The mystery collection........... part 2 working the ships

Now I am always fascinated by pictures which challenge you to uncover their secrets and yesterday I featured a young woman and her baby.

I don’t know who they were or when and where the pictures were taken.

They come from a collection of glass negatives dating from the very beginning of the last century and were saved from being thrown away by David Kennedy.

They are usually ones where there are few clues to where they were taken with no date and often shed no light on the identities of the people who stare back at you.

Some are of street scenes, others of men and women at work and include a fair number showing life on board a selection of working ships.

They range from causally posed scenes to ones where the photographer has caught his subjects fully occupied and perhaps unaware that they are being photographed.

These I think must be from a cross channel steamer given that others from the collection  are of Ostend and the surrounding countryside.

If I have favourite it is the one of the three crew members taking a rest and staring back at the camera.

Working these ships was not easy and the rare moments for relation must have been treasured even if in this one there seems to have been a fair degree of acting in front of the lens.

But work and the demands of running such a ship will have crowded out many opportunities for play.
All of which just leaves me that image of the woman caught walking away from the photographer and like all good pictures you are left wondering what she was doing.



Pictures; by courtesy of David Kennedy