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Sprite - a general history

Official No. 60198: Code Letters KBDW.

Owners: 1870 Lofthouse, Glover & Co, Hull; 1882 Charles M Lofthouse & Co, Hull; 1894 B & J Shaw, Hull; 1898 Furness, Withy & Co, West Hartlepool; 1899 West Hartlepool Steam Navigation Co, West Hartlepool.

Master; 1885-93 R Harrison; 1894 C Swann; 1899 HJ Hyde; 1905 J Jowsey.

Yorkshire Evening Post, Friday, January 31st, 1902:
OVERDUE WEST HARTLEPOOL STEAMER. A CREW OF TWENTY. The steamer Sprite, owned by the West Hartlepool Steam Navigation Company, left West Hartlepool on Saturday for Hamburg, which she should have reached on Monday. Nothing has, however, been heard of her there. Her crew numbered twenty.

Bound from the Tyne to Hamburg with a cargo of pig-iron & machinery Sprite foundered off Flamborough Head on 1 October 1905. The extreme weather had buffeted the vessel causing her cargo to shift straining her plates & causing her to leak. Two Grimsby trawlers, Buffalo & Nestor, tried to tow her to port but salvage was impossible. With difficulty the trawlers managed to rescue the 20 crew & two female passengers just before the vessel sank.

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