Name SS Robin

ROBIN was built by Mackenzie, MacAlipine & Co. in Orchard House Yard, Bow Creek, in East London, who had received an order for two identical coasters from Robert Thomson, a London ship owner. The keels were laid in December 1889 and ROBIN was launched on 16 September 1890 (her sister ship, ROOK, was launched in the previous month). She was fitted out in the East India Docks and moved in October to Dundee in Scotland to have her triple-expansion engine, boiler and auxiliary machinery fitted by Gourlay Bros.

On her maiden voyage, which started from Liverpool on 20 December 1890, ROBIN steamed further than on any other voyage in the next ten years, reaching the port of Bayonne on France's Atlantic coast. She continued to trade around the south and west coasts of England, the Thames and Medway, and to France's channel coast. Her ownership in the first two years was complicated, as shares were transferred between various part-owners, but Arthur Ponsonby of Newport, Monmouthshire, was apparently the main owner.

She was bought in 1892 by Alexander Blackwater to form the Robin Steamship Company; trading between Britain, Ireland and the continental ports, she carried cargoes including grain, iron ore, scrap steel, pit props, china clay, railway steel, general cargoes of casked and baled goods, and granite blocks for the Caledonian Canal. In her first decade of service, she visited 140 ports.

In May 1900, she was sold to Blanco Hermanos y Cia, of Bilbao, Spain, the beginning of seventy-four years under the Spanish flag, under the name MARIA. Her ownership passed to Hijos de Angel Perez y Cia, of Santander, in 1913 and to Eduardo de la Sota Poveda, of Bilbao, in 1965. She traded around the Spanish coast with cargoes such as coal and scrap iron.

During the First World War, she carried pig iron for the French government from the foundry at Santiago to Bayonne and Burdeos under French naval escort. Her appearance remained little changed for many years until, in a 1966 refit, her coal-fired boiler was converted to oil, the stern whaleback and the mizzen mast were taken out, the foremast, main mast and funnel were shortened, and the forecastle was extended. In May 1974, she was purchased by the Maritime Trust and, in June, steamed under her own power to St Katharine Docks, London. She was restored at Rochester, renamed ROBIN, and opened to the public as part of the trust's collection of ships, which at that time were berthed in St Katharine Dock.

In 1991, she moved to West India Quay and was subsequently bought by, what is now, the SS Robin Trust. New restoration work began in March 2002, and she was equipped as an innovative education centre with a successful photographic gallery. In June 2008, a £1.9m funding package was raised from Crossrail by Kampfner Development Consultancy and an extensive programme of conservation work began. SS Robin made her first sea journey for 35 years when she was carefully towed from her berth in London's West India Dock to a slipway in Lowestoft, Suffolk.

She was extensively restored under the guidance and management of KDC, who conducted an extensive appraisal of costs and conservation options, arriving at a unique and radical solution to the combined challenges of a fixed budget and the tender condition of the vessel's riveted hull. In order to preserve and display her original riveted fabric, the vessel was lifted onto a purpose-built floating pontoon, commissioned and built in Poland, in a dramatic and successful crane operation in June 2010.

Now restored to her former glory, she has returned to the Victoria-Albert docks in London, where fundraising and fit-out works for a future training centre and museum are being carried out.

Update, May 2023: Plans have been submitted to see SS ROBIN relocated with her pontoon from KGV dock to Trinity Buoy Wharf where she will have a floating mooring fixed between two piles with walkway allowing public access.