Oct 1958

THE BRITISH SHIP ADOPTION SOCIETY In the last week of term the "Clan Stewart" arrived in Southampton at the end of Voyage 10, during which she had covered a distance of 20,747 miles. A diary of this voyage, and some extracts from Capt. Graham's account, are given below. The ship seems to have encountered an unusual amount of bad weather—an Atlantic gale soon after sailing, heavy rain-storms off the S. African coast, a cyclone in the Bay of Bengal, and another tropical storm at Madras.

With labour troubles at Port Elizabeth and Colombo, and crew troubles in Calcutta, the voyage has certainly not been uneventful.

The mail we received included a very full account of the voyage from Capt. Graham, a cargo plan and a number of harbour plans from the Third Officer and one of the apprentices, to all of whom we are very grateful. The cargo plan reveals, perhaps, even more variety than usual. We expect a ship from India to have tea, cotton, hides and skins, tobacco, curry powder, jute webbing, palmyra fibre, mango chutney, and gunnies, all of which the "Clan Stewart" carried. Less expected are other items of her cargo : tobacco seed oil, mica, feldspar, granite (for tombstones, apparently), shellac, footballs, envelopes, quinine sulphate, sea shells, and prawns. And what would one do with such other items as myrabolams, poppadums, blue buffs, cutch, and prawn bali chow?

For those interested in entrepOt trade, it may perhaps be noted that some of these items will be re-shipped, mostly from London, to such places as Rotterdam, Hamburg, Gothenburg, Bremen, Waterford, Antwerp, and Helsinki. Some are for destinations as far away as Bathurst and Miami. But perhaps the most fascinating consignment is of 13 bales of C.P. goods addressed to Satan, whose abode, no doubt temporarily, is given as Oran.

"CLAN STEWART" EXTRACTS We sailed from Birkenhead with 7,000 tons of cargo on board and, for once, no passengers. Our decks were full of railway coaches and engines. On the fore-deck we had two engines each side of No. 2 hatch and two coaches across No. 3.

On the after-deck we had one coach across No. 4 hatch and one coach abreast No. 5 hatch starboard side. On the port side of No. 5 we had an electric engine. The decks were absolutely full. To get to the crew's quarters, a cat-walk had had to be built so that people would not have to climb over or crawl under lashings.

In No. 2 lower hold we had two Garrett engines. These weighed 65 tons each and were to be landed with the ship's gear in Beira.

As usual, we started off the voyage with bad weather. It was all right until we cleared the shelter of the Irish coast and then we got a severe E'ly gale with a very rough and high sea. My main concern was to avoid having any damage done to the deck cargo so we headed to the west, brought the gale behind us and then reduced 42