GrenadierGuardsDmr
Curl Curl New 30-11-28
Curl-Curl (with hyphen) first trip to Manly 30 November 1928. She arrived two months earlier from Scotland. Curl Curl was the first Manly ferry in service with the familiar bottle green hull. The hulls were painted black for the previous 70-odd years. Built by Napier & Miller at the small town of Old Killpatrick about 15km downstream from Glasgow on the Clyde River, I found the ship built at Napier & Miller immediately before Dee Why and Curl Curl, the SS Caledonian Monarch, also had the same shade of green hull. It's possible the Manly ferry green originated from that shipyard's supply of that colour paint, and/or selected after management saw ships of other fleets in that colour (eg: Union Steamship Co and the Monarch Steamship Co) which were also built or repaired at Napier & Miller. My father worked as a ship's joiner for the Manly ferries in the 1960's and he said the company called the colour "bottle green", which is a British Standards colour.
Withdrawn from service in 1961, in the mid 1960's Curl Curl was stripped down to the hull at Strides Shipbreakers, Glebe Point. In 1968/69 her sister vessel SS Dee Why arrived at Strides for a similar fate and for a few months they lay side-by-side. Curl Curl was towed out to be scuttled at the "ships graveyard" in about 270 metres of water, about 4 times beyond non-capsule deep diving range, on 13 August 1969. Like all ships at the graveyard, her exact position is not known. I can't imagine anyone bothering to record any accurate details of her scuttle position in those pre-environmental management days. A deep-sea telecommunications sonar survey found a wreck in 1991 which was confirmed in 2011 as that of HMAS Australia, scuttled in the ship's graveyard in 1924. The discovery confirmed that HMAS Australia was not near any of the three reported/speculated positions.
Curl Curl New 30-11-28
Curl-Curl (with hyphen) first trip to Manly 30 November 1928. She arrived two months earlier from Scotland. Curl Curl was the first Manly ferry in service with the familiar bottle green hull. The hulls were painted black for the previous 70-odd years. Built by Napier & Miller at the small town of Old Killpatrick about 15km downstream from Glasgow on the Clyde River, I found the ship built at Napier & Miller immediately before Dee Why and Curl Curl, the SS Caledonian Monarch, also had the same shade of green hull. It's possible the Manly ferry green originated from that shipyard's supply of that colour paint, and/or selected after management saw ships of other fleets in that colour (eg: Union Steamship Co and the Monarch Steamship Co) which were also built or repaired at Napier & Miller. My father worked as a ship's joiner for the Manly ferries in the 1960's and he said the company called the colour "bottle green", which is a British Standards colour.
Withdrawn from service in 1961, in the mid 1960's Curl Curl was stripped down to the hull at Strides Shipbreakers, Glebe Point. In 1968/69 her sister vessel SS Dee Why arrived at Strides for a similar fate and for a few months they lay side-by-side. Curl Curl was towed out to be scuttled at the "ships graveyard" in about 270 metres of water, about 4 times beyond non-capsule deep diving range, on 13 August 1969. Like all ships at the graveyard, her exact position is not known. I can't imagine anyone bothering to record any accurate details of her scuttle position in those pre-environmental management days. A deep-sea telecommunications sonar survey found a wreck in 1991 which was confirmed in 2011 as that of HMAS Australia, scuttled in the ship's graveyard in 1924. The discovery confirmed that HMAS Australia was not near any of the three reported/speculated positions.