William makes model of doomed SS Bereby ship

William makes model of doomed SS Bereby ship

5 October 2022

AN Ardglass man, renowned for his skills in making model ships, has completed his latest labour of love.

William Mulhall has spent the last six months making a replica of a transport ship which ran aground off Ardglass during the Second World War.

Little is known of how the SS Bereby met her demise on the rocks at Ringfad Point on September 24, 1941, while en route from Liverpool to the Gold Coast — now Ghana — in west Africa.

On board were 400 soldiers along with their equipment. Not a single life was lost and much of the equipment was offloaded before the vessel sank.

How the vessel came to the end up on the rocks off Ardglass is something of a mystery, which William wants to unravel.

“When the ship left Liverpool is should have turned left and headed south. Instead it turned right and towards Ardglass,” he said.

“Perhaps the captain or the person on the watch was drunk. Nobody seems to know what happened and there were no reports of an investigation. No-one seems to know anything, except that nobody died or was hurt.”

William has a souvenir of the disaster — a soup ladle which his father managed to get his hands on before the ship broke up and sank.

The SS Bereby was built in 1919 by Irvine’s Shipbuilding and Dry Docks Co Ltd at West Hartlepool on the river Tees in the north east of England.

Weighing in at just over 5,200 tons she had been built for Elder Dempster Lines, Liverpool, and served as a merchant steamer. She was originally named War Raven, but was subsequently renamed Bereby in 1933.

William obtained plans of the ship to make his model, which is an exact miniature replica down to the last detail.

It now sits in the window of his Quay Street shop in Ardglass alongside a replica of another famous ship, which also met its end on the Co Down coast.

The Georgetown Victory ran aground at Killard on April 30, 1946. She was travelling from Fremantle in Australia to Glasgow with 1,400 sailors and marines, who were looking forward to being demobbed.

Unfortunately the crew mistook Strangford Lough for the River Clyde and the ship ran aground at Killard Point at the entrance to the lough, breaking her back within a few hours of being beached.

All of the servicemen and crew were rescued, but alas according to legend, much of her cargo was looted.

William completed his model of the Georgetown Victory two years ago. Now it is joined by another ship whose story and end is a reminder of the perils of the sea.