HC Christensen
This Danish wooden three master was photographed by Frank Spry as she departed Littlehampton empty and in ballast in a series of postcards. This idea is very similar to another series of cards of the four master Kaj, by White, a few years earlier. Spry worked for White for a while and it seems possible that he may have been involved in the earlier pictures, or perhaps he just knew of their popularity and followed the same process.
Most of the sailing vessels of this size visiting Littlehampton Harbour operated out of Marstal, on the Danish island of Ærø in the Baltic Sea. They would have delivered cargoes of timber, sometimes leaving in ballast to pick up return cargoes of coal, probably from the north of England
Click here for more about Marstal.
This postcard shows another Danish sailing vessel arriving, with HC Christensen moored in the background against the boatyard on the west bank of the Arun.
The identity of the craft in the foreground has not yet been established. The back of the card has comments in pencil with a date of June 1925 and a suggestion that it is probably a Baltic schooner, also noting the presence of “HC” in the background.