Lot 456: John Robert Charles Spurling 'Jack' (1870-1933)

The Tantallon Castle under tug escort on the Thames off Greenhithe
signed and dated 'J.R.C. Spurling./1895' (lower left)
pencil and watercolour heightened with white
19 1/2 x 25 1/4 in. (49.5 x 64 cm.)

Ordered for the Castle [later Union-Castle] Line's principal Cape Town passenger and mail service, Tantallon Castle was built by Fairfield's at Govan, on the Clyde, in 1893. Completed early the following year, she entered service in April 1894 as the company's first quadruple-expansion-engined mail steamer and proved an immediate success. Registered at 5,636 tons gross (3,048 net), she measured 440 feet in length with a 50 1/2 foot beam, could steam at 17 knots and carried accommodation for 490 passengers in three classes. Present at the gala opening of the Kiel Canal in June 1895, with a select party aboard including the Prime Minister, Mr. Gladstone, and his wife, she transferred into the Union-Castle fleet when the two companies merged in 1900 and, at the same time, had her outmoded yards removed. Barely a year later, on 7 t h May 1901, she was wrecked in heavy fog on Robben Island, in Table Bay, as she approached Cape Town. Although both passengers and mail were recovered safely, all attempts to refloat her proved unsuccessful and she broke up within days of the disaster.

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