Ships on which I served

These links are to pictures showing some of the ships I worked on between 1977 and 1987, during the time I served as an engineer with the P&O Group of companies. This period was pretty much the last few years of the British Merchant Navy - a period of great decline when the Red Ensign approached extinction.

The first ship I served on was the former Strick Line cargo vessel "Strathappin" (ex-"Sharistan"). She was built in 1964 at the South Shields shipyard of J. Readhead and Sons, and delivered early the following year. She was a general cargo vessel, able to carry about 12,000 tons, and was initially used by Strick Lines for their U.K. - Persian Gulf service. Later absorbed into the P&O General cargo Division, she was renamed "Strathappin" in 1975. Rendered obsolete in the late 1970's with the expansion of containerisation, she was sold to Greek owners, and gave them good service until the mid-1980's, when she was scrapped in India.

One company I was employed with was Container Fleets Ltd. This was a P&O subsiduary, which provided manning for the ships owned and operated by Overseas Containers Ltd, on UK/Europe to Australia and New Zealand services.

The original O.C.L. ships were the six identical sisters of the "Encounter Bay" class. Five of the ships were built in Germany, the sixth being the "Jervis Bay" which was built on Clydeside by the Fairfield yard. Illustrated is the "Discovery Bay", a product of the Howaldtswerke-Deutsche Werft yard at Hamburg. Built in 1968, she was a single screw steam turbine steamer, of 26876 gross tons. Her Stal Laval machinery drove her at 21.5 knots. Capable of carrying 1530 20' containers, she was converted to a motor ship in 1981, at Govan. This gave her a new lease of life, and she remained in service until the late 1990's, latterly named "Direct Kea". Ships like this signalled the beginning of a wholesale disposal of conventional cargo carrying vessels from the British Merchant fleet.

After being made redundant by OCL, at that time suffering a downturn in trade, I joined the General Cargo Division of the P&O Group. My first appointment was to a rather unusual old ship, the "Dwarka" plying between Bombay and the Persian Gulf ports. Built by Swan Hunter's at Newcastle in 1947, she was employed carrying migrant workers from the Indian sub-continent to the oil-rich Gulf area for all her life. She retained her traditional British India colours despite being a fully fledged member of the P&O fleet from 1971. She could carry around 1100 passengers, of whom about 50 had cabin accommodation, and 500 were allocated dormitory style bunks - the rest slept on any bit of open deck they could find! She was withdrawn in 1982 and scrapped at Gadani Beach in Pakistan. A sad end to a wonderful, if hopelessly uneconomic, old ship - one filled with a character which will never be replicated.

P&O was involved in a rather more specialised refrigerated cargo ship operation, inherited from the New Zealand Shipping Co. This was a joint operation with the Danish shipowner Lauritzen Lines, and most of the ships carried the joint funnel colours of Lauritzen Peninsular Reefers, as the venture was named. Small, but fast fully-refrigerated tramping vessels were built in the early and mid 1970's, and all were given names of birds, prefixed by "Wild". The ships were delivered in pairs, one being named after a seabird, the other after a freshwater bird. Following delivery of an earlier, and similar pair of ships from the Drammen shipyard in Norway, P&O returned there in 1976/77 for a modified version, of what was now the yard's standard design of "reefer" ship. This pair were named "Wild Gannet" and "Wild Grebe", but the sisters only remained with P&O until 1983. After a number of years with a variety of Greek-based owners, they were still in service in the late 1990's.

As additional tonnage in the reefer fleet was required, P&O also converted two former NZS ships, the "Manapouri" and "Mataura". These were renamed "Wild Marlin" and "Wild Mallard". Like the smaller refrigerated cargo ships, they were disposed of to Greek interests in the early 1980's, following the break up of the Anglo-Danish partnership. "Wild Marlin" was finally scrapped at the end of 1999.

Following my time aboard cargo ships, both refrigerated and general, I transferred to Liquified Petroleum Gas carriers. By that time, the Bulk Shipping Division of P&O had been amalgamated with the General Cargo Division, forming the imaginatively named Deep Sea Cargo Division.

These ships formed around half of the fleet, the remainder being bulk carriers, and by then the few remaining cargo ships were working on borrowed time.

The gas fleet consisted of two distinct types of ship. There was one class of four large (54000 cubic metre) tankers, and five smaller ships. It was mainly on the latter that I was employed. These ships were later sold to Norwegian owners, half of them being registered under the Bermuda flag, the remainder under the Singapore flag. The last LPG tanker I sailed on was the "Gandara", later renamed "Helikon" by the Norwegians. She was later sold to Indian owners.