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The Bolton fleet consisted of three ships at the beginning of the second world war:
with two more on order (both of which survived the war), but seemingly an odd thing to do given the times.
And three ships at the end of that war:
Having lost two ships, Reynolds (II) and Ramsay (III), to enemy action in 1942.
Several other ships were also bare boat chartered during the war from the Ministry of War Transport which were war built government ships.
The immediate post war priority was to build up tonnage and the quickest way to achieve that was to buy second hand shipping, as it had been at the end of the First World War. Despite an inherent distrust of this there was little alternative.
The first two were US built Liberty ships, Ocean Vigil, renamed Ramsay (IV) in 1946 and Samcebu, renamed Reynolds (III) in 1947 which had in fact been managed by Boltons towards the end of the war.
Next the Ocean Wanderer (Ruysdael (IV)) also purchased in 1947, then Atlantic Vagrant (originally Ocean Vagrant and renamed Raphael (II)) in 1949.
The Empire Martaban was also bare boat chartered from the British Government (MOWT) in 1946 for 5 years with a fixed price purchase option written into the charter. She was resold almost immediately in 1951 at a handsome profit.
The immediate post war necessity was to convert from coal to oil. Oil was the obvious choice of fuel against rising coal prices.
It had also become increasingly difficult to find stokers since a coal burning tramp steamer could have 12 men shovelling 48 tons of coal between them per day, plus dumping the ash.
Boiler room stoke hold 'Hell Hole'
The conversions were carried out by Smith's Dock, North Shields, under the eye of the then chief superintendent, G.B. Lockley. Each one took upwards of two months at a cost of £60,000 each.
At the same time the heavy damage caused by North Atlantic war service, plus the effects of poor war time maintenance were also addressed.
An attempt was also made to modernise the ships with new washrooms, deckhouse and general refurbishing of seamen's accommodation.
Tim Bolton, on returning from the war, inspected all the vessels thoroughly and was appalled that such ships had only been built within the last five or six years.
1st Hand
'disgraceful asking men to live and work in such conditions'
Tim Bolton
However, the war-built ships were soon to display chronic signs of structural weakness.
They'd been built in a considerable hurry and it became imperative to sell them off in the early '50s to avoid the heavy costs of hull repairs especially bottom-stiffening (see 1st Hand - Reynolds (III)).
This would then make way for a new generation of ships, the first three being 10,000 dwt ton open shelter-deck, oil fired triple expansion engined vessels, with exhaust steam turbines. Average speed 12 knots burning approx 26 tons of oil per day.
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 rivetted ship ever to be built by the company at a cost of £527,655.
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