Last week we carried a 1952 photograph supplied by Press reader Malcolm Slater which showed a religious procession on King’s Staith - and, in the background, what looked for all the world like an ancient galleon moored up at the wharf.

Malcolm, a transport enthusiast, didn’t know what on Earth such a ship was doing in York then. We appealed to readers to see if they knew...

Step forward John Shaw, chairman of the Yorkshire Architectural & York Archaeological Society (YAYAS). John sent us a cutting from a 1952 edition of the illustrated newspaper The Sphere. It reported on a visit to York in mid-October 1952 of a half-size replica of an eighteenth century missionary ship, The Centurion. and it included the photograph we have reproduced (top left) showing the replica entering York through the lifting section of Skeldergate Bridge

The original Centurion was chartered in 1702 by the recently-founded Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts (SPG) to carry the society’s first missionary to Boston.

On the 250th anniversary, a half-scale model of the ship, built on the base of a wartime fishing vessel, set off to sail around the coast of England, calling at various ports.

The last major port of call was York. The ship berthed at King’s Staith, where it was welcomed by the Lord Mayor of York, Cecil Walter Wright. The ship was then opened up to visitors - and according to the account in the Sphere, between 4,000 and 5,000 fascinated York people went aboard the next day. That, The Sphere reported, was “more than on any other day during the Centurion’s recently ciompleted tour of eighty English ports.”

The replica ship was also the subject of a special commemoration service at the Minster. The Archbishop of York, Dr Cyril Garbett, said that the Centurion would ‘remain anchored fast in out hearts and memories; and when we recall the vision of her in her gentle beauty we shall also hear the message she has give to hundreds of thousands, that they should bravely set sail across the stormy seas of life in the adventure of serving Christ.”

We reproduce today both the original photograph from last week, and the photograph from The Sphere showing the replica ship passing through Skeldergate Bridge - there is some suggestion that she may have been the last vessel ever to pass through the bridge’s lifting section, though we have no evidence for that.

Look carefully at the photographs, and you will see that the ship is festooned with flags. These, apparently, represented the 38 countries in which SPG missionaries had worked.

Since we’re on the subject of York’s staiths, we also reproduce today a few photographs of Queen’s Staith. These come from a package of old Yorkshire Evening Press photographs of of the staith that we have just discovered, buried in a dusty archive. The photos include a wonderfully atmospheric picture by John Giles from 1978 showing a sailing barge tied up at the staith: and an extraordinary montage from 1983 showing a proposed futuristic multi-million pound development that would have been sandwiched between Ouse Bridge and the Woodsmill warehouse. It would certainly have looked different: an Eighties vision of the 21st century, perhaps....

Stephen Lewis