Collections Online

Starboard broadside view of S.S. BENGORE HEAD, Cardiff Docks about 1936

Belfast's best-known shipping firm was the Head Line, founded in 1877 by James and Frederick Heyn, sons of Gustavus Heyn, the former Prussian consul in Belfast. Head Line operated a cargo liner service from Belfast to numerous ports on the eastern seaboard of north America, with feeder services from certain European ports, particularly in the Baltic. The Bengore Head was a 2,609 gross ton steamer built at West Hartlepool in 1922, is seen here discharging pit wood at Cardiff, c.1936. She was torpedoed and sunk in the north Atlantic on 9 May 1941. (Source: Shipping at Cardiff: Photographs from the Hansen Collection 1920-1975 by David Jenkins, 1993).

S.S. BENGORE HEAD (2609 gt). Built 1922 by Irvine Shipbuilding & Drydock Co. Ltd., West Hartlepool for Ulster Steamship Co. (G. Heyn & Sons Ltd. - Head Line) Belfast. On the 9 May 1941 when en route from Belfast - Montreal carrying a cargo of 1200 tons of coal and binder twine she was torpedoed by German submarine U-110 and sunk when east of Cape Farewell. One crew (William John McCabe) was lost. The master (Maurice Kennedy), 35 crew and four gunners were rescued. Sixteen by the Norwegian ship BORGFRED and landed at Sydney, and twenty four by HMS AUBRETIA, who were landed at Reykjavik.