SATURNO Ship No 81 - Update

This Ocean going Salvage Tug was the first in a long line of pedigree vessels of this type built at the Leith Shipyards of Henry Robb Ltd, a line of tugs that lead to the two mightiest and most powerful in the world when they were launched at Leith as the LLOYDSMAN and the S.A.WOLRAAD WOLTEMADE in the 1970's.

The SATURNO was built and launched in 1928 and was only taken to be broken up in 2010 safe to say that she had a useful working life of around 75 years quite remarkable for a ship and a testament to the craftsmanship and pride in workmanship that went into her build.
Now thanks to the Grand Son of an old ex Foreman Loftsman at the Henry Robb yard we have lots of information and photographs of the build and sea trials of this fine ship, so our thanks go to Peter Wallace and to his Grand Father William Wallace who had the book originally.

From the original book made for the launch of the SATURNO in 1928

This amazing ship undertook a maiden voyage of more than 9,000 miles towing at first her two satellite vessels which were lighters of 95feet with a 200 grt to Dakar in Senegal, then back to the Canary Islands to pick up 3 crane barges that had first been built at Robb then dis-assembled and re-erected in the Canaries ready to be towed across the Atlantic by the SATURNO to home port of Santos in Brazil.
Fair to say they don't make them like that any more with most ships today lucky of a useful life approaching 30 years before going to the breakers.

 Many more original photographs will go into the forthcoming books on the ships built at Leith