The Tramps

The Stuff of Boltons

The post war renaissance of the company, when the old liberty and second hand replacement stock was sold off and new builds took to the blocks.

Tramping was the game and these were the ships to take Boltons forward into the new era of peace and prosperity.

Ramsay (V) and Romanic (partially refrigerated) were built at Smith's Dock and both immediately time chartered to Shaw Saville for four and seven years respectively.

The name Romanic was a compromise of the Shaw Saville tradition of names ending in 'ic' and the Bolton tradition of names beginning with 'R'.

Reynolds (IV) was built at William Pickersgill, Sunderland. She was the last riveted ship ever to be built by the company at a cost of £527,655.

She was with the company seven and a half years earning £373,953 from 18 voyages, two of which were on time charter.

Liner companies of this time had too few vessels of their own and frequently chartered steamers from other companys to meet the ever increasing demand.

Little is known to me of Ruysdael (V) and presumably she had a fairly successful and uneventful life.

Rembrandt (III) however, was a complete departure from the, by now standard, motorship direct drive propulsion design. She was fitted with a gas turbine main engine which was driven by free piston gasifiers. This necessitated a controllable pitch propeller in order to manoeuvre. Had it worked it would have been a winner. As it was the gasifiers were troublesome to say the least and it cost Boltons £1m during the course of the next 7 years trying to make the system viable. The turbine, thankfully, was trouble free but without a reliable source of motivation couldn't perform efficiently.

I'm sure someone out there knows the details of the saga and I'd be more than happy to publish them.