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Amgueddfa Cymru – Museum Wales
Port Broadside view of S.S. CHILE, with Watermans boat, about 1936.
The world's first successful ocean-going motor vessel was the Selandia, built in 1912 by Burmeister & Wain of Copenhagen for the well-known Danish East-Asiatic Line. The 6,956 gross ton Chile seen here was a later sister vessel built by the same firm in 1915. These vessels had a particularly distinctive outline, in that they had no funnels; gases from the engine were exhausted through pipes incorporated in the mizzen mast (third from the bow). (Source: Shipping at Cardiff: Photographs from the Hansen Collection 1920-1975 by David Jenkins, 1993.)
M.V. CHILE (6956gt). Built 1915 by Burmeister & Wain (B&W), Copenhagen, for Danish owners Det Ostasiatiske Kompagni. B&W built the world's first diesel-powered ocean-going ship in 1911. When Germany occupied Denmark in the Second World War, she sailed under the British flag, managed by United Baltic Corp. Ltd. (Ostasiatiske Kompagni & A. Weir), London. She was torpedoed by Italian submarine Leonardo da Vinci on the 7 June 1942 and sank about 350 miles south west of Monrovia. Five of her crew were lost.
