Bulkers

These were the final vessels to be ordered and operated by Bolton Steam Shipping Company which signalled the end of an era.

It certainly ended when the elegant naming system of artists with the initial 'R' was changed for the final two ships to that of spelling an American millionaire's name backwards and I've deliberately not included those ones.

The end of an era indeed!

These ships also resurrected the original Bolton hull colour scheme of light grey and were the new breed of tramps

Ribera spent much of her life trading between the US Gulf and Japan. She loaded grain from several Mississippi ports for ports in Japan such as Kawasaki, Chiba, Kobe. She nearly always returned in ballast, a reflection of the cost of fuel in those days!

Rossetti, Reynolds and Rubens were 'geared bulkers' and, as such, could find themselves in some of the more remote ports that had no loading or discharge facilities (mainly the latter). The simple but antiquated 'Union Purchase' derricks of Rossetti and Reynolds being replaced by, no doubt overly complex, French electric jib cranes (16 tons@<>80ft).

Having said that, looking after the 30 odd Ward Leonard controlled winches and associated contactors for the derricks was no mean feat!

They were all built to maximise the size limitations of the St Lawrence Seaway and regularly took grain cargos from ports all around the Great Lakes to Europe, Russia and the Baltic ports. Bagged crystallised pig urea from Poland to Tsingtao, China was one memorable deviation from this trade, dubbed at the time as -

"Taking the piss out of Poland"

This was all loaded in 25kg bags and stacked by hand. The unloading in China was also by hand and took a month!

Steel coils was also another cargo frequently carried from Japan to various ports around the world. This was always a fairly lengthy operation with trucks bringing two at a time and wooden sea fastenings being fitted as they were loaded.

Photographs of Ribera loading coils courtesy of David Knight