Cargo Liners: An Illustrated History

Preface

I inherited a love of the sea and ships from my father and research into shipping history has become something of a lifelong passion. Although my interest has ranged across all areas of shipping, I have always had a particular fascination with the cargo liners that plied the seven seas on a regular basis, transporting all manner of goods and raw materials between nations and, in so doing, providing a vital link in the world trade chain. Characterised by a forest of masts and posts and often faster than many passenger liners, they had a grace and beauty all their own.

Many of the well-known companies that operated cargo liners are fast becoming memories but we should be thankful that almost all have been written about in one form or another, either in official company histories or illustrated fleet lists. A number of excellent larger versions of the latter have been published recently, notably in the United Kingdom, Germany, Holland and Denmark. A few more books have dealt with specific subjects relating to cargo ships but, as far as I am aware, no book has tackled the development of the cargo liner per se, a somewhat surprising omission when one considers the number of books produced on other types of ships. Perhaps the sheer size and complexity of the subject, involving as it does so many different variations, has put people off.

In seeking to go some way towards filling this gap, it is my hope that this illustrated history will provide a starting point that will encourage others to tackle the subject in somewhat greater depth. Much remains to be written and perhaps one day an equivalent to David MacGregor, that champion of the fast sailing ship, will emerge to produce a definitive work.

With so many ships to choose from, I have had to be fairly selective in my choice of subjects with the inevitable result that a number of ‘favourites’ have had to be omitted. I have endeavoured to take a broad approach but the predominance of the British merchant navy during most of the period under review is self-evident. The story starts in the second half of the nineteenth century and I have chosen to end it around 1970, when development of the traditional cargo liner had reached a peak. That date, more or less, coincides with the entry into service of the first generation of purpose-built cellular container ships that revolutionised the carriage of general cargo and quickly began to usurp the role of the cargo liner. ‘Tween-deckers continued to be built for non-containerised trades for a further ten years or so, but these became increasingly container friendly and really fall into the multi-purpose ship category, which, for space reasons alone, is beyond the scope of this work.

I have consulted a large number of sources in the compilation of this work but would like to express my gratitude in particular to Lloyd’s Register of Shipping Information Services, the Starke-Schell Registers and the Miramar Ship Index website sponsored by the New Zealand Ship & Marine Society.

All the illustrations are taken from my own collection, built up over many years, and those where the source is known are acknowledged. However, despite my best endeavours, it has proved impossible to ascertain the origin of many and I can only apologise if I have inadvertently infringed anyone’s copyright.

AMBROSE GREENWAY MOREBATH, January 2009

Introduction

The cargo liner has been described as the backbone of empire. For more than a century it was the main vehicle for transporting general cargo around the world, carrying manufactured goods from the industrialised nations on the outward voyage and bringing back foodstuffs and raw materials vital to the manufacturing processes on the return voyage. It could also, if required, be adapted to carry bulk cargoes, such as grain.

Unlike the tramp steamer, which worked the bulk trades and sailed on a random basis to wherever cargo was on offer, the cargo liner sailed on a regular schedule to named destinations, and its itinerary generally included more ports of call than the passenger liner.

An external feature that distinguished the cargo liner from the average tramp was its more extensive cargo-handling arrangements. These consisted of derricks and winches, the former being supported by the masts as well as a number of tall posts, usually mounted in pairs, which were known as kingposts or sampson posts. The cargo liner also had a greater number of cargo holds, which were subdivided horizontally by two or more between or ’tween decks, hence their often being referred to as ‘’tween-deckers’. This allowed several different layers of cargo to be carried, making much greater use of the hold space. Following a decline in the tramp trades from the 1920s, an increasing number of tramp-ship owners built ’tween-deckers that could be used for bulk cargoes, such as grain and fertiliser, but which were also suitable for charter to liner companies when bulk markets were depressed.

Another description widely used for cargo liners was ‘shelter-deckers’. This term had its origin in an extra deck – the shelter-deck – which was created by ‘filling in’ the well-decks of a vessel with three separate island erections – forecastle, bridge and poop – on the main deck. As enclosed space counted towards the calculation of gross or net tonnage on which port dues were generally based, a device was employed which entailed leaving openings in the shelter-deck – tonnage openings – whereby the ship could operate in either an open or closed condition. The latter allowed the ship to be more deeply laden and was widely employed in wartime when maximum cargo capacity was required. Over time, additional deck erections came to be added to the shelter-deck, predominantly just a forecastle, but often various combinations of forecastle, bridge or poop.

Types of cargo

A cargo liner had to be capable of carrying almost any item of cargo, including the proverbial kitchen sink. Manufactured goods ranged from the smallest screws to household items, from explosives to steel products and from vehicles to railway engines. Imports, on the other hand, included all types of foodstuffs ranging from meat, dairy products and fruit to coffee, tea and sugar. Non-comestibles included raw materials such as lumber, jute, rubber, silk and wool, whilst provision was also made for the carriage of liquid cargoes, such as latex and vegetable oils. These required special tanks with heating facilities and were generally positioned at either ends of the ship or deep in the holds. If cereals such as grain were carried, shifting boards had to be installed to stop the cargo moving in rough weather.

Loading and discharge were the responsibility of the chief officer and posed a complex juggling problem, as cargo had to be arranged where it could be readily available at the correct port of discharge. Some cargoes were sensitive and therefore could not be juxtaposed or loaded on top of each other; in addition the ship’s stability had to be taken into account, which necessitated heavier cargo being placed deeper in the ship. The means of achieving the correct balance was the cargo plan, which was hand drawn, using different coloured crayons, on a preprinted elevation of the ship. On arrival in port, copies were distributed to those who required them, including the the stevedoring company that would be providing the shore-side labour.

Passengers

Because they operated as far as possible on fixed schedules, cargo liners were also attractive to a certain type of passenger, generally those who favoured a quieter and more leisurely mode of travel than was available in their larger and faster sisters, the passenger liners. In the early days, even the predominantly cargo-carrying ships still carried quite a number of passengers, but these were gradually whittled down to twelve after it was agreed that any ship carrying in excess of this number would be classed as a passenger ship and therefore had to carry a doctor. Cargo-liner accommodation was often the equivalent of first class and was generally pleasant and sometimes quite luxurious.*

Cargo handling

Derricks

Cargo liners were distinguished from tramp steamers by their extensive array of cargo-handling gear. Although comparatively common in Northern Europe, harbour cranes were by no means universal and, in many ports, particularly in the Far East and America, ships had to be capable of loading and discharging cargo directly onto open quaysides or into a variety of craft alongside. The gear consisted of an outfit of derricks and deck winches, the former often numbering more than twenty, with several different safe working loads and generally including one or two heavy derricks.

Derricks would be ‘topped up’ or raised from their stowage position before berthing, clearing the deck for working. If ship’s gear was to be used rather than dockside cranes, the crew would rearrange the derricks abutting the holds needing to be worked in readiness for the arrival of dock labour gangs. The most widely adopted method of operation, known as ‘union purchase’, involved positioning the end of the outboard derrick over the hold and the end of the inboard derrick over the quay. By the dextrous use of guys and a pair of winches, the load could be raised from the hold and transferred ashore or visa versa in one seamless movement. This was a skilled operation performed by the stevedores, but things did not always run smoothly and accidents resulting in cargo damage often occurred. Cargo positioned in the wings of the hold required particularly careful manhandling, especially when using the lifting hook and bond at an oblique angle.

Derricks could also be operated singly, in the same way as a crane, but it was not until the 1950s, when new types of ‘crane derricks’ were developed, that this process became more widely used.

Different techniques were required for handling individual items of heavy cargo, such as railway engines and boilers, and most cargo liners were equipped with one or two heavy derricks referred to as ‘jumbos’. These had to be rigged in a different way from the standard derrick, in itself a time-consuming process, and were operated more like a large crane with the derrick gently swinging the load over the side (see Heavy-lift ships at page 12).

Ships discharging with derricks and crane.

Cargo handling was a time-consuming business, so much so that during the course of a year ships often spent as much time in port as they did at sea. The situation was not helped by additional interruptions caused by the vagaries of the weather or industrial action by stevedores.

Deck Cranes

Hydraulic, steam-operated deck cranes were widely used in the coastal and short-sea trades in the later decades of the nineteenth century but were comparatively rare in the liner trades. More flexible than the ‘union purchase’ method using winches and derricks and requiring only one operator, they could plumb any area below the hatch or on the quayside within the radius of their boom. In the 1930s, the German Hugo Stinnes group built a series of ships fitted entirely with electro-hydraulic cranes, but these were essentially for the bulk trades and their holds lacked ‘tween-decks. The practice was resurrected in Johnson Line’s fast Seattle class completed after World War II; gradually the use of cranes increased, tentatively at first, with just a single or two units, but becoming more widespread as the 1950s progressed. Some were mounted on rails and others on travelling pontoon-type hatch covers. Cranes really came into their own following the development of multiple hatches, which allowed cargo to be placed directly where it was required in the hold.

A jumbo derrick hoisting a tank.

Hatches

Cargo liners generally had between five and seven holds served by a like number of hatches. The latter were generally not large and were raised above deck level by coamings to reduce the possibility of water entering in heavy seas. The traditional method of securing hatches was by means of baulks of timber known as hatchboards, which rested on steel hatch beams which fitted the inside edge of the coaming. The hatches were then sealed by two or three tarpaulins, which were secured around the side of the coaming by wedges. The reverse process had to take place before discharge could begin.

This time-consuming system lasted well into the 1950s but at the outset of that decade a new type of articulated steel cover was developed by the MacGregor Company, which had worked on steel hatch covers to minimise collier losses before the war. The cover was mounted on wheels running along either side of the coaming top, allowing it to fold up like a concertina for vertical stowage when pulled by a single wire mounted at one end of the hatch. This came to revolutionise the opening and closing of hatches, which could now be performed by one man in a matter of minutes. Other companies developed similar systems and folding hatch covers became more or less standard after 1960. MacGregor also developed flush-fitting folding hatches for the tween-decks, which enabled fork-lift trucks to be used to speed up cargo handling.

Folding the steel hatch cover.

Another innovation that occurred, in 1957, was the use of multiple hatches. Johnson Line’s Rio de Janeiro class had three hatches abreast serving individual compartments, and this idea developed into the ‘open ship’ concept whereby the hatch area covered almost the entire weather deck. The first applications were in the US twin-hatch Del Rio class in 1961 and the Russian Poltava type which appeared the following year. Triple hatches were subsequently used in many of the larger and faster cargo liners, but usually only for the two or three holds amidships where the hull was broadest.

A Stülcken heavy-lift mast.

Propulsion

The early types of cargo liner were propelled by compound steam engines, but the coming of the vastly more efficient and economical triple-expansion reciprocating engine soon became almost universal. Later, a number of quadruple-expansion plants were employed, but real changes that were to revolutionise cargo-liner propulsion did not occur until just before World War I. They resulted from two groundbreaking inventions that had occurred a decade or so earlier, namely Rudolf Diesel’s internal-combustion engine which bore his name and Charles Parsons’ steam turbine. The latter was first used commercially in the Clyde excursion steamer Queen Alexandra and thereafter in fast naval ships and passenger liners, such as Lusitania and Mauretania. In 1909, Parsons bought the old clipper-bowed steamer Vespasian from G Reid, Newcastle, and used her as a test-bed to perfect a system of gearing for his turbine, which made it suitable for use in cargo liners and other types of ship.

In 1912, Burmeister & Wain completed the world’s first ocean-going motorship, Selandia, a cargo/passenger liner with accommodation for twenty-six passengers for the Danish East Asiatic Company. Later that year it delivered the first diesel-driven cargo liner, Suecia, to Sweden’s Johnson Line. Diesel development was aided by the greater availability of oil in the 1920s. Twin-screw installations were still necessary if high power was required, despite the increased use of turbo-charging. It was not until the 1950s that the use of single diesels accelerated rapidly, as larger bore engines with greater output per cylinder became available. By the time the cargo liner reached the peak of its development in the 1960s, the majority were driven by oil engines, some of which exceeded 20,000bhp.

Meanwhile, the United States had made great advances in steam turbine development, largely for use in warships during World War II, and it was not altogether surprising that the majority of its postwar cargo-liner replacements used this form of propulsion. The fact that most were built with government subsidy for use as naval auxiliaries with extra, built-in defence power probably also had something to do with this.

Other forms of propulsion were briefly tried in cargo liners, including diesel-electric engines in Hamburg-America Line’s Wuppertal in 1936 and gas-turbine propulsion in the Soviet Parizhskaya Kommuna of 1968.

Refrigeration

The development of refrigeration had a huge impact on sea transport, opening up new markets for countries such as Argentina, Australia and New Zealand, which enjoyed rich grazing land yet had populations that were too small to consume all its meat and dairy products. However, the rapidly industrialising nations in Northern Europe were in urgent need of more meat to feed the growing numbers of workers who had left the land to seek their fortunes in the new manufacturing industries.

Freezer plants for preserving meat were operating in Australia from the early 1860s, but nigh on two decades were to pass before the process was successfully adapted for use at sea. In view of the shorter sea voyage to Europe, it was from Argentina that the first trial shipments of frozen beef and mutton were conducted by the Frenchmen Ferdinand Carré and Charles Tellier. The latter’s initial attempt in 1868 with an ammonia absorption plant in the City of Rio de Janeiro failed when the machinery broke down, but almost a decade later he had limited success with an ammonia compression plant fitted in the small steamer Frigorifique, which arrived in Rouen early in 1877, with some meat in reasonable condition. The first truly successful carriage of frozen meat was achieved the following winter when the Chargeurs Réunis steamer Paraguay, fitted with a Carré ammonia compressor, delivered 5,500 carcasses from Buenos Aires to Le Havre in good condition.

The United Kingdom quickly took up the idea of refrigeration at sea and in 1879 the Glasgow firm of Bell, Coleman & Company installed one of its cold-air machines, invented two year earlier, in Charles Burrell’s steamer Strathleven. She had been chartered by Andrew McIlwraith, a Queenslander who had previously inspected the Paraguay, and arrived back in London in February 1880 with forty tons of frozen beef and mutton representing the first successful shipment from Australia. Two years later Albion Line’s similarly equipped sailing ship Dunedin brought the first successful shipment from New Zealand, and thereafter many existing ships were fitted with refrigeration plants and had their holds partially or fully insulated.

Insulation was necessary to prevent the cold air escaping and initially came in several forms, such as flake charcoal, silicate cotton and pumice, but in time granulated cork came to be the most widely employed. In the case of Bell, Coleman & Company and, later, Haslam machines, cold air was circulated by means of fans and wooden ducts, but in compression and absorption machines, a cooled liquid – usually brine to prevent it freezing – was circulated through an extensive piping system arranged in grids on either side or on the ceiling of each insulated chamber. The complexity of the system required additional crew in the form of ‘fridge engineers’ to run it. This combined with the high initial expense of fitting refrigeration and the need for adequate speed margins to minimise the risk of cargo deterioration in the event of unforeseen delay to make these special types of cargo liners considerably more expensive to build than general cargo carriers.

The first purpose-built refrigerated steamer was the Elderslie, built for Turnbull, Martin & Company’s Scottish Shire Line, which entered the Antipodean meat trade in 1884. Others soon followed for the same owners, as well as the New Zealand Shipping Company, Federal Steam Navigation Company, the 1882-merged Shaw, Savill & Albion, James P Corry & Company and Tyser & Company, the latter two later being absorbed into the Commonwealth & Dominion Line, soon to become known as Port Line. In the River Plate trade, Lamport & Holt set the pace and was quickly joined by Houlder Line, Nelson Line and Royal Mail Steam Packet Company. The shorter voyage time of around three weeks from Argentina was about half that taken by ships coming from the Antipodes, and allowed meat carcasses to be transported on hooks in chilled form at between 28.5°F and 29.5°F, which resulted in their being almost indistinguishable from home-killed produce. This method had originally been developed for the extensive transatlantic meat trade, which declined after 1910 following a rapid increase in US home consumption.

It was not until 1930 that chilled meat was successfully transported from Australia in Port Fairy. Earlier trials as far back as the 1890s had brought mixed results, and even five reasonably successful voyages made by Aberdeen Line’s Marathon in 1910–11 using a Linley sterilising system – which kept beef in good condition for up to seventy days – had failed to elicit much support. The problem was eventually solved by government-backed research in the 1920s, which discovered that the answer lay in injecting small amounts of CO2 into gas-tight compartments. The same research showed that frozen apples could be carried from Tasmania and New Zealand by circulating air in the temperature-controlled chambers.

A number of large refrigerated motor ships were built in the 1930s, those trading to Australasia becoming known as the ‘Empire Food Ships’. Many became casualties during World War II, necessitating replacement during the 1940s and 1950s, a period that also witnessed the emergence of more efficient forms of insulation. Construction of these specialised ships slowed in the 1960s but, nevertheless, some fine examples were built, culminating in Port Line’s Port Caroline and Port Chalmers in 1968, just one year before the containerisation of the trade began, with the entry into service of the first new cellular ships operated by the Overseas Container Line and the Associated Container Transportation consortia.

Heavy-lift ships

Shortly after World War I, Norwegian naval officer Captain Christen Smith successfully transported two hundred railway locomotives from the United Kingdom to Belgium in two specially fitted steamers. He went on to design the first purpose-built heavy-lift ship, the 2,406gt Beldis, which was completed by Armstrong Whitworth at Low Walker-on-Tyne in 1924. She had long uncluttered decks, three very large strengthened hatches and open pillarless holds, being in essence a tramp steamer with heavy-lift capability, which could sail to wherever heavy items of cargo were on offer.

In 1927, Germany’s Hansa Line built a series of special cargo liners fitted with 120t derricks; a number of other companies, including Elder Dempster and Ellerman, also invested in special ships of this type. During World War II, the British government ordered eight fifteen-knot heavy-lift ships fitted with three 120t derricks, which were similar in concept to Christen Smith’s Bel ships with large open holds. A number of these were later purchased by Ben Line but their lack of ’tween-decks made them rather unsuitable for the carriage of normal break-bulk cargoes.

In the 1950s, Germany’s Hansa Line was quick to rebuild its heavy-lift fleet, starting with the Braunfels class fitted with a single 165t derrick but, in 1965, after collaboration with the Stülcken shipyard in Hamburg, it introduced an entirely new form of heavy-lift mast in the Lichtenfels. The Stülcken mast, as it became known, consisted of two heavy tapering masts splayed outwards at an angle of around fifteen degrees. The base of the heavy derrick was positioned midway between them, enabling it to pivot fore and aft and serve the holds on either side. Its operation was much quicker and simpler than that of the traditional ‘jumbo’, and it could be controlled by one person, initially from platforms half way up each mast, but later from a mobile control unit.

Lichtenfels was fitted with two Stülckens, one of 120t and one of 40t, and the new form of mast became a feature of subsequent series’ of Hansa ships, whilst specialist ships such as Treuenfels of 1960 employed two derricks that could work in tandem with a single yoke to lift up to 280t. A number of British companies, starting with Thos & Jas Harrison, built heavy-lift ships with Stülcken masts, and Blue Star Line’s Australia Star, when completed in 1966, had the largest single lifting capacity of 300t. Stülcken masts, together with variations on the same principle from other manufacturers, came in many different sizes and were increasingly substituted for traditional jumbo derricks in new cargo liner construction.

*Note:The intermediate ship type referred to as a passenger/cargo ship or combi-liner bridged the gap between liner and cargo liner and carried up to fifty passengers. These are beyond the scope of this book, but a number of those fitted with between twelve and twenty berths have been included, because they appeared to all intents and purposes like most other cargo liners.

CHAPTER

1

Origins and Early Years

Two significant events brought a revolution in ocean transport in the nineteenth century; the first was the introduction of steam propulsion and the second the gradual replacement of the paddle by the screw propeller. Development tended to revolve around passenger ships in the North Atlantic trade, in which competition was fiercest, but it was competition in the West Indies trade that led Liverpool shipowner Alfred Holt and his brother Philip to change direction in 1864 and try their luck against the sailing ships engaged in the China trade. Alfred, a trained railway engineer, had designed a new type of compound tandem steam engine with high-pressure boilers, which proved to offer lower fuel consumption during tests in their steamer Cleator. The brothers established the Ocean Steam Ship Company and built three new 2,280gt steamships fitted with the new engines at Scott & Company of Greenock. Agamemnon, Ajax and Achilles were iron, three-masted ships with the somewhat unusual arrangement of the rudder being mounted forward of the screw. Their instant commercial success resulted in a decision to concentrate on the carriage of cargo, although all the early Holt ships continued to carry passengers for a number more years. The opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 reduced the voyage to and from the Far East by more than 3,000 miles and underlined the superiority of the steamship over sail. Thus were sown the first seeds of what later developed into the cargo liner.

The first successful shipment of live cattle across the Atlantic was made by the European (H N Hughes & Nephew) in July 1874 and subsequently many passenger/cargo ships had temporary stalling arranged on the upper deck. This in turn led to the development of a new type of purpose-built cattle carrier in the late 1880s but the trade declined shortly before World War II, when the fast-expanding United States needed to retain its livestock to feed its own burgeoning population. Meanwhile, developments in refrigerating techniques had finally enabled frozen meat to be transported long distances at sea, initially from the River Plate and later from Australia and New Zealand. Demand was such that the final decade of the nineteenth century saw increasing numbers of new insulated steamers coming off the ways, primarily for British owners.

Increasing availability of the new triple-expansion engines in the 1880s greatly aided the development of the cargo liner, which had become much more substantial and had almost tripled in size compared with the early Holt ships. In mainland Europe, liner companies from Germany and Holland, which had previously concentrated on ships carrying a mix of passengers and cargo, were also starting to invest in ships designed solely for the carriage of freight, as existing ships were unable to cope with the growing amounts of cargo on offer.

Note: An asterisk in a caption indicates the vessel shown in the photograph.

Far East beginnings

The origin of the cargo liner owes a great deal to the early steamers of that great British shipowner Alfred Holt. His 2,072gt Antenor completed by Andrew Leslie & Company, Hebburn-on-Tyne, in 1872 was the last of four sisters, which were two-masted developments of the pioneering Agamemnon trio. She measured 322ft and was