The Last Ship.....
There is a saying at sea that the last ship was the best ship. It means that we all the habit of remembering the good things and forgetting the bad incidents. Anyway I was browsing through some old photographs and came across one of my favourite ships of yesteryear the RMS " Winneba", a passenger cargo liner owned by Elder Dempster's of Liverpool. The photo shows her called the "Umgeni" but she was bought by EDs to trade from London [Tilbury] to Madeira, Freetown, Sierra Leone, Takoradi, Ghana, and finally Apapa [Lagos] in Nigeria. The voyage homeward was the reverse and the whole voyage took six weeks with a week in London and then home leave. The ship was like an elegant Edwardian lady - lots of teak, mahogany, brass & bright work - and powered by two steam reciprocating engines with exhaust turbines - it was almost silent as it made 14 knots in great style across the Atlantic Ocean. There were 100 passengers in old fashioned luxury. The Master was Captai...