Ship Adoption

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

speed so that we would not get too far to the west. This lasted for three days. Then we had a day of peaceful weather before another gale came along, this time from the west.

The second gale lasted for two days and then we were clear. * * *

Before arriving at Calcutta we encountered a cyclone.

We had not had the usual indications of bad weather but the barometer suddenly started to fall. In a matter of four hours it had fallen from 29.75 to 29.43. Then the wind started piping up from the N.N.W. Before long the rain started and then the wind really got to work. The sea became rougher and steeper. I reduced speed and tried to find out where the storm centre was. Eventually we found out that it was about 100 miles from us, travelling slowly in a north or north-east direction. I waited for a lull and then turned the ship round so that we could get out of it. It was to the east of us so if we continued to travel south, we should eventually get clear. Once the barometer stopped falling and then showed a tendency to rise, we would know that we were getting clear. This we did. The wind reached a force of 9. The rain lashed down and visibility was nil. The sea was churned up by the rain and a large amount of paint was stripped off the ship by the force of the rain.

Eventually it eased off as the cyclone drew further away and we were then able to come round slowly to resume our normal course. The sky was completely overcast so I headed in for the Indian coast to find out where we were. Once we sighted the coast and fixed our position, I found that we had been blown 40 miles to the east. Just as well we had plenty of space. When we arrived at the anchorage, we were the only ship, but the following morning several ships returned. They had all made out to sea when the cyclone approached. * * *

The passage up the Red Sea was quite pleasant and we made a good speed. About 90% of the ships seen were tankers. We arrived in Suez Bay at 0930 hours, 2nd July, and anchored. The northbound convoy leaves from 0630 hours each morning so we had to wait until the following morning. Egypt now keeps summer time so we had to advance our clocks one hour. We were flying the Egyptian flag when we arrived but the Agent came out with the new flag of the United Arab Republic. This consists of red, white and black horizontal stripes with two green stars in the centre of the white stripe. We promptly took down the Egyptian flag and hoisted the new one. There were 23 ships in our convoy consisting of 15 tankers and 8 dry cargo ships. Our pilot was a young Russian. He took us as far as Ismailia and was then relieved by a German pilot. We had a good passage through the Canal and arrived in Port Said after an excellent journey of 13 hours. The ship astern of us had steering gear trouble and eventually hit the bank. This held up the ships 43