The Story of Viola: Lloyd’s Register and The Ghost Ship of Grytviken

On the foreshore of the South Georgian whaling station of Grytviken lies an old trawler. Launched in Beverley in 1906 as the Viola, she remains the oldest steam trawler with her engines still intact and one of very few vessels still in existence today that saw active service in the First World War. In collaboration with the Glasgow School of Art, The Viola Trust have produced a new film celebrating the life of this historic ship with which LR surveyors were very familiar.

Photo from The Viola Trust. http://www.violatrawler.net/gallery/

In September 1905, leading Hull trawler-owner, Charles Hellyer, announced a ‘staggeringly ambitious’ proposal to construct and launch a new North Sea fleet of around 50 trawlers that would be ready to sail in five months.1 Launched in January 1906 after only a few months construction, Viola was the eighth of at least 30 vessels built by Beverley-firm Cook, Welton and Gemmell for Hellyer’s grand project. 2 Throughout her construction, surveyors of Lloyd’s Register monitored progress. Viola was first surveyed by the Society on 30 September 1905, after which she was assessed a further 25 times. 3

Plan of Beam Arrangement for Viola, 13th October 1905. LRF Heritage: LRF-PUN-010024-010036-0064-P.

Her engines and machinery, largely constructed by Hull firm Amos & Smith, were inspected 38 times including LR visits to the shop floor as early as May 1905.4 Much of Viola’s survey work was conducted by surveyors Harry Crawhall Farrar and James Barclay. Farrar had joined the Society in 1899 as a surveyor in Middlesbrough before being appointed to Philadelphia in 1900. 5 After nearly a year and a half in the US, he was called back to the UK and appointed to Hull on 4 March 1903, where he remained until February 1910, returning to the US.6  Barclay, the senior engineer surveyor in Hull from 1904 to July 1911, had worked for the Society since April 1888, serving in Newcastle, Swansea, Hull and Cardiff before retirement in 1928. 7 According to Farrar, ‘the workmanship throughout’ the construction of Viola was ‘good’ and found to be ‘in general conformity’ with LR’s rules and regulations, entitling her to the classification ✠100A1 ✠LMC. 8

Steamer Report for Viola. LRF Heritage Centre: LRF-PUN-010024-010036-0064-P.

Viola spent 1906 to 1914 as an active member of Hull’s trawling fleet. Typically spending between five and six weeks at sea, Viola’s trawling operations were routinely split into six-hour periods, shooting the trawl around midday, towing for around six hours before hauling the net back onto the open deck where the catch was sorted into boxes ready for passage onto steam cutters. 9 However, the outbreak of the First World War swiftly brought Viola’s trawling operations to a close. The Admiralty had begun trials of trawlers as minesweepers in February 1908, and by the end of 1910, had purchased six trawlers, formed the Trawler Section of the Royal Naval Reserve, and made arrangements with leading trawler owners to acquire trawlers for naval service should they be required.10 Viola was requisitioned shortly after the UK declaration of war, departing her home port on 15 September 1914. 11She spent much of the war on patrol duty serving off Shetland and on the North Sea. According to the Trust, Viola ‘had numerous encounters with the enemy’ including being ‘involved in the sinking of two U-boats’.12 Her war service was one example of the overlooked contribution of UK fishing fleets. More than 3,000 fishing vessels and their crews saw active service during the Great War, with Viola one of the only known survivors.13

Upon her release from naval service in February 1919, Viola sailed for Wales, making a final stop in Hull enroute to Milford Haven where her crew were discharged from active duty. The following year, Viola was sold to a Norwegian trawling firm and eventually renamed Kapduen. She retained her LR classification, appearing in the Register Books as Kapduen until 1923 when she disappeared from LR records. According to Robinson and Hart, Kapduen was listed on the registers of Bureau Veritas, so it is possible that BV took on some survey and classification duty for the vessel after she departed UK waters. 14After a few years on mainly tug and towing vessel duties, Kapduen’s owners were taken over by a Norwegian whaling firm and, after a year of increasingly poor returns, Kapduen and others were sold to A/S South Atlantic, with the former Hull trawler renamed again, becoming the Dias.15

Under A/S South Atlantic, Dias completed several whaling trips, predominantly off the African coastline. However, poor returns saw the firm wind-up operations in June 1926, leaving Dias lying idle in Sandefjord until 1927 when she was purchased by Compañia Argentina de Pesca Sociedad Anónima, known as Pesca, to hunt seals on the island of South Georgia.16 After alterations were completed, Dias sailed south, arriving in Grytviken on 6 September 1927. Alongside her working life catching seals, Dias regularly supported expedition work. This included the Kohl-Larsen Expedition of 1928–29 which took the first cinematographic film of the island of South Georgia, along with regular relief voyages out to the Orcadas Base on Laurie Island, the oldest permanently occupied base in Antarctica.17

Orcadas Base, c.1927. Public Domain.

Dias continued to be updated to aid her career out of Grytviken, and she reappeared in the LR Register Book of 1949, retaining the ✠100A1 ✠LMC classification she was first awarded in 1906. Indeed, it appears LR continued to monitor and survey Dias until 1959 when her classification was withdrawn at the owners request, marking an end to a relationship between the ship and Society that had lasted, off and on, for 54 years.18 It has been suggested that LR continued to register Dias into the 1960s. However, after 1959 no record of the vessel in the Register Books could be found until 1971, that entry stating that she was classed by LR until 1959.

Viola’s class withdrawn at owners request. LRF Heritage Centre: LRF-PUN-010024-010036-0064-P

Grytviken closed operations in December 1964 after a Japanese takeover failed to boost poor returns. Dias, along with fellow Grytviken stalwarts Albatros and Petrel were mothballed and left at the station’s abandoned jetties. However, the peaceful retirement of Dias took another violent twist. A September 1979 deal to salvage scrap metal from South Georgia, including from the three mothballed vessels at Grytviken, descended into diplomatic chaos, igniting existing tensions between Britain and Argentina over the future of the Falkland Islands. By April 1982, Royal Marines were exchanging fire with Argentine troops across the water from Dias and, after 22 days of occupation and fighting, South Georgia came back under British control. Neither side saw any losses, but as Robinson stated, Viola/Dias had now ‘seen action in both the Great War and the Falklands’. 19

Today, Viola still lies on the shoreline at Grytviken as the oldest steam trawler in the world with her engines still intact. The Viola Trust have long campaigned to bring Viola home, but costs have made such a venture very difficult. With the help of the Glasgow School of Art, the VT are launching “Virtual Viola”, a 3D recreation of Viola with an accompanying film celebrating Viola’s fascinating life that uses LRFHEC archive materials to chart Viola’s story from the shipyard of Beverley to Grytviken and the Falklands.20 Its premiere in Hull will take place on 26 November 2025. With an anticipated international release, the film hopes to bring new light to Viola, ensuring that the story of the ghost ship at Grytviken lives on.

Detail from Virtual Viola. 3D model created by Craig Logan at the School of Innovation and Technology, Glasgow School of Art. Image from Glasgow School of Art: https://gsamediacentre.co.uk/virtual-recreation-of-historic-hull-trawler-viola-to-be-unveiled-in-collaboration-with-the-glasgow-school-of-art/