The Ship Model Forum

I do not think this has been announced here but the Nova Scotia Archives has has released hundreds of photos of various ships arriving and leaving Halifax Harbour via the archives web site. These include freighters, ie CAMs as well as the usual Liberties, Forts, Oceans, destroyers (RCN, USN, & RN), corvettes (Flowers and some Castles) escort carriers, and quite a few troop ships, especially US(however the queens and related were out of sight from his location). These are unofficial but the photographer made the best of his high office window overlooking the harbour. H. B. Jefferson did not let his job as chief regional censor keep him from doing this! Perhaps after waiting a suitable number of years for the statute of limitations to take effect he did turn them over to the archives! The ships may be distant but the camouflage parterns are quite clear as the angle is ideal and details can be enhanced by using the zoom feature.

http://www.gov.ns.ca/nsarm/virtual/east ... ge=English

Best Wishes
George

George -

Thanks for sharing. This is great.

Is this a radar mast behind the funnel on this CAM: http://www.gov.ns.ca/nsarm/virtual/eastcoastport/archives.asp?ID=367
and here: http://www.gov.ns.ca/nsarm/virtual/eastcoastport/archives.asp?ID=410

I haven't seen this before.

_________________
-- Scott

These are GREAT. The detail isn't the greatest to determine minute details, but is great for the USN destroyers shown in 1942. The photos show a snapshot of their general configuration and camo schemes. Mostly the USN destroyers are BENSON-GLEAVES from the early group (various units from DD-423 through DD-443). A nice view of Bristol (DD-453) on 17 May 1942 while she still had the 12 50-cal MG's.

There is a wealth of views of British and Canadian destroyers. If one is interested in cargo, etc ships ... enjoy.

Very interesting: how to spend hours.

One unexpected delight: codes and serials, sometimes both, for Sea Hurricanes on the CAM ships. Including at least one FAA aircraft - the Merchant Ship Fighter Units was run by the RAF, although it seems to be lost in the gap between RAF and FAA in most histories.

Very Interesting!

A minor word of warning - the captions warrant checking - some ship identifications seem to have been done purely from pennant numbers, and the writer has confused "L" flag superior with "I" - eg WANDERER (Pennant I74) is captioned as MIDDLETON (L74), despite being clearly NOT a Hunt class. Also, one of the early CVEs is shown captioned as ILLUSTRIOUS!

That said, lots of useful photos - many thanks to George.

Tim

George,

These pictures are superb. Thank you for drawing them to our attention.

Having now worked my way through the first 50% of them, I concur with Tim - beware the captions. The pictures that show RCN River Class, and RN A-I class and old V & W Class are 100% misidentified, normally as Hunts.

But great nevertheless...!

You are very welcome. I scratched my head a lot about some of the captions, thanks for the heads up on that. I thought some of the captions were so far off I thought they were matched to the wrong photo. I noticed HMS Montgomery was there, ref the recent WEM release or was it really Montgomery?
Today I just came across the log information. It is located under an early image that is just text, there must be dozens of pages there with dates of departures and arrivals. Curious all the censorship items that came up. It is certainly a trasure trove of raw information the archives just put it on the Web unedited and let us figure it out! A very interesting adventure for all!
I noticed that it is hard to tell when you reach the end of Jefferson's archive as it automatically goes to the next Halifax archive. When you come to the "no photography allowed" picture you are approaching the end and you have passed the end if his name is not in the text below the photo.

The radar item mentioned by Scott was interesting and I checked a CAM reference I had but there was only a photo of the Empire Lawrence and it didn't have that platform also dated in 1942.

I noticed that this threat is not going to the top when it is updated and there is an "arrow" in the symbol to the left of the thread title on the Index page. The arrow means "moved topic" but I don't know what that means (it is still where I uploaded this thread)or whether this is linked to the first problem.

Empire Lawrence and it didn't have that platform.
Best Wishes
George

Hi George,

I replied to your email regarding the forum notation.

_________________
De quoi s'agit-il?

Timmy C emailed me that primary location for this thread has been moved to the Reader Links area hence it doesn't operate regularly a a shaddow thread in the main Forum. I was not aware of the Reader Link thread. Thanks Timmy

Query: Candian Crown Copyright appears to have expired on these items?

http://laws.justice.gc.ca/eng/C-42/page ... #codese:12

Or would this fall under this section:

http://laws.justice.gc.ca/eng/C-42/page ... l_I-gb:s_6

_________________
Tracy White -Researcher@Large

"Let the evidence guide the research. Do not have a preconceived agenda which will only distort the result."
-Barbara Tuchman

Tracy
I'm not a lawyer but I suspect that these items are owned by the NS archives assuming that they were donated and not loaned by Jefferson. I did check the NS archive site and the link below may answer your questions. This page covers personal and commercial use.

http://gov.ns.ca/nsarm/useimages.asp#personal

I believe (but do not know) that general Government of Canada government photos become public domain after a number decades. I understand that this applies to WWII photos but the Jefferson collection would have been privately taken and therefore not "crown" photos. I hope this points you in the right direction.

Best Wishes
George

It helps... I sent some of the URLs to the Navsource Destroyer editor and was just trying to figure out how safe the images would be for them to post and what attribution there should be.

_________________
Tracy White -Researcher@Large

"Let the evidence guide the research. Do not have a preconceived agenda which will only distort the result."
-Barbara Tuchman

Tracy
As a point of clarification, the site that you linked is Government of Canada (federal) while this archive is held by the Province of Nova Scotia so the federal policy or conditions probably doesn't apply in this case in addition to the reasons I mentioned above. Even if the Jefferson collection is owned by the "crown" but at the provincial level. Best thing to do is send them an email.
George

I find this collection to be very interesting. The images of the escorts are really a wonderful snapshot. As an example, here are the former USN Flush-deckers in either British or Canadian service that I have found. The images are small and don't provide much detail, but the camo schemes can be made out and there certainly is a great deal of variation.

HMCS Annapolis about July 1942


HMCS Annapolis about July 1942


HMCS Columbia on 13 April 1942


HMCS Hamilton on 3 February 1942


HMCS St Croix on 4 May 1942


HMCS St Francis on 17 May 1942


HMS Broadway in about June 1942


HMS Burnham in about June 1942


HMS Buxton in about August 1942


HMS Caldwell on 24 February 1942


HMS Georgetown in about July 1942


HMS Lincoln on 3 May 1942


HMS Montgomery on 2 May 1942


HMS Roxborough in about June 1942

Rick, that is a very nice selection as there are many stories behind these photos. The Town Class ships were originally named by the RN after town names that were common to both the UK and USA but RN and especially RCN use have not been well documented so these photos are useful. The Towns formally turned over to the RCN received river names consistent the RCN "A to I" destroyer series. Of the RCN ones, St Croix was the most note worthy one with two U- Boats confirmed but was subsequently sunk by a GNAT in Sept 1943. Annapolis is of particular interest to me as it is the only Town with Nova Scotia links (named after an NS river) and I recently purchased the WEM HMS Montgomery to convert it to Annapolis. HMCS Mongomery, as pictured here, may be as presented in the WEM kit, at least it has the 271 radar (which may or may not indicate that a full moderization has been done. I think the term "Long Range Escort" was associated with the complete modernization). Annapolis photos presented here by Rick, as are all the RCN Towns pictured, are premodernization while the RN Town pictured are a mixture of ships with or without 271s. RCN moderizations always lagged behind RN moderizations and this situation was especially true with the corvettes. My intent was to model Annapolis as modernized but with the fourth funnel removed as was its configuration following a boiler accident. MacPherson reference material has some of these photos and these seem to correspond closely to the Annapolis (from my limited research so far) except for the front face of the forward superstructure. Mongomery was loaned to the RCN at the end of 1942 so it does have some RCN connections and at least one other Town was also loaned.
That is enough rambling but it tells a short story about the ships picture here by Rick, best wishes
George