Books of the Blue Funnel Line - Updated

 

Previously I've done a post describing books about the Blue Funnel Line but since then I've read quite a few more so thought I'd give an update.

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

Let me know if there are any others out there I should be collecting or if you'd like more detailed reviews.

Book Review: Those In Peril - a Blue Funnel Story, by Ian Cook

When I ordered this online I got a message back from the New Zealand vendor: it was heavier than expected and so the postage would be higher than quoted - would this be ok? Yes it was, I replied, but I can see why they would ask that as it clocks in at nearly 1.5 kg.

Those in Peril, A Blue Funnel Story, is the autobiography of Ian Cook who grew up in Scotland and was to travel the world, ending up in New Zealand many years later.

In 1944 he signed up with Blue Funnel and after training was appointed as midshipman to MV Prometheus: it was to be the start of a lifetime at sea. The book describes that life in its main stages:
- the Blue Funnel years, travel between Britain and the far east
- the Malaysia years, first with the Straits Steamship Company and then as a pilot at Penang
- the New Zealand years as pilot and harbour master

Its a rich story and I wasn't surprised to hear in this YouTube recording of a Skype interview that he constantly kept at diary which must have been the basis of this book.

Its a record of a time of much change, the last years before the container revolutionised merchant marine life, turning sailors into components to feed a mechanised distribution system. It also covers the end of empire, with independence from Britain, which was one of the motivations for the end of Cook's Malaysian years.

Intriguingly there is mention of him piloting the boat in which Victoria Drummond (another Blue Funnel old hand) was chief engineer into Penang but I couldn't see any reference to him in her book or actual reference to them meeting which is a bit frustrating.

What was common theme was Cook meeting fellow Blueys over the years and for that company to be a bond to connect them across time and space. But there was also a feeling that the Blue Funnel line changed when Lawrence Holt retired, and Cook decided to leave the company at that point.

During those years he got married three times and played a lot of golf, but that is mostly in the background, as the main focus in on his life as a sailor, ending up in New Zealand as "Captain Cook" (very appropriate).

Its a rich record of a life, though it could do with a bit more dates to tie down when events occurred, and probably more of a specialist than general read.

Cory, Blue Funnel and the Working Thames

An earlier post described one of the main working boats of the Thames, namely the sailing barges. There used be hundreds of these and other craft thick upon the waters.

Now they have almost all gone, but there are still some working boats on the river. One of the main tasks is to take rubbish from the centre out to incinerators and dumps down the estuary.

One of these is shown in the photo above, part of the Cory fleet, heading downriver as seen from Canary Wharf.

But it is a rare sight, unlike that of a crane in central London, an uncountable forest stretching to the skies building the tower blocks of the future.

Random fact of the day: for a time Blue Funnel's parent Ocean owned the Cory fleet as part of an ultimately failed attempt to diversify in response to containerisation.

Book review: The Remarkable Life of Victoria Drummond, Marine Engineer

I got "The Remarkable Life of Victoria Drummond, Marine Engineer" to complement my little library of books relating to the Blue Funnel Line and what a joy it turned out to be.

This is the biography of Victoria Drummond written by her niece, Baroness Strange, but based on her writings, so possibly partly autobiographical in nature. It certainly has a wonderful direct voice as if she wrote it herself.

Victoria Drummond was born in 1894 into a very well-to-do family in Scotland - so connected that she had none other than Queen Victoria as a godmother and Prince Albert came to stay (she gave him some rather sticky toffee).

But then came a financial crash when the family lost their money and parent's their positions. The 21 year old Victoria was told by her father she could choose her career and her response was: "I'm going to be a marine engineer"!

The difficulty was that at the time there were no female marine engineers: it was unheard of for Britain in 1915.

Little discouraged, she started in the local garage before moving on to the Caledon shipbuilders. Then she had the stroke of luck, when waiting at Dundee railway station, to meet one of the directors of the Blue Funnel Line who offered her a place after she finished her apprenticeship.

And so she made her way to Liverpool, ending up signing in August 1922 as 10th engineer to the Anchises, sailing to Australia and back several times. Her signature for this voyage can be found in the archives of the Merseyside Maritime Museum, the first British woman to become a marine engineer.

It was the start of a lifetime of voyages, making her way up to finally becoming Chief, fighting discrimination and Nazis on the way. Indeed her bravery in the Second World War, when she kept the engines under full steam while being bombed out in the Atlantic, earned her an MBE.

With her good family connections came opportunities on her voyages. She was invited to dine and dance with the Governor of various British colonies and stay at Biltmore thanks a cousin who had married Cornelia Vanderbilt.

Less glamorous was being in Vienna when Hitler marched in and seeing him drive down the street outside her hotel.

Full of good stories of a rich life, strongly recommended.

The search for Beckfoot

Of course Beckfoot is fictional, a house in a novel. But many of the places in Ransome's books are very closely based on real places, such as Holly Howe, Swallowdale and the secret harbour.

A number of books have been written that try to identify these matches, such as "In search of Swallows & Amazons" by Roger Wardale and there are some good posts by Sophie Neville from her trips to the Lakes plus the original filming.

A number of different identifications have been made for Beckfoot - for example Belle Grange on Windermere looks sort of similar, but then Ransome was more closely connected with Coniston Water.

Roger Wardale highlights Lanehead and Tent Lodge around Coniston Water, and for good reason as it was this lake that Ransome visited when a young child and again as a young man where he met the Collingwood family - a key milestone in his life.

In the early years of the 20th Century the Collingwoods were staying at Lanehead and befriended the young Ransome. The father was an artist with children around Ransome's age and they become close friends - indeed he proposed to two of the daughters. In the boathouse below Lanehead there was a dinghy which they sailed on Coniston Water, teaching Ransome himself, and it was called the Swallow.

So could Lanehead be Beckfoot and the Collingwoods one of the inspirations for the Blacketts?

The Blacketts are likely an amalgam of people, from Ransome himself as Jim Turner and maybe the Collingwoods too, but they were not in any sense rich, unlike the Blacketts. According to an autobiography, their school and university fees were paid for by a "rich friend".

This "rich friend" has been identified as Miss Emma Holt who lived at the nearby Tent Lodge, which is another of the candidates for Beckfoot itself.

There are other connections: it is said that boats used by the Collingwoods were actually those of the Holt family. This would fit into the background of the Liverpool based Holts with multiple shipping lines to their name, include Blue Funnel (Arthur Holt, Emma's uncle) and the Lamport and Holt (George Holt, Emma's father).

They also had a piano (as per Beckfoot) which the Collingwoods would use and it is said that Emma Holt's high fashion outfits were the model for the GA (not the character of course, which was said to be "polite, kind, mild-mannered and generous"). When the Collingwoods ran out of money during the time that they knew Arthur Ransome they stayed with Miss Holt at Tent Lodge and let Lanehead, so Ransome would have known both her and the house.

This certainly sounds like the sort of money the Blacketts would have had: substantial and related to the sea, to inspire the children with all things boating and allow Jim Turner the means to travel the world to his heart's content.

It is of course impossible to say for certain how strong the connection was. Could you argue that if the Amazon's great aunt was a Holt then they were at least part Holts too - especially if there is a connection between the Emma Holt and the red hatted girls that Ransome mentioned as an inspiration? Or only that the generous Emma Holt, in opening Tent Lodge to Ransome's friends, the Collingwoods was just one factor, along with Lanehead, in the mix that became the Blacketts and Beckfoot?

But it could well be that the original Swallow was a Holt boat, and along with the shipping lines the family played its part in the creation of Ransome's great sailing stories.




Note 1: photo above from the web site for Tent Lodge today which looks just lovely and you can apparently hire it for a week or long weekend. The view looks wonderful!

Note 2: there were to be more Ransome - Collingwood connections, as one of the daughters who rejected him would end up having the children that inspired the Walkers.

Books on the Blue Funnel Line

 

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 two 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

Travelogues and Life on Board

Two are highly readable descriptions of life on-board a Blue Funnel ship as it travels between Liverpool and the Far East. 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 Surgeon's Log: Impressions of the Far East by J. Johnston Abraham
• Blue Funnel: Voyage East by Richard Woodman

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

Let me know if there are any others out there I should be collecting or if you'd like more detailed reviews.

Note there is an update on this post which can be found here.

The end of the Blue Funnel Line

The Blue Funnel Line rebuilt after the Second World War, but the fifties and sixties were to be the last great decades of this company, as the winds of change were blowing.

The most significant of these was the switch to containerisation, which required huge capital expenditure to invest in new ships and new port facilities. That meant that shipping lines had to work together, to create new lines in which Blue Funnel were just shareholders.

Then Blue Funnel was itself changing. It had lost its family connections with the retirement of the last Holt or Hobhouses and become a new life as public limited company, corporate, open to take overs, looking at short term balance sheets and managing risk.

It merged with other companies, spreading its expertise more thinly, and eventually its fragments were bought by a range of other companies including P&O and DHL.

The company founded by Alfred Holt (above) is now just a memory.

But there are many books on the subject for those that are interested, as will be blogged tomorrow.

The Blue Funnel Line at War

At Tillerman's request its back to maritime issues and the Blue Funnel Line. Coincidently the next stage of Blue Funnel's history involved conflict.

As a maritime trading nation Britain is dependent upon its ships, which made them targets.

In both the First and Second World Wars the Blue Funnel Line suffered grievous loss of life and vessels.

The casualties in what was then called the Great War (which started a hundred years ago this summer) were 16 ships and 80 officers and men. The Second World War was worse, with 41 ships and 324 lives lost.

During the Second World War Blue Funnel Line ships saw action in many of the key theatres, from Dunkirk, to Malta, to the North African Campaigns, to D-Day.

Again and again ships were hit by torpedoes fired by U-boats and crew scrambled for life boats. Casualties were particular high amongst engineers working below the water line.

There were many stories of quiet heroism in the small boats, such as how crew and surviving officers protected the ship's master from being taken away by the U-boat.

As Blue Funnel was a truly global shipping line often the sinking was far from land and the survivors had to navigate their way to land, often using basic techniques, such as timing sunrise and sunset to measure longitude (such as for one of the life rafts of the Medon, above).

But they never faltered and played their part in the great effort that would eventually bring both conflicts to an end in victory.

Building the Blue Funnel Line - Ships

The first of the Blue Funnel fleet was an order for three, Agamemnon (above), Ajax and Achilles, and together they cost £ 156,000, which in today's money would be about £ 17m (according to this site).

Initially business was slow but they hung in there and made some good connections - most importantly with the Swires. One problem was that rates per tonne were initially higher than sailing ships, and it wasn't until the 1870s that their costs were lower.

By 1875 the fleet was 14 strong, ten years later it was 28, then in 1895 up to 36: steady and controlled growth, taking advantage of opportunities to buy new ships at economical prices.

There were tensions, with the Swires pushing for more, newer, faster ships: but they were thinking of the cargo they could ship, not the costs involved.

The long Victorian era of stability was not to last, and in 1914, and again in 1939, the company found itself at war.



Photo from: here

Building the Blue Funnel Line - Management

In addition to good timing, the Blue Funnel Line's Holt management team made some good decisions.

Firstly they would hold off buying new ships until there was an economic downturn when prices were low.

This was helped by them being a family owned business, so they could decide to build up and keep large financial reserves.

These reserves also meant they could self-insure their boats, reducing their costs. This in turn meant they ordered their boats to the highest specification and developed their own training programs, which led to fewer accidents and losses.

They also made good decisions about agents, in particular teaming with John Swire in China. This partnership led to joint ventures and development of assets such as company owned docks.

The Holts and the Swires thought long term and knew that good business was also about good working relationships and trust.

Building the Blue Funnel Line - Timing

Setting up the Blue Funnel Line in 1865 turned out to be a very good decision by Alfred Holt, though it was helped by a number of factors.

Firstly it was one of the first, if not the first to use iron hulled steam powered screw propelled vessels to carry cargo between Britain and the far East.

Then it was fortunate that the Suez Canal was to open just four years later, a route that was quicker than round the Cape of Good Hope and easier for powered ships than sail.

Furthermore there was a huge growth in cargo to be transported as China and neighbouring countries opened up and there was a continuing stream of new areas of business. They were well located, with their main base in Liverpool where they were the largest shipping company.

But margins were not driven too low to be profitable as conferences with other shipping companies ensured prices that allowed long term planning.

They also made good management decisions, as will be blogged the day after tomorrow.


Image from here

The Blue Funnel Line

In 1851 my great, great, great uncle, Alfred Holt, was unemployed.  He'd finished an apprenticeship as an engineer in the railways just at they entered a depression.

After taking odd jobs including clerical work he set himself up as a consulting engineer, and was soon busy applying his steam engine skills in the shipping industry.

It was a period of rapid technological change, with the introduction of steam power, iron ships and screw propellers opening up new opportunities.

After working on his father's ships for many years Alfred Holt saw the opportunity to take steam power shipping to the furthest corners of the world: between Britain and China, to topple the tea clippers that still ruled these long distance routes.

So on the 11th January 1865 he and his brother Philip set up the Ocean Steam Ship Company. It would be one of a host of other subsidiaries known for their famous blue funnel.

It was the start of one of Britain's greatest merchant marine fleets.

Book Review: Voyage East

Ex-Beatle Ringo Starr recently made the headlines by saying he missed nothing about his home city of Liverpool. It is indeed a city that is short of admirers, but there is one thing it was rightly famous for, and that was its shipping lines. And arguably the greatest of those was the Blue Funnel Line.

Ok, maybe I'm more than a little biased given it was founded by a great-to-the-something relative, but it seems that I'm not alone, and the Voyage East would be one of the exhibits in my defence.

This book describes the journey by a ship of the Blue Funnel Line in the last days of Britains once great mercantile fleet. There isn't a precise date as its an amalgamation of several journeys - I'm guessing around 1960 - into one, with names changed to protect the innocent.

Not that there were many innocents among the crew, for this book makes it clear the reputation of the merchant seaman was well earned, and the description of the temptations of shore are graphic, together with the risks and fears of STDs.

It makes a great companion to a book previously reviewed, namely the Surgeon's Log. There are strong echoes of this earlier book in Voyage East and I wouldn't be surprised if Richard Woodman, its author, was familiar with it. He seems well read, often quoting the likes of Conrad, just as the Surgeon's Log was frequently quoting my favourite buccaneer, William Dampier. 

In both cases the journey starts and ends in what was the great port of Liverpool, taking in the Suez Canal, Singapore, Bangkok, Hong Kong, Japan and back again via the Philippines and Borneo. The boat has a rich but realistic cast of "characters" from the old man, known as China Dick (and for a reason), the Mate (from the old school - efficient and married to the romance of the sea), to the engineers and deck hands. 

I really enjoyed it, and felt it captured the reality of that life, the hardship of endless watches and loss of roots that comes from continual travel, balanced by the wonders of strange lands and those experiences of the sea worth remembering: perfect sunsets and endless stars at night.

In the end the British merchant navy was to be destroyed not by war or angry seas but a metal box. For the soulless container ship operating under flag of convenience would make the general cargo ship an anachronism.

But there are many that morn its loss, and there are those Blueys still out there with memories of derricks and cargo storage, carrying anything from palm oil to the kitchen sink through storms and typhoons.

And I'm sure they will look back on those days with affection and read this book with a smile of recognition

Book Review 3: The Surgeon's Log

This weekend I've kept my upper lip stiff and my shirts starched while had a spot of tiffin with the natives as sailed from Liverpool to Yokohama courtesy of "The Surgeon's Log".

It was an unexpected delight. I picked it up without great expectations in a local charity shop, but it turned out to be a bit of a minor classic. Its a travelogue, written in 1911 about the experiences of one Dr James Johnston Abraham on board the S.S. Clytemnestra between January and June 1907, and which went on to have over 30 re-prints.

Only there wasn't an S.S. Clytemnestra. After a bit of Googling discovered on the forums of this web site that the boat name had been changed to protect the reputation of its crew. Its real name had been the S.S. Polyphemus of the Blue Funnel Line, as pictured above from the book "Ships of the Blue Funnel Line" by M.M.Le Fleming.

Now this got me pretty excited as the Blue Funnel Line was set up by one of my great-to-the-something uncles, and it was wonderful to get a feel for what life must have been like on one of his fleet. Often there was mention of seeing another of the company's ship in a far off port, and the comradeship between the crews.

There was another family connection, as the doc had to hand William Dampier's writing, which he often quoted. The opinions of that "quaintly pious buccaneer", as he was described, were given on topics from water-spouts, to places like Achin, to the taste of the durian fruit.

Some aspects were less encouraging. The views and character studies of the peoples of other nations would be pretty unacceptable nowadays. Basically there is John Bull (solid, adventurous, brave, active etc), John Chinaman (respected as ok in a hard working way) and then the rest, Johnny Foreigner (misguided, devious etc). Having said that a Google for "cheese eating surrender monkeys" returns over 60,000 links, so maybe we haven't progress that far.

But there are signs his views changed as the voyage went along. In Penang on the way out he admired the white formal dress of the Brit abroad; but by the return journey in Java he was suggesting that the native dress was far superior for the climate. By then he was also more receptive, and able to spot the subtleties of local architecture and drama.

My copy of the book was illustrated with 16 photographs, though the first edition had more. One that was missing, but found on the Ships Nostalgia forum, was particularly touching. One of the ship's officers had a romance with a Japanese girl called Ponta, and there a photo (below) of her and her friend walking down the street, with umbrellas to protect against the heat of the day.

I wonder what happened to the author and what romances he had. He dedicates the book to "My Australian Wife" and my copy was published in Melbourne, where co-coincidentally I should be in a few weeks.

There is a wonderful sense of what life must have been like to have been a privileged European touring the world and getting a glimpse of life of so many other cultures. In those days wind jammers - tall ships as we would call them - still sailed the sea. Opium was not banned, just subject to a Government monopoly.

Life was indeed very different then, over a hundred years ago, in the days when you didn't have lunch - you had tiffin.