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For those wanting to know more about the Blue Funnel Line there is a reasonable range of books on this topic, including those in the photos above and below. I've only reviewed a handful of them, though more might follow in the future.
Company Histories
Three of these books are histories, that set out to record what happened in the company over specific times, and each achieves its goal:
- Blue Funnel, A history of Alfred Hold & Company of Liverpool, 1865 - 1914 by Francis E. Hyde
- A Merchant Fleet in War, Alfred Holt & Co 1939 - 1945, by Captain S. W. Roskill
- The Blue Funnel Legend, A History of the Ocean Steam Ship Company 1865 - 1973, by Malcom Falkus
- The Blue Funnel Line, issued by Alfred Holt & Company, 1938
Travelogues and Life on Board
These are highly readable descriptions of life on-board a Blue Funnel ship as it travels between Liverpool and the Far East. The first three are particularly of note: the first one is disguised but apparently is S.S. Polyphemus in 1907 and the second an amalgam of several voyages on similar vessels in the 1960s. The third is the description of what is indeed a remarkable life, the first female marine engineer:
- The Surgeon's Log: Impressions of the Far East by J. Johnston Abraham
- Blue Funnel: Voyage East by Richard Woodman
- The Remarkable Life of Victoria Drummond, Marine Engineer by Baroness Strange
- Those In Peril - a Blue Funnel Story, by Ian Cook
- Memoirs of a Blue Funnel Midshipman by Tom Effeny
- East with the Blue Funnel by Neil R. Beattie
Reference Books
Finally there are reference books with lists of ships often with photos:
- Blue Funnel Line, A Photographic History by Ian Collard
- Ships in Focus: The Blue Funnel Line by John Clarkson, Bill Harvey and Roy Fenton (below)
- Ships of the Blue Funnel Line by H. M. Le Fleming
- Merchant Fleets 6: Blue Funnel Line, by Duncan Haws
- Blue Funnel & Glen Lines Bulletin: Centenary Edition 1865 - 1965
- The Blue Funnel Line: A Portrait in Photographs & Old Picture Post Postcards by Terry Moore
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2 comments:
Hi my mother was a passenger on The Perseus in 1958 from Liverpool bound for Hong Kong but she alighted at Singapore to visit her sister and carried on weeks later on an Italian ship. Any information about that voyage or similar ones?
Hi navig_09,
The book nearest in time to your mother's voyage would be Voyage East as that's around 1960, but its very much from the viewpoint of the crew, though of course they do interact with passengers. It's about the Antigone but there is at least a photo of the Perseus in it.
My favourite perspective of a voyage is The Surgeon's Log, though that was a lot earlier, around 1911.
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