Skip to main content
National Library of Scotland Blog

Frustration, Fascination and Film Identification

10th March 201710th March 2017 Ann Cameron Digital resources, Film, Uncategorised

From first viewing, it’s nothing very much to look at, a rather grainy piece of silent colour film lasting just under two minutes.

Simply recorded as (Lifeboat Launch) the film was dated rather vaguely as ‘1950s’ with an ‘unknown location’.  Time to send in the cataloguers.

The first thing to do was identify where it was! There was a harbour, lots of crowds (some in uniform), a Royal National Lifeboat Institution boat and loads of bunting.  I decided to look at the map of lifeboat stations on the website of the Royal National Lifeboat Institution, comparing those images to the still I had from the building on the harbour (see above).  I randomly chose Arbroath and worked my way anti-clockwise, stopping at Mallaig.  This was needle in a haystack stuff, nothing matched.  I printed the photo and distributed it to my colleagues.  They came up trumps with Broughty Ferry.  (Note: I should have gone clockwise!)

We were then able to investigate events featuring a heavy presence of bunting in Broughty Ferry Harbour in the 1950s. The Queen’s coronation in 1953 immediately sprung to mind.  But it turned out to be the naming ceremony of the lifeboat ‘The Robert’, on 15th May 1960 by the Duchess of Kent.  Such a happy event was tinged with sadness when we discovered the lifeboat that came before, the Mona, had capsized with the loss of eight lives in 1959.  We even preserve a film related to that event in the Scottish Television Collection:  Broughty Ferry Lifeboat Disaster (1959)

Cataloguing film is all about making these interconnections, contextualising and interpreting the visual clues we have. Facts must be checked.  Places, people and events must be correctly identified as we add moving image to Scotland’s rich cultural memory bank.

The film discussed here will now be re-titled to reflect the event it records and will be published on the catalogue with the remainder of the collection (all 102 cans of it).  All new collections brought in to the moving image archive are routinely digitised and made available to view here at the National Library of Scotland at Kelvin Hall

…. and I will now never, ever forget what Broughty Ferry castle looks like.

Here are some other lifeboat related films you can view and enjoy on the National Library of Scotland’s Moving Image Archive catalogue, meantime:

A Glimpse of the Lifeboat Service (1931)

Duchess of York Names New Lifeboat (1932)

Lifeboat Drill (1936)

Launch of Lifeboat “Sir Arthur Rose” (1939)

Naming of the Lifeboat “John and Frances MacFarlane” (1958)

Naming Ceremony “The Duke of Montrose” (1958)

Lifeboat Coming (1963)

Every Second Counts (1966)

 

16mm acquisitions broughty ferry bunting cataloguing colour disaster dundee Dunnachie film film archive harbour lifeboat metadata movies moving image royal Scottish Television silent STV teamwork

Post navigation

March’s Map of the Month: A map of Scotland. [Stitched by] Margaret Montgomery, circa 1800.
Charity Bazaars in Scotland

Follow us

  • Facebook
  • Twitter

About this blog

A blog about the work and collections of the National Library of Scotland. From our curators, subject experts and guest bloggers.

Learn more about the Library’s collections

RSS Subscribe with RSS

Social Links

  • Facebook
  • Twitter

Recent posts

  • Pen Names: Doris Lessing to Jane Somers
  • “Mark” a short story by Saki
  • The many names of Laurence James
  • “Christine Strathern imbues this romantic story with all her own abiding love for her native Scotland”  
  • Ian Rankin and the Missing Person Case of Jack Harvey

Categories

  • 16th-century items
  • 17th-century items
  • 18th-century items
  • 19th-century items
  • 20th-century items
  • 21st-century items
  • Digital resources
  • Exhibitions and events
  • Family history
  • Film
  • Illustrations and photographs
  • Local history
  • Maps
  • Medieval items
  • New to the Library
  • Uncategorised

Tags

acquisitions anniversaries archive archives bartholomew biography book history books cinema collections digital resources edinburgh exhibition exhibitions film Football Glasgow history illustration literature local history manuscripts maps medical medical history Music novelist novels online resources poetry printing religion science scotland scottish Scottish authors Scottish literature Scottish Printers social history sport translation travel women World War I writers

Past posts

National Library of Scotland     Theme by Colorlib Powered by WordPress