Priestman

Priestman are, or at least were, a brand of crane and excavator manufactured up until possibly the late 1990s. They have a long history according to this page. I found the logo above on a crane on the docks in Cork Harbour back in 2005. It’s probably still there!

The Priestman story began when William Dent Priestman in 1876, who had founded an engineering firm in Hull six years earlier, was asked to build a winch and grab for work off the west coast of Spain, in an attempt to locate lost gold. Though nothing was ever found, the mechanism that William Dent created was found to be equally effective at dredging mud and silt in docks, rivers and harbours.
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Today, what is left of the firm trades in Bradford under new owner, Gardner Denver, the american based compresser and blower manufacturer. No longer are cranes or excavators manufactured. The replacment parts business became unsustainable after the last Priestman emplyee retired in 2007. All the drawings and specifications exist. These are all in storage slowley deteriating with age. The legacy lives on ?.

I gotta go back there and check if that crane is still there and get a decent photo of it. Here’s a very enthusiastic fan of Priestman vehicles. If that link doesn’t ping his post, I’ll leave a comment pointing him here!

PS. this is my first post from my newly installed Ubuntu 9.10 on a big 500GB internal drive. Previously I managed with about 40GB of space which wasn’t enough when shooting in RAW. Working off external USB drives was sort of painful but now I can store a few years worth of photos on my speedy internal drive!