Clash of the Titan I Crane 1921 - by and copyright to Janis Blower of the South Shields Gazette

If you really want to unnerve yourself in the wakeful hours of the night, try imagining the Tyne harbour and our inshore waters being sucked away to reveal the weedy burial ground below. You'd find the corpses of many ships. But what's that, 180ft or so down just a few miles east of the piers? Blow me, it's a crane! Well the hull of one, though not that that detracts from the amazing story that's been brought to my attention concerning the fate of the first Titan crane on the Tyne. Most river folk are familiar with the Titans, owned by Swan Hunter's. The third generation of the great cranes - great in their day at least, but nothing compared to the likes of, say, the Asian Hercules - can still be seen up near the old Walker naval yard. But I'm obliged to reader Mike Ennis for an account he's researched of what befell the first Titan on a winter's night in 1921. It seems that, with just a watchman on board and while carrying two boilers, she broke her moorings just off Hawthorn Leslie's yard at Hebburn. She then proceeded to drift down river on what pretty much became a gigantic wrecking spree. First she collided with a steamer, the Gothic Price, lying at No 3 tier at Hebburn; then with two drifters, the Isa and the Scour. She also hit a jetty at the Bede Metal and Chemical Co Ltd. at Jarrow; piling at the launch berth of Renwick & Dagliesh Ltd. and also one of their jetties. She piled into the tug Cambrian, sinking her; then barrelled into, in turn, the steamer Whitemantle, lying at the Wallsend and Hebburn Coal Company's staithes; the Hordern, at Bowes and Partners' east staithes, and the s.s. Cairnside, lying at Bowes and Partners' east tier. This caused the Cairnside to break adrift, so that she in turn collided with the s.s. Benwood, of Liverpool, which was lying at No 2 tier at Jarrow, carrying away the tier's west buoy (all of this, by the way, gives you an idea of how crowded the river was at that time). As she continued on her way, she drove two other ships, the Artur Von Gwinner and the Benwood, aground at Palmer's works at Jarrow. In turn the Benwood fouled a sailing vessel, the Ben Lee, while the Artur Von Gwinner fouled the west buoy of Commissioners' No 1 tier at Jarrow. The rogue crane then hit the s.s. Eskimo, of Hull, which was lying at Jarrow Quay Corner tier, setting her adrift so that she eventually came to ground off the British Portland Cement Company's premises. In doing so the Eskimo carried away some of the moorings of the Firpark and Birchleaf, of Portland, Oregon, and also fouled the west buoy at No 7 Tier, Jarrow Slake. Fortunately - or not as the case may be - the crane then capsized, sinking in 20ft of water just abreast of the Commissioner's No 10 tier at Northumberland Dock, by which time the two boilers it had been carrying had gone missing completely. And sunk she remained, her position marked, until the spring of the following year when work to salvage her hull began. It was eventually raised and moored off Northumberland Dock. Shortly after, one of the boilers was also recovered and taken to Swan Hunter's. Now whether she was so damaged as to be beyond repair, or whether she had just blotted her copybook in such spectacular fashion, I'm not sure, but the decision was subsequently taken that the crane's hull should be taken by Swan Hunter's to sea and sunk in 32 fathoms of water about seven-and-a-quarter miles due east (magnetic) of the Tyne piers. And presumably that's where she still lies, what's left of her, though I like to think that she was recalcitrant to the end.