SS Chester (1884)

SS Chester was a passenger and cargo vessel built for the Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire Railway in 1884.^[1]

History
Name	SS Chester
Operator	1884–1897: Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire Railway 1897–1910: Great Central Railway
Port of registry
Builder	Edward Withy and Company, Hartlepool
Launched	29 April 1884
Fate	Sunk in collision 28 September 1910
General characteristics
Tonnage	1,010 gross register tons (GRT)
Length	238.6 feet (72.7 m)
Beam	32.2 feet (9.8 m)
Depth	14.1 feet (4.3 m)

History

Chester was built by Edward Withy and Company in their Middleton Yard at Hartlepool and launched on 29 April 1884, sponsored by Miss Florence Withy.^[2] She was designed for the passenger and cargo service between Grimsby, England, and Hamburg, Germany. She had a long poop deck, a long bridge house, and a long topgallant forecastle. The bridge house was fitted up for the accommodation of thirty first-class passengers (including ladies’ cabin), the captain, and so on. There was accommodation in the forecastle for second-class passengers, and in the poop aft for officers and crew. In the ‘tween decks were fittings for 100 emigrants.

On 4 December 1885, Chester was involved in a collision with her sister ship Wakefield, which resulted in the sinking of Wakefield and the drowning of her stewardess.^[3]

In 1897, Chester passed to the Great Central Railway. On 28 September 1910 she was in a collision in the River Elbe with a Swedish steamer which resulted in her being badly damaged. She was beached to prevent sinking.^[4] However, she sank quickly into the soft moving sand and became a total wreck, the water having flooded her holds.^[5]