact, Gino, Jo, Pamead, Subro Venture, Subro Vesta and Theo.

Function had been lifted high and dry on the quay at Wells on Sea on 11th January 1978 during an exceptionally high tide and a severe storm, but was lifted back into the water by a large crane, and later sold in August 1983 to Marine Services Ltd., Guernsey for Channel islands trading as Sark Trader. She was eventually broken up at Hull in June 1997 after use as a sand carrier.

Luminence and Kindrence were the biggest in the fleet at 3,210 dwt, and Luminence had been adapted for temporary cablelaying operations between 1982 and 1987 with cable sheaves forward, much increased accommodation areas aft and a variety of deck cable gear. She was first chartered to lay a cable off Java in Indonesia and then a cable across the Pentland Firth, and finally a duplicate set of power cables underneath the Cook Strait between North and South islands of New Zealand. The diameter of the power cables exceeded that of standard telephone cables, and thus a specialist ship conversion was needed. She was re-engined for this work in November 1983 with a twelve cylinder four stroke British Polar diesel engine. Dominence was converted to a cable repair ship for work off the Shetlands in October 1981, and ten years later Militence laid cables off the Orkneys and in the Clyde estuary.

The company had disposed of its large fleet of ‘intermediate’ sized motor coasters of up to 300 dwt by 1985, the last to be sold off being Diction, Kiption, Libation, Loach, Locator, Lodella, Rogul, Rohoy, and Roffen. Rows of laid up ‘intermediate’ sized coasters were a feature of the Strood river scene at this time. Horation had the misfortune to break her back and sink on 6th March 1981 at Mistley Quay at Manningtree in Essex, and she was then raised and broken up at Rainham. This fleet found new uses of many types with new owners e.g. as floating clubhouses, seaweed or sand, aggregates and gravel dredgers, or as water tankers in Greece, or simply rotted away in remote creeks when their new owners abandoned them as uneconomic to operate. Eloquence of 1969 and Ordinence of 1978 were sold to a Kirkwall owner and renamed Holm Sound and Kava Sound and transported many cargoes around the Western isles of seaweed and sand and gravel. Elation was sold in May 1983 to British owners and then in 1992 to Port of Spain owners in Trinidad as veronica L, but she sank shortly afterwards in January 1993 at St. George, Grenada.

Cabby 

The auxiliary Thames spritsail barge Cabby, whose construction had begun at Rochester in 1925 by the gill family, but because of a slump in trade she was not completed until three years later in 1928. She was named after the pet dog of Mrs. Ernest Albert gill, wife of the Chairman of the London & Rochester Trading Co. Ltd., who had started his career as a designer of Thames spritsail barges in the 1890s. She carried her last cargo for the London & Rochester Trading Co. Ltd. in 1969. She was the last of her type in the fleet, and had worked during her long life for the company in the grain, animal feeds and other bulk cargo trades. She was re-rigged in 1970 for passenger use as the company charter barge to replace the similar Sirdar, built at Ipswich in 1897, and competed in the annual Blackwater Barge Match with other Thames spritsail barges. She was laid up at Snape Maltings in the winter, and spent her summers operating out of Rochester on passenger charters. She is still operational in the summer today, and is preserved in the winter at her base at Maylandsea on the Dengie peninsula in Essex, and until recently was owned by Charles McLaren with a passenger certificate for 36 persons.

Towage Business 

A fleet of six tugs was being operated in the 1950s towing company lighters and barges. They had light brown hulls with two white lines and red boot topping and names such as Coaxette, Dragette, Enticette, Luggette, Pullette and Snatchette. The last four tugs in the company fleet were Lashette of 730 bhp, Shovette of 730 bhp, Luggette of 660 bhp and Nudgette of 660 bhp. They also found further employment in manoeuvring the ‘Lash’ barges into the ‘Lash’ combined container and barge ships that came into the Thames and Medway, a successful system suitable for big river systems such as the Mississippi. The tugs had a silver ‘crescent’ on their funnels instead of the white version of the coasters. Lashette and Shovette had been built at the company yard at Strood in 1972 and 1974, and served until 1998 when they were sold off with the rest of the company towage business to Deutsche Binnenreederei (U.K.) Ltd.

Bowker & King Ltd. 

In 1965, Hays Marine Services Ltd. had taken over the coastal tanker and bunkering firm of Bowker & King Ltd. of London and founded in 1884. Four former admiralty ‘X’ lighters, X36, X45, X64 and X76 of 190 dwt, had been owned as tankers by Bowker & King Ltd. in the 1950s and 1960s, having been built in 1915 by Sunderland and West Hartlepool yards as four of a class of two hundred twin screw lighters for use as landing craft during the Gallipoli campaign. Hays in the late 1980s had a fleet of twenty one tankers of up to 1,770 dwt with names beginning with ‘B’ e.g. Banwell, Bardsey, Barmouth, Barrier, Beckenham, Beckton, Beechcroft, Berkeley, Bisley, Blackfriars, Blackheath, Blakely, Borman, Botley, Bouncer, Breaksea, Brentwood, Bristolian, Bromley, Bude and Budleigh were taken over. This fleet normally worked in the Thames, Solent, King’s Lynn and Bristol Channel areas, but also undertook contracts for the movement of oil in Irish waters and on charter in the Mediterranean for French oil companies. Two houseflags were then used, a red one with a white crescent for the dry cargo fleet, and a blue one with a white crescent for the coastal tanker fleet. The six dry cargo coasters of the Piquence class of 1,375 dwt built in 1978/79 also spent time trading from the French Mediterranean coast in the late 1980s, loading grain at several Rhone upriver ports for Sicilian, Greek and other Mediterranean ports. They were also used in the Baltic timber trades, and in the Danube river trades to Italian ports.

Crescent Ship Management Ltd. 

Crescent Ship Management Ltd. was set up in 1987 to undertake ship management of coasters. Ro-ro vessels owned by Merchant Ferries Ltd. (Cenargo Ltd.) on the Heysham to Warrenpoint route in the Irish Sea began to be managed in 1989. Merchant venture, Merchant Valiant and Merchant Victor had been built as Farman in 1979 in Portugal and the sisters Salahala and Emadala in 1978 by the Rickmers yard at Bremerhaven. Merchant victor was renamed in April 1997 as Moondance, Seatruck Ferries Ltd. having been set up by the Crescent Shipping group on 22nd March 1996 to resume the Heysham to Warrenpoint service, which had been transferred to Dublin by Cenargo Ltd. another sister, built originally as Mashala by the same German yard in 1978, was also purchased in August 1996 and renamed Riverdance. Riverdance was later wrecked at Blackpool on 31st January 2008 after her cargo had shifted in a storm. The last piece of her hull was cut up for scrap in October 2008.

Five large ro-ros were also managed for UND ro-ro Isletmeleri A.S. of Istanbul in UND Denizcilik, UND Hayri Ekinci, UND Marmara, UND Saffet Bey and UND Prenses. They had been built in Poland and Scandinavia in the late 1970s and 1980s and operated between Trieste and Istanbul. Several other ro-ros and ferries as well as two general cargo coasters were also managed in Alexander and Nancy of 3,200 dwt, together with three Thames sludge vessels in Bexley, Hounslow and Thames from 1990.

Crescent Finale 

In February 1995, ambience carried out a successful trial passage to the farthest navigable berth on the Medway at Aylesford, seven miles further up the Medway from Rochester. She was assisted in this difficult winding stretch of the river by the company tug Lashette. The company ship repair yard facilities on the Medway had been closed down in 1994, and valuable contracts worth £1.5 million for the lengthening by ten metres of the four 850 dwt coasters delivered during 1980/83 as Tarquence, Ambience, Boisterence and Crescence were carried out by the Stocznia Remontowa Nauta yard at Gdynia during 1994/95.

In 1997, Crescent Shipping was acquired jointly by the Clipper group of Denmark and London & Wessex Ltd., with the Clipper group purchasing their partner’s 50% share five years later. The fleet continued to be gradually sold off in 1998/99 with only a dozen dry cargo coasters and nine coastal tankers owned by the company at that time. The former cablelayer Luminence, built in 1977 by Clelands, was sold in 1999 to Portuguese owners and renamed virtual, her sister Kindrence was sold two years later to Blue Adriatic Shipping Co. Ltd., Nassau and renamed Kindred. Crescent Marine Services Ltd. moved its head office down to Brunswick House in Brunswick Place in Southampton at the Millennium. They were left operating a fleet of nine dry cargo coasters in Millennium year, which were engaged on the following voyages in November of that year:-

Ambience had suffered bow damage in a collision two months earlier and was repaired at the Rotterdam yard of Vlaardingen Oost Shiprepair. This last fleet of nine traditionally named Rochester dry cargo coasters had only a year or two of trading left before they were all sold off. Two new dry cargo coasters of 2,688 dwt joined the fleet at the end of Millennium year as Crescent Rhine and Crescent Seine. They had been completed by Bodewes of Foxhol after their bare hulls had been towed from the Black Sea yard of Daewoo Mangalia. They were sold off to RMS of Germany during 2003, and the Clipper group of Denmark then concentrated this fleet on bunkering and coastal tankers at British ports with ‘Crescent’ prefixes to their names e.g. Crescent Barolo, Crescent Beaune, Crescent Bordeaux, Crescent Connemara, Crescent Cuillin, Crescent Highlander and Crescent Oratuna. Crescent Beaune was the bunkering tanker at Portland and replaced Brabourne. Crescent Marine Services Ltd. became Clipper Marine Services Ltd. in 2006, still headquartered in Southampton, but in 2008 it became part of Clipper Wonsild Tankers of Copenhagen along with Copenhagen Tankers and Wonsild Tankers.

This traditional dry cargo fleet with the very distinctive ‘crescent’ funnel colours and very visible reddish brown hulls with a blue or white topline and red boot topping had lasted eighty years from the formation of the London & Rochester Trading Co. Ltd. in 1924, later becoming Crescent Shipping Ltd. The total size of the fleet included very many small coasters, barges, tugs and lighters and was estimated at 650 owned vessels during that time, but this estimate also included the large Thames spritsail barge fleet and other barges built before that date.

The Protection and indemnity (P. & I.) cargo risks of the company were insured with the British Marine Mutual insurance association Ltd. for 84 years. Directors of the Rochester based company served continuously as directors of the insurance association, starting with Ernest Albert Gill (1909- 1953), Maurice Owen Gill (1953-1974), G.S.C. Clarabut (1974-1982), P.D.T. Roberts (1982-1985) and A.R. Winter (1985-1993), with three of these directors as vice Chairmen of the insurance association.

Many of the fleet are still trading in remote corners of the world, with Eminence, built at Goole in 1969 sold to British owners in 1984 and after a bad grounding at Dundalk in 1991 she was repaired for Caribbean service for Millie Shipping of Port of Spain in Trinidad and renamed Millie C and is still traded today by this owner. The similar sized Sentence built at Goole in 1974 was sold in 1985 and after six further names she sank on 17th October 2007 in a collision with a bulk carrier off Thessaloniki.

The Clelands built coasters Kindrence, Luminence and Militence built in 1977/78 are still trading today after careers in many parts of the world including the Far East, Eastern Mediterranean and North Russian waters. Kindrence was converted to a livestock carrier in 2011, and Militence to a vegetable oil tanker in 1999.

The surviving ‘red devils’ have certainly voyaged to many remote parts and corners of the world.