When he was 21970, his maternal grandmother took him out of school for six months and around the world on tramp steamers.
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In 1955, for example, about a million people worked in New York City's factories, and in its crowded harbor, tramp steamers, ocean liners and tugboats struggled to avoid one another.
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Fiction writers depicted tramp steamers as a way that penniless adventurers can explore exotic ports by being taken on as a crew member.
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They differed from ocean liners which focussed on the passenger trade, and from tramp steamers which did not operate on regular schedules. Cargo liners sailed from port to port along routes and on schedules published in advance.
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In 1930, when the Great Depression struck, the shipyard was closed due to lack of orders. In 1932 the yard temporarily re-opened to build a Tees pilot launch and six tramp steamers, before being closed again.
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During the First World War the yard built the Arabis-class sloop (yard no. 661) and Aubrietia-class sloop (yard no. 666). It also built a further dozen tramp steamers, eight standard War "A" tramps and a standard "AO" tanker.
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On 2 March 1883 the Blyth Shipbuilding & Dry Docks Company Ltd. was registered as a limited liability company. It built cargo liners, tramp steamers and colliers. The fifth ship built at the yard was for the shipping company Stephens and Mawson of Newcastle.
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Chandler was born in Aldershot, Hampshire, England. He was a merchant marine officer, sailing the world in everything from tramp steamers to troop ships. In 1956, he emigrated to Australia and became an Australian citizen.Australian Dictionary of Biography – Arthur Bertam Chandler By 1958 he was an officer on the Sydney- Hobart route.
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In the beginning, the company was given seven tramp steamers totaling . These ships burnt coal, were capable of six to eight knots, and were, on average, 35 years old. The company took delivery of the ships between December 19, 1955 and 1957. The early post-war years were very profitable for the company, allowing it to reinvest in itself.
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Stiff competition, declining world trade, and the employment of tramp steamers to carry lumber cargoes combined to put Higgins' Lumber and Export Co. out of business. He kept his boatbuilding firm (established in 1930 as Higgins Industries) in business, constructing motorboats, tugs and barges, for the private market as well as the United States Coast Guard.
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Tramp steamers and freighters are associated with off-the-beaten track, romanticized adventure and intrigue in pulp stories, children's books, novels, films, and other fictional works. When characters such as spies or resistance fighters are on the run, or lovers are fleeing from an affair gone wrong, tramp steamers are used to slip in or out of a country. The crew of a tramp steamer is often a picaresque mix of societal outcasts and rogues with colourful (or even illegal-activity-filled) pasts who cannot or who do not want to work elsewhere. Steamers are often depicted as operating in a grey area of legality, both in terms of their lax observance of steamship safety regulations and their plying of black market trades and smuggling of goods and passengers.
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Short Brothers of Sunderland built her in 1889 for the Westoll Line, also of Sunderland. Her triple expansion steam engine and two boilers were built by Thomas Richardson and Son of Hartlepool. She was named after Captain Magnus Mail (1858–1916), a friend of James Westoll. Magnus Mail was one of the last tramp steamers to be built with a clipper stem.
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Yards in the north east and in Scotland became dominant. British yards produced the majority of the world's shipping at the end of the century, mostly tramp steamers. In 1913 Britain had 61% of the world market, with 40% in 1920 but this had declined to 0.7% in 1997. Modernisation of the shipyards took place in the 1960s allowing construction of supertankers.
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In 1909, they purchased two tramp steamers (Pakeha, renamed Broderick, and Rangatira, renamed Brodmore) for the China trade and converted them into refrigerated ships. This was the beginning of the Blue Star Line, which was registered in 1911. They set up their own cattle ranches in Argentina and Australia. The brothers acquired the Wave Hill Station, a cattle station in the Northern Territory of Australia, in 1914.
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The Kulukundis and Mavroleon families had formed the shipping company London & Overseas Freighters (LOF) in 1948. Kulukundis entered the shipping industry by working on tramp steamers in the Mediterranean. After the death of his uncle John Kulukundis in September 1978, Kulukundis joined the LOF board. The company suffered mounting losses, and after it had sold all but two of its ships and all shoreside assets, he resigned on 11 December 1985.
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The shortcomings of Serbia's response were published by Austria-Hungary. Austria- Hungary responded by breaking diplomatic relations. The next day, Serbian reservists being transported on tramp steamers on the Danube crossed onto the Austro-Hungarian side of the river at Temes-Kubin and Austro-Hungarian soldiers fired into the air to warn them off. The report of this incident was initially sketchy and reported to Emperor Franz-Joseph erroneously as "a considerable skirmish".
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By the end of that decade Richardson, Duck had built five hundred tramp steamers, other merchant ships and lighters. It had also become licensees for the Isherwood system of longitudinal framing. Richardson, Duck's ships in 1911 included the cargo steamer SS Budapest (yard no. 616) which was later renamed SS Kerwood and in 1918 was commissioned into the US Navy as . In 1912 Richardson, Duck built 12 ships and became a limited liability company.
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Heavy shipping losses during World War I were more or less balanced by new additions to the fleet, particularly the 12 ships bought from the Rankin-Gilmour fleet in 1917; by 1920 Harrisons owned a record 58 ships. However, the inter-war period proved a difficult time. The Conference lines had to content with periodic price cutting from tramp steamers. Trade was depressed and the Harrison Line was hard hit in the depression years 1929-32.
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The last sailing ship was delivered in 1900 to the Chilean shipping company AP Lorentzen Alta. During the First World War the company produced freight ships and tramp steamers from Duncan's slipways. In addition, a standard type "C" freighter and three standard type "Z" tankers were built. Early in the war, in 1915, the shipbuilding company Lithgows (then known as Roberts & Co), took over the Duncan shipyard, but the yard continued to operate under its old trade name.
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The ship had two decks, six watertight bulkheads,American Bureau of Shipping 1922. p. 886. two masts, barque-rigged, and a single funnel. Her powerplant was a 400 IHP, three-cylinder triple expansion steam engine with cylinders of 27, 42 and 70 inches by 48-inch stroke. With her fine, "yacht-like" proportions, Port Victor was considered to be "out of the ordinary run" of tramp steamers and "one of the handsomest" of the Milburn fleet.
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Demand for meat had risen during the Boer war and the export of beef was now the mainstay of trade in the port. After this, he tried his hand at gold prospecting. For a while longer the brothers tried to re-establish themselves in Africa, but an unsuccessful mining venture finally exhausted their patience and they decided to leave and ride the tramp steamers around the world. Stanley and Amyas began their way homeward through the Orient.
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The ORS report was delivered in December 1942. They demonstrated that torpedoes could only be dropped from low altitudes and speeds, or risked breaking upon impact with the water. They also tended to dive after entering the water, which make them largely useless when attacking convoys hugging the shoreline in shallow waters. But most of all they were expensive, which was of little concern when attacking capital ships, but of rather questionable value against tramp steamers.
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The company was later renamed the Reardon Smith Line in 1928 with a capital of £1,232,000. In 1913, Reardon Smith established the Great City Steamship Co Ltd with capital of £60,000, which was subsequently amalgamated with the St Just Steamship Company in 1917 and wound up. Reardon Smith's companies prospered, and by the outbreak of the First World War he owned nine tramp steamers, divided amongst five companies, with all engaged in the exporting of coal from south Wales.
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It initially built ships for the British Government and foreign companies, as well as ships for Furness, Withy & Co and its subsidiaries. During the 1920s it built colliers, tramp steamers, twin-funnelled passenger/cargo liners, whaling ships and five deep-sea tankers. In the late 1920s it built a number of ships for service on the Great Lakes of North America, transporting grain and gypsum rock. These vessels were of the bridge- forward/engines-aft design typical of the lake freighters.
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Each model was mounted on a wheeled chassis, which were then pulled through the water using transparent string. Remote control devices were initially tested in operating the machines, but the tugboats became too heavy and unable to move through the water. Remote controls were instead used to power other devices, such as the moving eye features of the models and some cranes. Throughout the series, the two fleets primarily contest contracts to dock and tow larger sailing vessels and objects, including ocean liners, tramp steamers and schooners.
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The Commonwealth Line began as a pet project of Prime Minister Billy Hughes. While visiting England in mid-1916, Hughes purchased 15 tramp steamers to transport Australian commodities (particular wool and wheat) to export markets. This was a risky venture, as the British government had the right to requisition some or all of the fleet for the war effort. However, Hughes managed to convince H. H. Asquith not to take any of the vessels, so long as no more were purchased before the end of the war.
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Opening of the Queen Alexandra Dock in 1907. Picture taken by Queen Alexandra Frustration at the lack of development at Cardiff led to rival docks being opened at Penarth in 1865 and Barry, Wales in 1889. These developments eventually spurred Cardiff into action, with the opening of the Roath Dock in 1887, and the Queen Alexandra Dock in 1907. By then, coal exports from the South Wales Coalfield via Cardiff totalled nearly 9 million tons per annum, much of it exported in the holds of locally owned tramp steamers.
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Exeter City (1887) of the Bristol City Line was built using the three-island principle. The three-island principle was a technique used in the construction of steel-hulled ships whereby a ship was built with a forecastle, bridge deck, and poop. The technique allowed the economical and efficient construction of ships and was particularly common in tramp steamers and smaller vessels of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The Knight of Malta, for instance, a 1929 steam ferry of only 16ft draught that operated between Malta and Sicily, was built on the principle.
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In response, Austria- Hungary withdrew its ambassador. It was reported that Serbian reservist soldiers on tramp steamers fired on Austro-Hungarian troops near Temes-Kubin in Hungary, on July 27. This report was false.Herwig, Holger H. The Marne, 1914, Random House Digital, Inc., 2009, pp 10 However, together with the unsatisfactory Serbian reply to the Austrian Note and the fact that Serbia had mobilized its army before sending the reply, the report convinced the Austrian Foreign Minister, Berchtold, that the problem of Austro-Serbian tension could only be solved by war.
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In 1934 the yard re-opened to build two paddle steamers to provide a passenger ferry service across the River Humber. In 1935 the yard reopened briefly to build a tramp steamer, which was not sold for another two years. Not until 1936 did business began to improve, and in the years up to 1939, the company completed thirty tramp steamers and cargo liners, and two s for the Royal Navy. The outbreak of World War II saw a revival in activity with 72 ships built and 1,750 ships repaired between 1939 and 1945.
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Many of the ships were old tramp steamers, coasters and the like, hastily retrofitted for wartime service. It is an established fact that the great and much-vaunted Singapore Naval Base had one glaring weakness, no ships! These small craft were soon carrying out sweeps up the east and western coasts of Malaya and the Johore Straits around Singapore Island. From his office at the Singapore Naval Base and through his contacts with Naval Intelligence it was abundantly clear to Captain Mulock that the colony would soon fall.
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Cardiff's first steamship was the Llandaff of 1865, and by 1910, there were some 250 tramp steamers owned at Cardiff, by prominent firms such as William Cory & Son, Morel, Evan Thomas Radcliffe, Tatem and Reardon- Smith. Each day, the principals of these companies would meet to arrange cargoes of coal for their ships in the opulent Coal Exchange in Mount Stuart Square. This trade reached its pinnacle in 1913, when 10.7 million tons of coal were exported from the port. After the First World War, there was a boom in shipping in Cardiff, with 122 shipping companies in existence in 1920.
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The Jungle Cruise is a river boat attraction located in Adventureland at four Disney theme parks worldwide: Disneyland, Magic Kingdom, Tokyo Disneyland and Hong Kong Disneyland (the attraction at Hong Kong Disneyland is named "Jungle River Cruise"). Disneyland Paris and Shanghai Disneyland are the only Magic Kingdom-style Disney parks that do not have the Jungle Cruise in their attraction rosters. The attraction simulates a riverboat cruise down several major rivers of Asia, Africa and South America. Park guests board replica tramp steamers from a 1930s British explorers' lodge and are taken on a voyage past many different Audio-Animatronic jungle animals.
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Web Mulhstock, considered one of the finest draughtsmen in the country. was singled out for hi sensitive depictions of individuals by Montreal art critic Robert Ayre of The Gazette. IBy the mid-30s 1935 they were reviewed collectively in the Canadian Forum (Toronto): "The subject matter of [Louis Muhlstock, Alexander Bercovitch, and Sam Borenstein] is similar: they paint the Montreal ghetto, tramp steamers in the harbour, street scenes, typical workers and members of the lumpen proletariat.... Muhlstock and Borenstein link their preoccupations closely with political awareness, though neither has as yet participated in the revolutionary movement."The National Art Gallery of Canada.
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Servia differed from earlier Atlantic liners in a number of significant ways, but most notably, she was the first liner to specialise in passenger transportation, due to her cargo space being sacrificed for her large power-plant. This sacrifice was viable because at that time, tramp steamers had taken over much of the freight across the Atlantic, while the demand for passenger transportation had increased. Because of her passenger specialisation, Servia is considered to be first liner of what became known as the Express Transatlantic Service. Servia also had a number of innovative technical features which are noteworthy in the history of ocean-going liners.
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To know of and put to use a machine not fully employed, or > somebody's skill which could be better utilized, or to be aware of a surplus > stock which can be drawn upon during an interruption of supplies, is > socially quite as useful as the knowledge of better alternative techniques. > And the shipper who earns his living from using otherwise empty or half- > filled journeys of tramp-steamers, or the estate agent whose whole knowledge > is almost exclusively one of temporary opportunities, or the arbitrageur who > gains from local differences of commodity prices, are all performing > eminently useful functions based on special knowledge of circumstances of > the fleeting moment not known to others.Friedrich A. Hayek (1945). "The Use > of Knowledge".
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Evan Thomas's brother, Thomas Thomas (1836–1911) was a part- time sailor, part-time farmer, and became secretary of the Aberporth Mutual Ship Insurance Society. Capt. Evan Thomas obtained his master's certificate and after eight years as Master in Steam in the tramps of the Baltic, Mediterranean, Black Sea, and United States of America proposed the setting up of a new ship-owning company in Cardiff, the booming coal metropolis. Evan Thomas commanded the first vessel purchased by Evan Thomas, Radcliffe, namely the Gwenllian Thomas. Gwenllian Thomas 1882 By 1884 Evan Thomas gave up the sea, and upon his death at the age of 59 on 14 November 1891 the company he had established less than ten years previously owned as many as 15 tramp steamers.
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In association with Sir Christopher Furness, he also bought the Moor Steel and Iron Works of Stockton-on-Tees, the Stockton Malleable Iron Works, and the West Hartlepool Steel and Iron Works, which were amalgamated into a new company, the South Durham Steel and Iron Company Ltd., which provided the materials to build Gray's ships. In 1900 two more slipways were built, making a total of eleven, and the company now employed 3,000 men, who built 200 ships up to the outbreak of World War I in 1914. The war brought an increase in activity to the shipyard, and by 1918, Gray's had built 30 cargo liners and tramp steamers, 13 vessels for the Admiralty, including four s, and 30 standard "War-class" cargo ships for the Shipping Controller.
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All the Evan Thomas, Radcliffe vessels were tramp steamers, sailing not along fixed routes but to whatever port in the world the charterers wished. Nevertheless, from 1882 when the company was established until about 1914 there was a pattern of trading with the vessels taking out cargoes of coal from the Tyne ports and South Wales to west European or Mediterranean ports, then proceeding in ballast to the Black Sea, to such ports as Odessa, Taranrog and Novorossisk, returning to British, but more likely a continental port, with grain. This became so much the normal pattern of trading that the annual reports of the company constantly refer to the Black Sea traffic. This pattern of trading was repeated for almost all the Evan Thomas, Radcliffe ships with little variation until 1912–13 when there was a decline in the trade.
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This was also supplemented by ship building, including the opening of a facility by Hughes, Bolckow and Co of Middlesbrough. Large scale shipbuilding had begun in 1811, and after passing through various hands, in 1880 the first two iron ships were built at Blyth for the Russian Government. This led to the foundation of the Blyth Shipbuilding Company on 2 March 1883, building cargo liners, tramp steamers and colliers. With a cargo ship under construction, in 1914 she was purchased by the Admiralty and converted into the Navy's first seaplane carrier . The company returned to commercial ship building, but collapsed in 1925. It was then revived from 1926, but after merger with other local yards and in light of the Wall Street Crash and resultant global recession, collapsed again in 1930. Reopened under its original name in 1937, it built various ships in preparation for and during WW2, including the former German cargo ship Hannover which was converted into the escort carrier .
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Merchant Navy 2nd Mate Certificate, 1943 Based on their own experience, abilities and hard work, any Able Seaman was eligible to progress from the most junior rating to firstly take the examination for a Second Mate certificate, then after sufficient sea-time, a First Mate and finally Master Mariner and it was not unusual for a former Deck Boy to become a master. In order to obtain a Second Mate's certificate (known as a "ticket"), a seaman would have had to have gained several years sea time experience either as an Apprentice (a Cadet) or as an Able Seaman, no matter what his background or educational qualifications, either route involved living and working with seamen. There was very little class consciousness at sea, particularly aboard general cargo ("tramp") steamers although the degree of regimentation necessary for maintenance of discipline amongst large crews and the adoption of naval-like uniforms aboard ocean liners did sometimes attract officers and others who were more comfortable in that environment.
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The period after 1945 was a period of reconstruction and rebuilding, although Evan Thomas, Radcliffe, in common with all other South Wales shipowners, was never to enjoy the prosperity of the pre First World War period. Cardiff was to witness a gradual decline in the fortunes of its docks as the export of coal diminished, for Cardiff, above all, was a coal exporting port and its fortunes had been built on the export of that one single commodity. Many of the Cardiff tramp steamers were concerned in the coal trade and the vessels owned by Evan Thomas, Radcliffe were principally designed for transporting coal. The company, therefore, had to look elsewhere for its freight and with the change of ownership to the Evans and Reid group, as a fully integrated company within the group after some years in partnership with Evans and Reid, the Radcliffe fleet was principally an oil tanker fleet. In 1946 the company possessed only 5 ships of its own: Llanberis (built 1928); Llangollen (built 1928); Peterston (built 1925); Flimston (built 1925) and Llandaff (built 1937).
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