We know that Mærsk Mc-Kinney Møller took a direct interest in the Maersk Group's purchase of P&O Nedlloyd and we know that he visited Beagle House in London on at least one occasion during the period of the takeover, 2005/06.

Links to the full press release and tribute information published on-line by the Maersk Group (links at the foot of this page), but we quote here in full one extract which is the statement from Michael Pram Rasmussen, chairman of the board of A.P. Møller - Mærsk A/S:

Michael Pram Rasmussen" 

See also: Daily Telegraph - Obituary

Wendy was one of the members of the Sydney Head Office EDP Operations team and had been involved with the very first OCL service from 1969.  Wendy retired from P&O Nedlloyd in 1998.

We would like to pass on our condolences to Wendy's family and many friends.

It is with great sadness that I have to advise you that on Sunday February 5th, our dear colleague and friend Anton in 't Veen passed away at the age of 54.

Anton died at home, in the presence of his family, after having for more than four years fought his illness with great strength and spirit.

 .

Anton worked for 37 years in various commercial positions with a.o. Nedlloyd Lines, P&O Nedlloyd and Maersk Line. His last position was Sales Manager of the Forwarders team.

.

He was a fantastic person, who throughout his career was loved by his colleagues for his honest, positive, warm and always upbeat character.

Our thoughts are with his wife Karin, his children Patrick and Steffanie, and Anton's family and friends.

 

With best regards,

Maarten.

 

PS: The funeral is expected to take place in Spijkenisse on Friday February 10, 16:00 hrs. We will advise you further when more details are known.

Volume 2 again contains a mixture of video and still images from Captain Welch's time at sea, and is titled The Far East Voyages.  This DVD focuses on voyages between Northern Europe and the Far East on the five Liverpool Bay class.  The story of a typical 'trip' is told with each port call and canal transit marking the various stages of the trip.   The opening scenes include passing alongside the Kowloon Bay (in P&O blue) on the Elbe and the Cardigan Bay (in OCL green) on the way into Rotterdam.  These vessels may be small now in comparison to today's mammoth container ships, but this footage is a reminder that these were once the largest vessels of their type in the world. 

For anyone who has ever wondered how port and deep sea pilots join and leave from the deck of a laden container ship, there is a clip showing a landing on departure from Le Havre.  A second helicopter appears in the next scene where a woman is rescued from a yacht in the Mediterranean and then air-lifted ashore.  

Other scenes include a southbound Suez Canal transit and a dry-dock in Singapore.  The Liverpool Bay being given a fresh coat of OCL green paint while in the Sembawang dock will be of interest to ex-sea and shore staff alike, and the footage taken in the engine room will fascinate anyone who has ever wanted to 'see under the bonnet' of a container ship!

After leaving Singapore, Captain Welch takes us to Hong Kong before we return back through the Suez Canal to Europe.  Gibraltar is shown in the distance.  We also get brief glimpses of a Princess cruise ship being overtaken and then the ss Canberra at night off Lisbon.  Our film voyage then ends with arrival Southampton.

This is yet another excellent DVD.  The quality of the footage in volume 1 was good, but with the scenes in this edition being taken with higher resolution video this one is even better.   Definitely a must for former sea staff who want a nostalgic half hour or so in front of the TV, or for anyone else who wants a flavour of what it was like to be on a container vessel voyage to the Far East in the 1980s.  

 

The sad news has reached us that Erwin Simons, forrmer Chartering Manager in Rotterdam with Nedlloyd Lines/P&O Nedlloyd, died on the 14 December in Shanghai.  Erwin has been most recently working as General Manager Operations Asia with NileDutch.

Our thoughts are with Erwin's family and friends at this difficult time.  .  

A further announcement and an online condolences register can be found on the NileDutch website.

The PONLHeritage group has received the sad news that Norman Arnott, formerly P&O Containers director with responsibility for continental Europe has passed away.  The following obituary has been kindly provided by Chris Holt:

 

Norman passed away in Rotterdam on Friday October 28th 2011 after complications resulting from heart surgery.

 

He joined OCL from Ocean in Rotterdam in 1969 and retired as a Main Board Director in 1992. Born in North London, and after time at sea, he made Rotterdam his home. 

 

Norman’s working life was devoted to shipping and in particular to British shipping. He will be remembered for having fought for, and successfully establishing, OCL as a force in Continental Europe at a time when the British shipping lines were more focussed on preserving their UK interests. His foresight saw the need to establish a competitive organisation in Continental Europe and his legacy was a strong foundation on which volume could be profitably built. His love was the Far East trade. His contribution was exceptional and single-minded.

 

Whilst many will remember him from business contacts as a forceful personality, those working with him were inspired by his motivational skills which frequently were laced with a sharp humour. It is a great shame his stories from his days plying the seas in West Africa with Blue Funnel through to his negotiating days with blue-chip customers were never written down for posterity. Perhaps the sharp humour might not have been appreciated by some people but there was always a story told which made most people laugh. Those who knew him well found the same story was seldom told twice.

 

Norman was very patriotic in a way that might today be seen as old fashioned. He found ways to help British interests whenever he could which was appreciated in a private way by many and reflected his private nature.

 

Norman’s contribution to OCL is recorded in more detail in "British Box Business, A History of OCL" in which he is described as being “head and shoulders above the opposition in a market that was as competitive as it was complex."

 

After retiring from OCL, Norman continued to work but at a slower pace and enjoyed more time with Letty, travelling and playing golf.  His cremation will be taking place on the 3rd of November 2011 at 13.00 hours.

 

Hofwijk Crematory

Delftweg 230

3046 ND Rotterdam

 

 

 

 

PONLHeritage have been given the sad news that Karen Wall passed away on Saturday, September 10 2011.  Karen worked for P&O Containers and then P&O Nedlloyd in the North American IT team based in the East Rutherford office.

 

Karen's funeral took place in New Jersey last Saturday (17 September).

 

Jennifer Bonsanto (ex-East Rutherford with P&O Containers and P&O Nedlloyd) has kindly provided us with the following biography for Karen:

 

Karen Lee Wall was born September 1, 1957 in Paterson, NJ and fell asleep in the arms of the lord on September 10, 2011 in Ridgewood, NJ.

Captain Joe Welch spent his whole career at sea with P&O, OCL P&O Containers and P&O Nedlloyd.  From when he started in 1959 until her retired in 1997, he took every available opportunity to record life at sea in film and pictures. 
 
Having found a bit of time to spare last year, Captain Welch decided to convert his film and picture library into a digital archive.  One thing led to another, and he found himself at a P&O Reunion in Sonning selling copies of his first DVD, Volume 1 - The Early Voyages with all profits going to the marine charity Mission to Seafarers.
 
Captain Welch's first DVD covers the period from his start with OCL in 1969 through to the early 1980s.  Most of the footage is of the Encounter Bay class vessels on voyages to Australia and the Arabian Gulf, but other company ships that were in service during that period make an appearance, including the Resolution and Mairangi Bays, the Strathconon and the Strathettrick.
 
The OCL vessels on the DVD are seen in heavy seas, berthed in Abu Dhabi and arriving in Sydney (sailing under the Harbour Bridge on the way to White Bay).  There is fascinating footage of Suez and Panama Canal transits, and a trip along the Elbe through ice. 
 
This  DVD will be of interest to sea staff and operations people who want a trip down memory lane, and those who are interested in the history of shipping and want to see what life at sea was like in the early days of containerisation.
 
For a review of the DVD and details of how  to get your own copy, please go to The OCL Containerships

 

 

PONLHeritage has learned that Sir Brian Shaw died on 5 February at the age of 77.  Sir Brian was the former chairman of Shaw Savill Line and one of the key figures in the early years of the development of containerisation and the establishment of Overseas Containers Limited (OCL).

 

One of the highlights of Sir Brian's involvement with Overseas Containers Limited was serving on the steering board with Kerry St Johnston and P&O's Harry Beazley that was set up in late 1973 to drive the containerisation of the Europe-New Zealand and Europe-Southern Africa trades.

 

Sir Brian was chairman of the Furness Withy Group from 1979 and was also chairman of the Council of European and Japanese National Shipowners' Associations (CENSA) from 1979-1984 and president of the General Council of British Shipping from 1985-86.  He was chairman of the International Chamber of Shipping from 1987-1992 and was knighted in 1986.  He was an Elder Brother of Trinity House, the UK lighthouse authority and was chairman of the Port of London Authority from 1993-2000.

 

Sir Brian's business interests were not restricted to shipping.  He was a director of the Bank of New Zealand from 1973 to 1977 and Grindlays from 1977-1996.  From 1988 he was on the board of the UK's Automobile Association as its chairman from 1995 until its sale to Centrica in 1999.

 

A full obituary for Sir Brian Shaw can be found at:

 

PONLHeritage is always interested to receive news items involving former staff and company history, but we are counting ourselves very fortunate to have been recently made aware of two stories which are intertwined by involving the same subject - Sir Thomas Sutherland, the great Victorian referred to in the title of this piece.

 

The story about the grave starts in 2002 when John Dawes, a former P&O staff member and SCARA member visited his local churchyard.  John had learned that St Lukes Church, Milland was the last resting place of Sir Thomas Sutherland, the former chairman of P&O Steam Navigation Company and founder of the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Company, now known as HSBC.

 

Sir Thomas Sutherland was born in 1834 and started working for P&O in 1852 at the age of 18.  The shipping company sent him to Bombay and then Hong Kong where he was the P&O Agent. In 1865, at the age of 30, he founded HSBC before returning to P&O in London. He was chairman of P&O SNCo for other 30 years.

 

Founding a bank and being chairman of one of the world's largest shipping companies would have been enough to make Sir Thomas famous, but he made his mark in history in other ways too.  He was a member of parliament and played a key part in the development of the Suez Canal (he was a director of the Suez Canal Company and a major influence on the French and British governments which then controlled it). 

 

John Dawes had spent a significant amount of his time in the Far East with P&O and Swire (he was in Hong Kong at the start of the containerisation for OCL), and was very well aware of the significance of Sir Thomas Sutherland's life and career.  He had gone to the churchyard to seek out the grave of Sir Thomas and was very disappointed to find that its plaque was badly weathered and almost illegible.  John took it upon himself to get this sorted out using his contacts at P&O SNCo and HSBC. 

 

The work to get a new plaque placed on Sir Thomas Sutherland's grave took a while, but John was eventually successful and the replacement was unveiled in 2007.  This plaque reads:

 

 

 

And now to the book... Malcolm Sutherland (no direct relation) was in the process of writing a book - Sir Thomas Sutherland, A Great Victorian.  He had been invited to write the biography of Sir Thomas by Mr and Mrs John Creighton. Marona Creighton is the only surviving great niece of Sir Thomas. The biography is Malcolm's third published book, and his interest came from his research on the history of his Scottish clan (the Clan Sutherland).

 

The book, which consists of 127 pages with numerous illustrations is fascinating to read.  As you'd expect it covers his life from birth to death but it is far more than a biography of one man.  Sir Thomas Sutherland lived through a period of major world change, and this book documents how he played a key role in many of the events and developments in shipping, global trade and economics that took place at that time. It is factual but in the opinion of this PONLHeritage writer extremely it has been written in a way that it captures the reader's interest and is definitely not a boring read!

 

Malcolm says that writing the biography was difficult because most of Sir Thomas's personal papers were destroyed. He was fortunate in tracking down the few remaining Thomas Sutherland papers and some family photographs. They are now held in the Tate Gallery Archives.
 
Malcolm says that Sir Thomas "had a keen, clear mind and a sharp sense of humour. When he was an MP he said that the speech of another Member 'possessed the great merit of considerable vagueness'." How often could that be said today?!

 

If you would like to purchase a copy of the book (which has a cover price of £10) then please contact the author - malcolm.sutherland@btinternet.com