Built originally in Jularbo in north Sweden and launched in 1905 St David worked as an icebreaking tug in the hostile waters of the artic. She was then powered by a steam engine. The engine room and aft hold housing the boiler and engine and what is now the
captains cabin forming the coal hold. The wheelhouse then is now the galley and accommodation was sparse.
In the 1930s the ship transferred to Stockholm where she was involved with keeping the waterways open during the winter freeze and towing of larger ships within the archipelago. She also made a regular trip to the German port of Rostock on the pretext of providing small engineering spares from her then large cargo deck area. In 1939 she was stopped and her real cargo of 40 Jewish refugees was found hidden onboard. She is known to have made several such journeys.
The fate of her crew is unknown but the ship was confiscated and pressed into service under the swastika as a patrol ship. The plates for her small guns can be seen near the anchor winch and aft by the two rail and a substantial plating remains around her new funnel where a more substantial mounting was installed.
She was repatriated and returned to hr rightful owner, as the papers show, in 1948 and she returned to her former ice clearing and towing duties.
She underwent a major refit in the early 1960's during which her steam engine was replaced by a diesel. She remained in service until the 1980's when she was purchased by an elderly gentleman for conversion to live onboard. During his extensive refit work in which the new superstructure and funnel were added and the entire hull re- plated the large diesel was again replaced with a more economical Scania. His work was of such a high standard that the insurers classed her as new build in 1992. Unfortunately he became too infirm complete his project and sold her to a millionaire who owned an island in the Stockholm archipelago.
She was used in effect as a school bus for his children!
It was in 1999 that she was found there by her previous owner and brought back to the UK where an extensive refit costing £80,000 was conducted. The entire interior was stripped bare and all systems reinstalled from scratch. The hull was shot blasted and then painted to commercial specifications.
The current owner bought her in the summer of 2013 and has undertaken extensive renovation work, both mechanical and structural
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