British India Steam Navigation Company Ltd.

Richard Douglas Crow

SIRDHANA.


©P&O Collection.

Built: 1947 by Swan, Hunter & Wigham Richardson Ltd., Newcastle.
Tonnage: 8,608 g, 5,057 nt, 8,827 dwt.
Engines: Twin screw, 2 x 4 cylinder 2S.C.SA. Doxford, 5,900 BHP, 14 knots by Builder.
Passengers: 21 1st Class, 30 2nd Class A; 40 2nd Class B, 2,355 Deck.
Launched 8th January 1947, completed 9th December 1947. Yard No.1828.

Sirdhana is both a town and district near Meerut in northern India.

After a varied career, but spending most of her life on the Gulf service, Sirdhana was scrapped at Kaohsiung, work commenced on the 16th of August 1972.

The following photographs were taken on Sirdhana's maiden voyage from London bound for Calcutta to commence her Apcar Service by Richard Crow her Second Officer.


C/EO, Captain Evans, C/O Haji Reid.


Back row unnamed
Front row contains : C/EO, Captain Evans, C/O Haji Reid, 2/O Crow, Cadet.


Sixth along on back row 2/O Crow, others unnamed.
Front Row: C/EO, Captain Evans, C/O Haji Reid.

I joined Sirdhana, on the 29th of December, 1947, at the East African berth in London for a voyage calling at Mombasa, Bombay and Karachi before sailing for Calcutta and the Apcar berth to load for Japan on Sirdhana's inaugural voyage. During the voyage, as per usual with new tonnage, much was made of her arrival in service and Agents, Shippers and Port Authorities alike were invited onboard to inspect the ship.

Prior to joining Sirdhana, I had been on leave and had met up once more with my old friend from cadetship days aboard Australia, Bill Oliver. Bill told me that he was now working in Dar-es-Salaam for the Tanganyika Railways and Port Services as a Marine Officer; he also added that a vacancy had recently occurred and suggested I apply immediately. Not needing second bidding I applied immediately and was fortunately accepted.

On Sirdhana's return to Calcutta from Japan BI relieved me and I travelled to Bombay by rail to join Tairea for passage to Dar-es-Salaam. I arrived on the 25th of June 1948 and immediately took up my appointment as Marine Officer for T.R.&P.S., this administration amalgamated with the Kenya & Uganda Railways & Harbours becoming East African Railways & Harbours, my rank of Marine Officer was also changed to that of Pilot. I completed my pilots training with Bill Oliver and after about four weeks became licensed in my own right. At that time there were many BI ships, both Home Line and Coast calling at East African ports so I by no means lost touch with either the company or my friends, of course my added bonus was that I got to sleep in my own bed every night, well almost.



DAR - es - SALAAM.

(A brief history)


Dar-es-Salaam Harbour, circa 1866.

In the nineteenth century the principal port of what is now Tanzania, was Tanganyika and then was a coastal strip under the jurisdiction of the Sultan of Zanzibar, was BAGAMOYA, an open roadstead port a few miles north of Dar-es-Salaam. At that time Bagamoya was also the port of embarkation for the slaves brought down from upcountry by the Arab slavers. The ruins of the slave compounds are still visible and there are still many mango trees in the area which the slave traders used , throughout the slave routes, spaced at a days march distance apart, to feed their human caravans.


Sultan Sayyid Magid Said
1856-70

In 1857 the Sultan decided to turn the sheltered landlocked harbour of Dar-es-Salaam into a port and trading centre. The popular myth is that he left his chief wife in charge in Zanzibar and took his favourite concubine with him, calling his new port Dar-es-Salaam or Haven of Peace. In fact, although he built a grand palace and other buildings the project did not prosper, the vested interests in Bagamoya and the narrow winding entrance channel with it's strong tidal currents which proved difficult for the Arab dhows and other sailing ships to navigate caused the scheme to be abandoned.

Nothing further was done until the advent of the German East Africa Company towards the end of the century to whom the Sultan granted ( for about the equivalent of £200,000) the right to develop the port and raise custom dues. By now the advent of steam ships , which had no difficulty in navigating the entrance channel, made the sheltered harbour of Dar-es-Salaam much preferable to the open roadstead of Bagamoya as a port. This was amply demonstrated in 1892 when several large units of the German navy entered the inner harbour and again in 1905 when some large warships of the Russian fleet anchored in the harbour in an unsuccessful attempt to obtain supplies from a neutral Germany.

This fleet had been denied access to Suez Canal. It was later defeated by the Japanese Fleet at the Battle of Tsushima.

The start of the construction of the Railway from Dar-es-Salaam to Lake Tanganyika made port improvements imperative. Dar-es-Salaam quickly became a large and thriving port and an Administrative capital. The port facilities were improved by the provision of wharves, dockyards and a floating dry dock. The Secretariat and other large Government buildings were built and are still used for similar purposes by the present Administration today. The present New Africa Hotel, where I stayed for a few days when I first arrived in Tanganyika was, I believe, the German Officers club.

It is interesting to note that, on what in 1950 was a golf course, the Germans had a veterinary experimental station where they attempted to break in and train Zebras for riding and driving. In fact a young army lieutenant succeeded in riding one on safari and a burly sergeant major, at no small risk to himself and to the terror of the locals, drove a four in hand of Zebras through the streets.

In December 1914 the port was bombarded by British naval forces, not a great deal of damage was done although Government House on the sea front was destroyed and the port's signal station, where I lived during my first tour of duty in 1948, was hit and still has a shell hole in the wall of one of the store rooms in the basement. The Germans attempted to deny access to the port by sinking a dry dock in the entrance, this was unsuccessful although the sunken dock still remains to one side of the entrance, and the wreck of an 8,000-ton German ship, the TABORA, is in the south creek.

Early in 1919 the British Civil Administration took over, Government House being rebuilt on its original site in 1922. About this time the Port Department of the Tanganyika Railways and Ports Services took over the responsibilities for the Ports, lights , buoys and beacons on the Tanganyikan coast from Tanga in the north to Mtwara in the south just north of Cape Delgado, of which Dar-es-Salaam was the principal port.

During the period between the wars steady progress was made to the town and port, new lighterage wharves were built and a dockyard established to deal with marine repairs etc. The Belgium Government established a base, Belbase, as a terminal for the shipment of goods to and from the Belgian Congo via the rail link to Lake Tanganyika. After the WW2 a fillip was given to the ports of Tanganyika by the 'Ground nuts scheme' sponsored by the British Government which attempted to increase the production of ground nuts (for their oil content) in the Southern Province, necessitating the building of a new port, Mtwara, and a rail link. It was because of the need for an additional pilot for this port that I was fortunate to be appointed a pilot to the Ports Service in 1948.


Short Solent at Kisumu on Lake Victoria in 1947/8.
With Thanks to Kevin Patience

Briefly, around 1949, Dar-es-Salaam harbour became a staging point in the British Overseas Airways Corporations Princess Flying Boat service from U K to South Africa. A mooring was established off the Customs House jetty and the flying boats landed and took off on the South Creek, shipping movements being controlled as necessary to allow the flying boats the right of way.

Since WW2 there has been a spectacular development of the town and port, with the provision of three deep-water quays at a cost of some £3 million, a modern airport and many other ancillary features including a modern International style hotel. That was the progress up to the time I left East Africa in 1960, no doubt there has been much more since!


Dar-es-Salaam Harbour today.

Early Days of Piloting.

When I arrived in Dar-es-Salaam to become a pilot an old friend and shipmate of the cadetship AUSTRALIA days, Bill Oliver, was the pilot and it fell to him to take me in hand, show me 'the ropes' and give me my initial training as a pilot. I had to go with him on all the ships he piloted, at first to watch and then as I became more familiar with the procedures, to take over from time to time under his supervision. It was necessary, also, to familiarise myself as soon as possible with the harbour, its approaches, lights, beacons, anchoring marks, berths, depths of water and the tidal streams. Another of my tasks, as the new boy, was to work out tide times and heights for each daylight hour of each day of the month. These were important as we were a tidal port i.e. entry and departure depended on the height of the tide and the draft of the ship, also at springs the tidal currents ran at up to 5 or 6 knots in the entrance and vessels had to stem the tide at such times.


Dar-es-Salaam Harbour.

I well remember the first ship I boarded with him, a modern American cargo vessel of the Farrell Line. The bridge was sited well abaft of amidships and to my horrified gaze the bow seemed to stretch forward for ever, it seemed to be almost touching the opposite side of the harbour and I could not imagine how he could ever possibly turn her to port and the harbour entrance.

Of course there was plenty of room, slow ahead and hard a port and she came round as sweetly as you like.

The harbour at Dar-es-Salaam is entirely landlocked, visualise a roughly oval shape, the long length being east and west, the entrance from the sea being at an angle from the north east at it's eastern extremity, necessitating (on entering) a starboard turn of nearly 90 degrees. There were five anchorage berths for large vessels (the maximum length accepted being 600 feet) in this part of the harbour. At its western end a navigable south creek extended southward and provided three more berths for smaller (450 ft) vessels. 'D' berth was a single anchor berth in the middle of the harbour and was used mostly for passenger and other short stay ships but all the others required a running moor with two anchors to limit the swinging circle to the length of the ship.

For the first eighteen months or so of my tour there was no harbour berthing tug at Dar-es-Salaam so ship handling was entirely in the hands of the ship, some were much more manoeuvrable than others. After that the tug Empire Linden was stationed at Dar, which greatly expedited pilotage movements. Also, now that tug assistance was available, a trot of mooring buoys was laid in the South Creek which enabled us to moor larger and deeper draft vessels there than previously with the former anchor moorings. In addition, in order to meet the growing use of oil fuel by the railways, a tanker berth was established at the head of the creek.


Warwick Castle 1951 sailing from Dar-es-Salaam
Sunken Dry Dock in left foreground

Gradually, as I became more familiar with piloting I was allowed to take over myself more and more, but still under Bill's supervision, until he considered that I was ready to be passed over to the Harbour Master. At this point the Harbour Master came with me and watched me pilot selected ships both inwards and outward. When he was satisfied that I was proficient the Superintendent of Ports issued me with a pilot's certificate.


Entrance to Dar-es-Salaam Harbour with Signal Station in background.

The first ship I piloted on my own was an old Union Castle cargo ship, I suppose the Union Castle's equivalent of the BI's 'G' class, inwards to one of the south creek berths. Every thing went fine, we ended up smack in the middle of the berth with 3 shackles of each cable on deck, all according to the book.

The same could not be said for my first ship outward, a Prince Line motor ship in ballast from the first of the south creek berths. It was an afternoon sailing on the ebb tide assisted by a fresh southeasterly breeze. Had I been an experienced pilot I would have known that in ballast and those conditions it would have been a simple matter, with a touch or two of slow ahead and full port rudder to turn her the 90 plus degrees to port to head for the harbour entrance. But I was not yet so experienced and opted to go by the textbook and turn short round to starboard. I misjudged the effect of the ebb tide and breeze so that eventually, in order to force her bow up into the wind towards the entrance I had to use full ahead power and hard a starboard rudder, and then only just made it! A most unsafe manoeuvre as the Captain pointed out to me.

As I suspect happens to many new pilots, after several months of uneventful piloting I went through a bad patch of nerves and loss of confidence, it all came to a head one afternoon when I was scheduled to pilot a BI ship, the Amra, to sea. I was working in the port office and every time I looked out of the window, there she was, waiting for me. At last, when it was time to go I knew that I couldn't do it and stood up to tell the Harbour Master so. At that moment his telephone rang and the moment had past, (you might say I was saved by the bell)! I went off and piloted the Amra to sea, a perfectly normal and easy job. That seemed to be the turning point for me and I started to enjoy piloting again. Many months later I told the Harbour Master about my crisis of nerves on that afternoon. He smiled and said "I know just how you felt, a very similar thing happened to me when I was a new pilot."


AMRA.
P&O Collection

Piloting was not all hard graft, on most occasions it was a delight to be up there handling a responsive ship, especially in the cool at daybreak when one felt superior to all those slugabeds still to get up. Of course there were the odd nail biting moments such as the time I was piloting a handy little twin-screw motor ship in. When the anchor came aweigh the order 'Half ahead both engines and starboard ten' had her swinging nicely up to the fairway buoy. Lined up on the channel and ‘midships and steady as you go' but she still kept swinging to starboard. 'Port your helm' then 'hard a port' but still no response. Finally 'Full astern both engines, let go both anchors' and we ended up athwart the channel with our nose embedded in the sand. Fortunately we were not going too fast and by heaving in on the anchors and astern on the engines she came off with no trouble. It transpired that her steering gear was electrically controlled and that the 3rd. Officer, when testing the controls, had simply forgotten to switch it on.

Such incidents were more than off set by the many moments of light relief.

Once, piloting an American ship to sea, we had just got started and heading for the entrance when a very large and very drunk seaman arrived on the bridge escorting a very small and equally drunk shipmate, saying "Tich here hasn't done any work today he must do his trick at the wheel". Fortunately the Captain was even larger than the large seaman, he merely walked slowly towards him and when their stomachs touched kept right on walking so that the seaman was slowly forced off the bridge, much, I might say, to my relief.

On another occasion, bringing a ship out of the south creek, as soon as the main engines were started the steering engine packed up and we could not steer. After several fruitless attempts I was able to drop the anchor in a vacant berth while the engineers investigated. After a while it was reported to be all well, apparently, or so I was told, they had been working on the steering engine in port and had somehow put the piping back crossed so that instead of pumping steam in it sucked it out. Whatever, the steering gear now worked and I was able to take her to sea, and glad to be rid of her! I was always a bit dubious of the explanation given and put it to the Mistri Sahibs on the BI Website who were unanimous in thinking it rather phoney too. As one said, it's difficult enough to put the pipes back the right way round, it would be practically impossible to put them back crossed! The consensus of opinion was that the steam pressure was too low so that the main engines used all that was available leaving none for the more remote steering engine. Perhaps the duty Engineer had not raised enough steam pressure and was trying to pass the buck to another, possibly more junior colleague on day work.


Mantola

Another occasion involved that well-known B.I. character Captain Claude Fellers. His ship, the Mantola was one of two that had arrived during the night and both required a pilot to enter at daybreak. The other was a collier fully laden with coal for the railways. I was duty pilot and had to call in the stand by pilot Bill Oliver to do one of them. As stand by he had the choice and naturally chose the easier and well-known Mantola, leaving me the collier. She, because of her deep draft had to enter at the very top of high water, which was at daybreak that day. Capt. Fellers, a very experienced shipmaster and familiar with the port had anchored close to the fairway buoy and when he saw the pilot boat approaching was weighing anchor ready to move in. You can imagine his chagrin when Bill told him he had to wait and allow a dirty old collier in ahead of him. As I steamed slowly past I was surprised to see Claude on Mantola's bridge give me a wave, but I gaily waved back. Later, in the office, I commented on this to Bill, "He was not waving" replied Bill, "he was shaking his fist at you and when you waved back we all thought he would do himself a mischief."


Dawn over Dar-es-Salaam, Customs Jetty in foreground.

Around 1949/50 the British Airways Princess Flying Boat service between U K and S. Africa landed at Dar-es-Salaam. A mooring was laid for the flying boats off the Customs Jetty, which landed and took off along the South Creek. I well remember waiting on the bridge of a ship in the creek until the aircraft had taken off before leaving our moorings. By the time it had reached us it had gained height to about the level of our bridge and in my minds eye it seems as if I could have reached out and touched it's wing tip as it roared by on full throttle.

Towards the end of my tour of duty another ex BI officer, Dudley Wash, his last ship being LANDAURA as 2/0, was scheduled to relieve me. His first tour in East Africa had been in command of the Administrations ship LIEMBA on Lake Tanganyika so he had no piloting experience and I had to train him, as Bill Oliver had had to train me.

We were both very similar in appearance and when in pilot’s uniform were real look alikes. In fact one Captain said he had never before been piloted by two brothers (I don't know which of us felt the most insulted!) and once, during a period of beer rationing, Stewarts Stores, where we both shopped, refused Dudley his ration saying that he had had it. I had to go in with him to prove that there were two of us.


LEICESTERSHIRE.

Eventually our leave arrived and we sailed for home in the Bibby Lines LEICESTERSHIRE on charter to the B. I. In those days ones leave did not commence until arrival in the U K, which meant a pleasant three weeks sea voyage as part of ones tour of duty. Nowadays, with the advent of air travel, that pleasant interlude is a thing of the past.


Hippos in her garden et al.

One of the principal reasons for my leaving the B.I. and taking up piloting was so that my wife, Bonkie, and I could enjoy a settled home life together. That was fine from my point view but I have since often wondered what my wife must have thought about giving up all the urban amenities of West Kensington to come and live in what amounted to rural East Africa.


BONKIE AND VELVET

As I was the junior pilot we were housed in the Signal Station flat on the other side of the entrance to the harbour so that, although we could see the bright lights of Dar-es-Salaam across the water we were cut off once the ferry had stopped running at dusk. Our nearest neighbour on that side was a retired Colonel some two miles down the road towards Mjimwema, who had recently had his dog snatched from the verandah by a leopard!




SIGNAL STATION FLAT

The Signal Station, built by the Germans at the beginning of the century, had no mains power, light or water and, of course, in those days there was no air conditioning so that the Aladdin kerosene pressure lamp made the room even hotter.


SIGNAL STATION 1948

Our African cook cooked on a kuni (wood) fired Dover stove. We did buy a Valor oil cooker for my wife but it was not very successful as the sea breezes kept causing it to blackout. We had no refrigerator either until the last year of my tour when the PWD were able to provide us with an Electrolux kerosene refrigerator which was a great boon.


ALI HOUSEBOY 1948

On the other hand the Signal Station was sited in a beautiful position overlooking the harbour and the entrance channel with it's own private beach. While it was handy for my piloting duties I also had to keep an eye on the ferry to the mainland nearby with it's occasional problems such as when a car ran off the pontoon into the harbour on the evening I was due to take my wife out for our anniversary dinner.

The private beach also had it's flip side, being Government, my wife's friends in the Education Department sometimes asked her to host a beach party for the teachers and children which entailed an anxious afternoon for her counting heads to make sure none had gone missing.

In those days, with no TV Video's and such like modern gadgets we had to make our own entertainment, which often were small dinner parties for our friends, on a reciprocal basis over the months, with a dance at the Club in between, these were the usual diversions.

At the end of dinner it was customary for the Ladies to retire to the bedrooms for nose powdering etc. while we men folk went into the garden to water Africa.

I recall one such party at the Signal Station. When the men were out in the garden, frantic screams were heard from the ladies bedroom, rushing back to see what was wrong, we found the Ladies clustered round the washbasin pointing to a little black hand with yellow spots poking through the grille of the overflow drain. Investigation shewed that the overflow pipe outside was open to the ground and a little frog had climbed up the pipe and was only trying to get out at the top.

One Sunday afternoon I decided to take our little harbour boat (called Sara Jane after a favourite niece) up the south creek to examine the leading beacons at the head of the creek for possible maintenance and painting. It being a fine pleasant day my wife came too with the makings for a picnic. On the way up the creek, my wife placidly knitting and I smoking my pipe and minding my own business, the Cox' swain suddenly gave an exclamation and the boat veered off sharply. Looking up to see what was going on I found myself staring, at very short range, into the eyes of three large hippos in the water. Fortunately they took no action and we were able to carry on.




DAR-ES-SALAAM HARBOUR

The following Monday morning I sent a working party off to paint the beacons. That evening about sunset a very wet and bedraggled working party reported back. They too had met the hippos but had not been so lucky as we were on Sunday, their boat was overturned and they were forced to walk back as best they could overland.

The following Sunday, having no early shipping movement, I had a lie in and about 7 am let the dogs out. Almost immediately there was a great deal of barking and kerfuffle, the biggest, Sam, a spaniel guest who was staying with us while his owners were on leave, shot back in and under the bed, Velvet, our own dachshund, came in and stood close behind me while Davy Jones, a cocky little Sealyham, another guest, stayed barking at the foot of the steps.


VELVET

Thinking an African fishing boat had stopped off on our Signal Station beach to sort out their nets after a nights fishing as they sometimes did I went down just in time to see a large hippo take off into the channel and head for the mangrove trees.

Monday morning and my job was to service the outer channel leading lights. It being low water I landed from our boat at the edge of the reef and waded to the nearest beacon. On returning I discovered that my boat had moved quite a long way off and, on being called for, kept replying 'kiboko' 'kiboko' the Swahili for hippo. Swearing to my self I started towards the edge of the reef when, to my great astonishment and no little alarm a hippo rose up out of the water at the edge of the reef right in front of me. You can imagine I changed course very rapidly to where my boat had gone.

That afternoon, piloting an American Robin Line vessel to sea I told the Captain that there was a hippo in the channel just about where we were. "Ah Gee pilot" he replied, "I guess that is just another of your East African yarns." But, right on cue, disturbed by the beat of the ships propeller the hippo rose up at the edge of the reef as we passed. I refrained from commenting!

The Government's game wardens told us that it was most unusual for hippos to be in the harbour, they put it down to an exceptional dry season with the hippos following the failing fresh water streams until they ended up in the harbour to keep cool. They were not usually dangerous, only if they had young with them or their retreat was cut off.


DAR-ES-SALAAM HARBOUR

Personally, with hindsight, I am inclined to think that my wife, Bonkie, might have had something to do with it as well as any dry season. She seemed to attract more than her fair share of wild life stories!

Apart from hippos in her garden, she had only been out a few weeks before a lion was sighted near the signal station and she was told to stay indoors until the all clear was given.

And then a large male baboon came to stay one Friday evening. We were told to ignore him and avoid eye contact as that might lead to a dangerous confrontation. An uneasy weekend ensued but then, fortunately, he took the hint and left on Monday morning as mysteriously as he had arrived.



One day we had a lunch engagement in Dar and I sent a boat over to the signal station for her at the agreed time. She was almost an hour late arriving and explained that the delay was because Kombo, the head signalman had insisted she remain shut up in her flat while he and the other boys, with much excited shouting, caught and killed a particularly venomous snake. Andy, the Harbourmaster, commented "Oh, they say all snakes are kali (bad), that's just Africa". Afterwards, when we were alone, Bonkie was quite indignant and said "it's all very well for Andy to say that's Africa, but it WAS a bad snake, after they had killed it they cut off it's head and then buried the two parts separately and far apart because, they said, if they didn't the two would join up at sunset, come alive again and chase them for killing it."

The Mumiani were something else again. One morning our kitchen Toto (boy), who lived in a village just down the road, failed to turn up for work. On enquiry my wife was told it was because he was afraid of the MUMIANI. My Swahili was not very good, Bonkie's was better but not much, fortunately Kombo spoke fair English, from all sources we gathered that the Mumiani were bloodsuckers, a sort of East African Dracula legend, that stemmed from the 16th Century era of the Portuguese in East Africa. The explanation of all the fuss, it later transpired, was that the Red Cross in conjunction with the Sewa Haji native hospital had launched a drive for blood donors, hence the bloodsuckers. We could not persuade our superstitious village boy otherwise, however, and remained totoless until it was over.


HEADSIGNALMAN KOMBO and HIS GRAND-DAUGHTER TATU 1948

Another of Bonkie's wild life adventures took place during our next tour of duty when I was pilot I/C Tanga.

She had been ill and went to convalesce in the cooler climate of the Lawns Hotel at the up country hill station of Lushoto.

The Lawns, like most traditional East African hotels of the time, had a main building of dining room, lounges, bars etc. but the guests rooms were en suite 'bandas' scattered about the grounds. My wife, being a convalescent, was given a quiet secluded banda where she lived quite happily with our dog Velvet. One evening she opened the door to allow the dog out for it's final run before retiring but Velvet refused to go out and, with her hair on end, took refuge under the bed. To see what was wrong my wife went out and seeing a few yards away what she thought was a large 'ridgeback', or lion dog as they were called, stepped forward and indignantly shooed it away. Imagine her surprise when it turned and looked at her over its shoulder and she realised it was not a lion dog at all but a real full-blooded lioness. She very quickly joined her dog, not under the bed, but in the rather dubious safety of her room. When I visited the next weekend the local game warden told me that it was the first time for some fifteen years that they had lions up in the hills at Lushoto.

Another aspect of life at the Signal Station was that we had a first aid box to deal with the occasional cuts and bruises sustained by the signal men, boat boys and ferry staff, Bonkie usually dealt with that sort of thing as she was on the spot and in consequence was regarded by all the staff as a sort of universal mother under the name of Mama Mem Sahib. At first there was the occasional faux pas, for example when Ali our houseboy reported his wife had a bad cough and was given some cough mixture for her. He misunderstood my wife's instructions in her elementary Swahili and took the mixture himself, next day saying that it was mzuri sana (very good), and his wife's cough was much better!

After the amalgamation of the three railway systems into the East African Railways and Harbours, Dar-es-Salaam was often referred to by those at Headquarters in the bigger port of Mombasa as "The sleepy hollow." Nevertheless we always looked back on our first tour in Dar as one of our happiest.

An Eyewitness Account of the Loss of the SLEMMESTAD by Fire off Dar-es-Salaam on 27th. March 1951.
By Pilot Richard Crow.

SLEMMESTAD.


Slemmestad on Fire, painting by Richard Crow

The SLEMMESTAD , a Norwegian cargo vessel, was built in 1928 by Burmeister and Wain at Copenhagen for A.F. Klaveness & Co. A/S. She was powered by an early type of diesel engine.

When I boarded to pilot her to sea she was lying to a single anchor in Dar-es-Salaam harbour. As the anchor came aweigh she was facing the entrance so that only one engine movement was necessary, "half ahead." The engine started with a great clatter of bangs and backfires, blowing smoke rings up the funnel and I remember saying, "My goodness, Captain, I don't like the sound of your engines" to which he replied "It's all right Pilot, they are always like this."

I disembarked as usual at the Fairway buoy and returned home but had no sooner got in my bath when the duty signalman telephoned through to say that the ship that had just left port was on fire.

After alerting the Harbourmaster I turned out the pilot boat's crew and set off to see what assistance we could give.

The Slemmestad had been southbound so that by the time we arrived the northerly current had swept her back to almost abreast of the port.

We learnt afterwards that the fire was caused by a fuel pipe fracturing and spraying burning oil around engine room which had to be evacuated, in consequence it was not possible to start the pumps for the fire hoses and the fire spread rapidly and unchecked to the adjoining cargo compartments.

She was carrying general cargo, much of which was highly combustible including 400 tons of safety matches in the 'tween decks and Bitumen in 40 gallon drums on deck.

By the time we arrived she was well alight, fore and aft and the drums of bitumen on the fore deck were exploding with the heat and throwing great gouts of burning bitumen into the air and overside rather like gigantic "Roman Candle" fireworks.

The crew had managed to rig a makeshift accommodation ladder well forward near the break of the fo'c's'le head and were all waiting on it and I was able to tuck the pilot boat in under the shelter of the bow so that the burning bitumen was falling into the sea clear of us. It looked horrendous and was hot but the pilot boat was in no real danger and we were able to reach the ladder and embark all the crew on it, including the Captain and his wife.

After safely backing off it was discovered that six of the crew were not on the pilot boat but were said to have escaped over the stern on a liferaft.

By this time the port tug "Empire Linden" had arrived with the Port Manager and Harbourmaster onboard. The Captain, Chief Officer and Chief Engineer were transferred to the tug and I was instructed to land the other survivors, including two engine room crew who had been injured and required hospitalisation, refuel the pilot boat and return as soon as possible to search for the missing liferaft with the six missing crewmen.

By the time of the pilot boats return, about midnight, the tug had managed to get a line aboard the burning ship and had towed her to a position just north of the port where she had been beached and was now blazing furiously aided by a consignment of oxyacetylene gas cylinders which were exploding sporadically like 12 pdr. gun shots.

We then commenced a search of the Zanzibar Channel for the missing liferaft which continued, unsuccessfully, until 11.30 the next morning when the pilot boats engine broke down. It was ironical that, only some half an hour later, an inward bound Arab dhow found them about a mile ahead of us and carried them safely into Dar-es-Salaam. The pilot boat was later towed, ignominiously, back by one of the small harbour TID tugs.


TID Tug

The SLEMMESTAD was, of course, a total constructive loss. She burned on the beach for many days and people drove from up country and miles around to park on the cliff top to look. After dusk she was an amazing sight, the whole hull glowed red hot with the beams and frames shewing through like the ribs of a skeleton.

I was particularly sorry for the Captain, it was, I believe, his first voyage in command and, through no fault of his own, had lost his ship. Fortunately no lives were lost and that must have been some consolation to him.

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