Rare Visitor To Port

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31117, 21 July 1966, Page 7

Rare Visitor To Port

The visit of a Bibby Line vessel to Lyttelton is sufficiently rare. "Hie six-year-old cargo liner Cheshire, now discharging United Kingdom cargo under a Shaw Savin charter, is one of nine vessels owned by Bibby*s noted for their Burma trade. The company was founded at Liverpool in 1807 by father and son. and the Bibby Line was established as a shipping line in 1827. Although the strongly entrenched passenger trade between Britain and Burma disappeared after Burmese independence, four modern cargo passenger liners, each carrying 12, still maintain a connexion.

Captain A. E. Young, master of the Cheshire, said that Bibby*s still carried twothirds of Ceylon’s annual tea output for British markets. Although Bibby*s have dwindled, it was hoped to have 23 ships in service by 1972, Captain Young said. Apart from the Burmese trade, most of the vessels were engaged in charter work. Of five ships now building, two were to be bulk carriers of 78,000 tons. Captain Young said that a number of people in New Zealand recalled the famous Bibby four-masted, one class passenger liners on the United Klngdom-Burma run. Considered to be among the

most graceful and attractive vessels in the British Merchant Service, they included, the Derbyshire, Staffordshire, Shropshire, Worcestershire and earlier Cheshire. Each vessel carried approximately 283 passengers and took about two months and 10 days on a round trip. Two famous Bibby ships, both troop ships, have been sold. They are the Oxfordshire, which is now the Fairstar owned by Sitmar, and the Devonshire, now the school ship Devonia owned by the British India Steam Navigation Company. The scope of the company’s charter trade was today enormous, Captain Young said. It embraced most of the world, including the Great Lakes.

As master of his present ship, he had carried cargo from China to Cuba at the height of the Cuban uprising. In doing so, although under charter, he was confronted with a two-headed problem for he had to contend with the pro-Castro Cubans and the anti-Castro Cubans.

The Cheshire was the only vessel to sail from Britain for New Zealand during the recent seamen’s strike, Captain Young said. She has an Asiatic crew, European officers and quartermasters and, because she had signed on four days before the strike began, she was allowed to leave Liverpool for Wellington with general cargo.

Upon completion of discharge at Lyttelton, the

Cheshire will end her charter and is expected to sail about Monday for Queensland to load sugar for St John’s, New Brunswick. A 16-knot motor vessel, she is comfortably appointed and air-conditioned. Captain Yeung, who served in the Royal Naval Reserve in the Second World War with the rank of commander, said that he had enjoyed his 32 years of service with Bibby’s.