Silver Line (shipping company)
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- For other uses, see Silver Line.
The Silver Line was a shipping company formed in 1908, part of the British Merchant Navy. By the 1930's they were offering round the world passenger/cargo services, with the passenger fare on a freighter £100. Entirely on foreign service, the ships did not include UK ports of call. [1]. Managing owners were the S & J Thompson family. Most of their merchant ships bore the name Silver followed by the name of a tree. The Second World War claimed 11 of their ships. Silver Line switched to tramping around the world in the 1950's, then went through several ownership changes, and by 1985, with the sale of their last ship, was no more.
The Silverplane, a sleek twin funnel vessel of 7,226 gross tons built in 1948, was sold to the Cunard Line in 1951 and renamed Alsatia II, and so was her sister ship Silverbriar, to become Andria I. Their forward funnels were false, containing the chart room and the captain's cabin, looked like miniature Queen Elizabeths, and carried just 12 passengers, the maximum allowed without a regulation onboard doctor. They were sold to the Republic of China and renamed Union Freedom and Union Faith respectively. The latter ship was wrecked in a blazing collision with an oil barge outside New Orleans in 1969, with considerable loss of life.
An associated company, Joseph L. Thompson & Sons of Sunderland, was involved in the design of the first Liberty ships that saw service in World War II and beyond.
