Trip from Trinidad - 1

On board the ship Bayano

Sunday, May 6, 1928

Dear Phoebe,

We have just got on board our big ship that will take us far away to England, and I promised that Grandma would write to you each day to tell you all about it. I know that we have a stop in Bermuda before we actually go to England, so this letter will get to you quite soon, as we can get off the boat and I can post it then. You will have to wait for a several weeks, for the later ones.

The Captain is called F.H. Swain, and he is a very nice man. I heard he was from Sussex. There are going to be 74 of us passengers by the time we pick up the rest in Bermuda, and I haven’t had a chance to chat with any of them yet, so I will leave telling you about them for a future letter.

Let me tell you a bit about the boat. I bought this postcard, which I am enclosing, which will show you a picture of a boat being loaded with bananas. At each of the places that the SS Bayano stops in the Caribbean, they load on more bananas. There are two refrigerated areas in the sides of the boats, and they are put there. We got on the boat last night, but I couldn’t sleep and woke up your Grandpa and together we went up on deck to watch the men loading the boat with bananas. They sang softly while they worked, and it was really quite fun watching them haul each bunch which must have weighed over 100 lbs. I was told that all together we will be carrying 140,000 stems which weighs 1.750 tons. That is a very big bunch of bananas. ☺ Tomorrow night they will load the rest of the bananas from Bermuda, and then we will be on our way. There are 103 crew members on the ship.

I know that this won’t mean much to you, but I will copy it down, and you might tell your brother, Philip, about it. Boys are more interested in these sorts of things. Our ship is owned by the Elders and Fyffes Ltd. line, and they are the biggest fruit shippers in the world. It weighs 6,788 tons (without the bananas). She (they always call ships she for some reason) is 425.5 feet long and 54.2 foot beam (whatever that means - you will have to ask your brother) and holds 30.4 feet deep, poop (I’m not being rude, that is a real word and has something to do with one of the decks) 40 feet, bridge (that is where the captain steers from) 195 feet, and forecastle (I had to ask what that is - living quarters consisting of a superstructure in the bow of a merchant ship where the crew is housed) 47 feet. It was built in Glasgow in 1921. It is the second ship with this name, and I understand that the first one was blown up in the Great War. I will try to find out more about that and tell you later. Anyway, your brother will want to know how it is powered. It has steel twin screws, 3 masts, 4 decks, and is has electric lights, wireless, refrigerating machinery. and is very poshly laid out. I will tell you more about that in another letter.

As far as how fast it goes, (Philip especially asked me to find that out), it has a triple expansion engine with 6 cylinders of 23 ½, 39 1.2 and 67 inches in diameter each pair, stroke 48 inches, 622 nominal horsepower. I don’t know how many miles per hour it goes, but perhaps because our load is so great, it doesn’t go very fast. Anyway, we are not due to dock at Avonmouth, Bristol in England until the 20^th of May, so that is nearly two weeks. It is 3445 miles from Bermuda to Britain, so if you divide that by 13, it makes about 260 miles a day (I think).

Well, I must stop writing as it is nearly time for breakfast, and your grandpa is very anxious to get to the dining room and see who we will be sitting with.

Give your mummy and daddy a big kiss from me.

Love

Grandma Louise