A ‘C2’ Cargo Ship

After accepting an offer to study engineering in the United States, I gave notice to the management of the Union Castle Line and after completing one further voyage with the line as second officer on the Rochester Castle I found myself beached for several months as some business friends of my father tried to find me an inexpensive berth on one of the ships which regularly brought paper to the UK. It did not take long and soon I was travelling to Liverpool to join a C2 cargo ship, the American Harvester of the US Lines and to sign on as a supernumary. She had just finished discharging including reels of paper from mills in the Southern States and was returning empty to Savannah in Georgia to take on another load.