A few more from Mostyn of the Duke Of Lancaster. The ship has been here since 1979, which means that it’s been at Mostyn longer than it was in revenue earning passenger service. Wikipedia states that the original plans were for her to be used as a static leisure centre and market. Marketed as the ‘Fun Ship’ it apparently wasn’t open for too long, primarily due to the very low railway bridge under which the access road passes under – this would have been inaccessible to emergency vehicles. Since then, the ship has been used as a warehouse for a Liverpool company. Incidentally, the ship is apparently beached / enclosed by sand, and isn’t actually floating, although it does look like it from a distance.

These were all taken from the east of the ship, there is a footpath running alongside the dock to the west of the ship on the other side of the river. The owners of the ship use it for storage (and it does look very secure), and they are understandably not keen on people getting a closer look, which is why the site is surrounded by razor wire. That said it’s easy enough to just walk into the dock if you have a look round.  However, I was more than happy with the view I got from the path –  ships are big old things, and difficult to photograph up close. And needless to say people have got on deck (have a look on 28 Days Later), but I’ve neither the climbing skills or the inclination for that kind of thing any more!! As can be seen, the ship is not in a good state, and will probably stay here until it’s unsafe at which point it will probably be broken up where it lies.

It took me a while to figure out how to get this image looking like this, until I started tinkering with blending modes, but I’ll go into that more next week. It did occur to me that this would be an interesting photo to take when the tide is in, using a really long exposure and one of those 10 stop filters that are all the rage currently.

I used a telephoto lens for this so as to create a slightly abstract composition. It’s all to easy to take the obvious photographs, i.e. the front three quarters, so I experimented a bit to isolate some of the detail, and using a telephoto also helped compress the length slightly, or at least it created the illusion of doing so. It also shows the condition of the ship – rather poor.