Anchor Line was a great shipping company with a history of 140 years after being established by Handyside and Henderson in 1852. In later years, only cargo-liners and gas tankers were operated after Viscount Runciman and Moor Line of Newcastle had purchased and gained control of Anchor Line in 1965. After 1968, Anchor Line vessels began to fly the original white swallowtail houseflag bearing a red diagonal anchor at the main, with the Moor Line houseflag at the foremast. A smaller version of the Moor Line houseflag was then adopted, which flew superior to the Anchor Line flag.

Circassia and Cilicia

The Indian express trade to Bombay was the raison d’etre of the three twin screw passenger liners under review here, Circassia and Cilicia of 1937/38, and Caledonia of 1948. They were sisters of elegant and handsome appearance with a massive superstructure surmounted by a well proportioned funnel placed between two tall masts with an eye to longitudinal balance to achieve a very pleasing effect. They had straight stems with no pronounced rake, a cruiser stern, the contour of which was taken well below the waterline in a sweeping curve. The rudder was of an unbalanced single plate design, supported by gudgeons on the sternpost and by a massive cast steel bearing where the stock entered the hull. Several bossings enclosed the lines of shafting right aft to the twin propellers.

Superior accommodation was provided for 321 one class (First Class) passengers on Upper and Bridge Decks as well as a deckhouse on Boat Deck, with another eighty Indian native passengers housed aft on Main Deck ‘C’. The crew and deckhands were accommodated above the steering gear aft. There were six decks plus in addition, the top of the house on Boat Deck formed a spacious Sun and Sports Deck of length 189 feet. The Promenade Deck was of length 207 feet and had five of the six public rooms for the enjoyment of passengers, with below that the Bridge Deck ‘A’ (or weather deck), Upper Deck ‘B’, Main Deck ‘C’, and Lower Deck ‘D’ on top of the tunnel tanks. The trio were built by the very famous Govan yard of Fairfield Shipbuilding and Engineering Co. Ltd. on dimensions of length 506.6 feet, moulded beam of 66 feet, and moulded depth of 35.6, and a loaded draft of 27 feet. Gross tonnage was 11,170, net tonnage was 6,580, and they were powered by twin eight cylinder Fairfield-Doxford opposed piston oil engines of 10,200 bhp at 120 rpm to give a service speed of 16.5 knots. Circassia was launched first on 8th June, 1937 and sailed on her maiden voyage to Bombay from Glasgow on 23rd October 1937, two days after Cilicia was launched at Govan. This pair were the first motor ships in the Anchor Line fleet, and were designed for the express service between Glasgow, Liverpool and Bombay. Circassia was the third of that name in the Anchor Line fleet, whereas the name of Cilicia (Yard number 664) had never been used before.

The trio had five cargo holds, two masts and one set of posts with a dozen derricks for cargo handling including a 25 tonne heavy lift derrick, and operated by twelve electric winches. Three big cargo hatches of dimensions 33 feet by 20 feet, 24 feet by 18 feet, and 14 feet by 12 feet were forward of the superstructure, and two aft with number four hatch of 18 feet by 16 feet trunked through the accommodation and number five hatch being 24 feet by 16 feet. The Master’s suite of rooms was on the port side of Boat Deck with the Navigating Officers, Purser and apprentices on the starboard side. Moving aft on the centreline was the dome over the two deck Lounge and Social Hall then a pantry, linen locker, gymnasium, with a swimming pool and changing rooms aft. Engineer Officers and Petty Officers were housed on the port side of Upper Deck ‘B’. The native stewards had quarters on Main Deck ‘C’ aft of the engine exhaust trunking, while the native crew were housed under the poop, each with separate messes. The Bridge had wireless equipment, echo sounder, gyrocompass, and electric signalling apparatus, with radar fitted post-war, and there were ten steel lifeboats under gravity davits and plenty of liferafts. Five of the six public rooms were on the Promenade Deck below Boat Deck.

Public Rooms

Dining Saloon was on the Main Deck and was of full width across the ship to seat 170 passengers at a single sitting at tables from 2 to 10 passengers. It had a modern decorative scheme, with walls of panelled Tasmanian mountain ash with contrasting panels of sycamore and ash burr. The walnut furniture was upholstered in blue hide, with rubber flooring in shades of fawn, brown and cinnamon. A handsome sideboard in walnut burr was topped by a large wooden Gesso wall panel carved in low relief and finished in silver gilt. The main kitchen and pantries were immediately abaft the Dining Room.

Lounge and Social Hall on Promenade Deck was of double height and in the classic Adams style with handsome veneers and cream sycamore wall panelling. The sides of the upper part were finished in quilted maple, together with beautiful and charming wrought iron laylights with tinted glass and small rectangular lighted panels decorated in a leaf motif. A large sun motif graced the decoration above the fireplace and beautiful curtains could be drawn across at one end of this imposing room.

Smoking Room on Promenade Deck was accessed from the Gallery and the aft Entrance Hall. It was finished in straight grained Queensland walnut relieved with Zebrano bandings. An Ancaster stone fireplace with an electric fire behind a wire grill had a marquetry panel above it featuring a tobacco plantation scene. This gorgeous room had walnut furniture covered in hide in shades of red and fawn, with floor coverings of brown traversed by green banding to provide an excellent contrast.

Cocktails Room was forward on Promenade Deck with an excellent view forward through large windows to the forward deck and hatches. It was accessed from the forward Entrance Hall, and the beautiful and elegant cocktail bar was in light Queensland walnut finished in mazur birch veneers. The corners of the bar were curved, and the woodwork behind the bar was of the same high quality, and there were circular tables, small armchairs, and bar stools, with a cold cupboard for wine and cocktail storage.

Gallery was on the port side aft of the Lounge and Social Hall and was a small room with an informal and intimate atmosphere for a social rendezvous with fellow passengers. The room had wall panels in semi-burr ash with contrasting panels in straight grained weathered sycamore. The furniture included settees, easy chairs, writing tables, all in bleached mahogany. The main colours of this room were fawn, brown and red, and the room was always supplied with fresh flowers in vases and curtains hung from the windows to give a ‘homely’ feeling.

Verandah Café was aft on Promenade Deck and was open to the deck and was suitably furnished with teak tables and plenty of cane armchairs and settees. The colours of the public rooms given above were of Cilicia, her exact sister Circassia had differing colours to provide a contrast if an outward sailing was on one sister and the homeward sailing on the other.

The comfortable First Class staterooms were single berth or double berth, the latter had two bunked beds, cane chairs, and two dressers with three drawers in walnut surmounted by a mirror, together with a washbasin providing hot and cold water in between the dressers. Bridge Deck ‘A’ had most of the staterooms, and Upper Deck ‘B’ had staterooms for 91 passengers on the starboard side and 31 passengers on the port side, with a further 22 passengers forward on Main Deck ‘C’ of the Dining Room. The staterooms on Boat Deck together with four special cabins on Bridge Deck had private toilet facilities, all the others used central toilets inboard of the cabins. Mechanical ventilation with punkah louvres permitted each passenger to regulate the volume and direction of the air stream to each cabin. Cabins for electricians, carpenter, chief stewards, baggage master, chef, two cooks, butler, baker, barber, ladies hairdresser, and bar keeper filled the rest of the port side of Upper Deck ‘B’.

Lower Deck ‘D’ and Engine Room

The Lower Deck ‘D’ was discontinuous as it had several steel platforms at various positions along the hull. Refrigerated machinery and stores for meat and poultry, milk, fish, ham, bacon, ice cream, fruit and vegetables was aft of the engine room on Lower Deck ‘D’, and the Baggage Room was forward of the engine room on the starboard side with the Linen Room on the port side. The engineer’s workshop and stores, the tank and pumproom for the sewage system and unpurified oil fuel tanks surrounded both sides of the top of this deck.

The Engine Room was cavernous with the port and starboard Doxford opposed piston oil engines placed centrally next to each other, with the auxiliary air compressors, three diesel electric generators of 320 kwatts, distilled fresh water drain tanks, and lubricating oil drain tanks surrounding them to the sides. The auxil-iary pumps in the engine room were electrically driven except for two small steam driven pumps supplied with steam from a composite boiler, which utilised the exhaust gasses from the main engines or alternatively burnt fuel oil. The greater part of the generated steam was used for heating the accommodation and public rooms and other enclosed spaces. The cellular double bottom extended from the collision bulkhead to within a few frames of the aft peak bulkhead, but not to the aftermost of nine compartments into which the transverse subdivision divided it. The double bottom had various tanks for water ballast, oil fuel, and fresh water, with further oil fuel capacity provided in a deep tank immediately forward of the engine room. The fore and aft peaks were arranged as ballast tanks for adjusting trim.

The rudder frame was supplied by the Dennystown Forge Co. Ltd. of Dumbarton, and the twin bronze propellers were manufactured in Glasgow. Watertight subdivision was by eight transverse bulkheads, the Upper Deck ‘B’ being the top of the bulkheads. Additional smaller bulkheads formed the boundaries or divisions for oil fuel or water ballast tanks, and increased the degree of subdivision at various points along the hull. A deep tank in number three hold was either for cargo or water ballast. The wing spaces abreast the shafting immediately aft of the engine room plus a number of central spaces were fresh water tanks. The tunnel top formed the floor of number five hold, and cargo spaces were available abreast and between the shaft tunnels in number four hold. There were no web frames or side stringers in the holds to give easy handling of cargo between widely spaced pillars.

Wartime Service of Circassia And Cilicia

Cilicia served as an Armed Merchant Cruiser (A.M.C.) from September 1939 to March, 1944. In 1940, she was in collision with the Cunard liner Carinthia of 20,277 grt built in 1925 by Vickers at Barrow, which was also serving as an A.M.C. They were both travelling at speed and were blacked out and neither had radar. Carinthia cut into Cilicia almost to her centreline in way of number two hold, and left her jackstaff onboard. Cilicia was saved from sinking by the large number of empty drums in her holds for buoyancy purposes. She sailed at half speed for Belfast Lough and repairs, leaving behind her a long trail of empty drums. The jackstaff from Carinthia decorated the wardroom of Cilicia throughout her war career as a well armed A.M.C.

While on patrol in the North Atlantic, Cilicia received a radio signal on 25th March 1941 from the Anchor Line passenger ship Britannia of 8,799 grt built in 1926 reporting that she was being attacked by the surface raider Thor some 750 miles west of Freetown. The surgeon onboard Cilicia was Dr. Thomas Miller, whose daughter Nancy was surgeon on Britannia. As no further signal was received, it was clear that the raider’s attack had been successful. Three days later, Cilicia sighted the Spanish steamer Bachi and at 0715 hours sent over a boarding party to investigate. She had in fact picked up 63 survivors from Britannia, and the first to reach the deck of Cilicia was Dr. Nancy Miller to be greeted by her overjoyed father. Cilicia landed the survivors at Freetown, and Dr. Nancy Miller was later awarded an MBE and Lloyd’s Medal for her services attending to the survivors. However, no fewer than 127 passengers and 122 crew had lost their lives during the sinking of Britannia.

During 1942, Cilicia established a meteorological station on the island of Tristan da Cunha in the South Atlantic. The Edinburgh settlement is built on a long ledge on this volcanic island whose cone rises to 6,760 feet above sea level. The project was known by the austere name of ‘Job 9’, which involved the transportation and erection of a small township, the weather station being only a part of the task. In all, twenty thousand tonnes of cargo was transported from Cape Town to Tristan da Cunha. As ships cannot approach the shore closer than half a mile, everything had to be landed by boat from Cilicia onto an open beach and in heavy surf. The work of discharging cargo took one month from 9th May to 9th June as only seven days provided suitable weather for working cargo. A 6d Tristan da Cunha stamp featuring Cilicia was issued post-war in 1969 to commemorate this, and Cilicia also features on a 38p Gibraltar stamp sailing past ‘The Rock’.

In March 1944, Cilicia sailed to Mobile (Alabama) for overhaul and conversion into a troopship. She sailed from Liverpool on 16th December, 1944 with 2,400 troops for Port Said, and by the end of hostilities she had made four trooping voyages carrying 16,035 troops and prisoners of war. Cilicia was refitted at her builders yard in 1946 and sailed from Liverpool on 31st May 1947 to re-enter the Indian passenger trade for which she had been built.

Circassia was converted into an Armed Merchant Cruiser in 1940, and patrolled the following areas during the next two years:-

1.1940 – 10.1940 Northern Patrol

11.1940 – 3.1941 Northern and Western Patrol

4.1941 – 5.1941 Bermuda and Halifax Escort Force

5.1941 – 7.1941 America and West Indies Station

8.1941 – 10.1941 North Atlantic Escort Force

11.1941 – 1.1942 America and West Indies Station

2.1942 – 3.1942 Western Patrol

She was then transferred to trooping duties in 1942, and was part of the third large convoy for the North African campaign that left the Western Approaches on 1st November 1942 with 2,700 troops and 300 crew. In 1943, she was rebuilt as a Landing Ship Infantry (Large) and was present at the landings in Sicily in July 1943, and at Anzio on 22nd January 1944 along with Ascania and Winchester Castle, and at the landings in the South of France on 15th August 1944. She returned to her builders yard in 1946 for a long refit, and re-entered Anchor Line service to India later in 1947.

Caledonia and Post-War Service

Caledonia was the third vessel of this class and was a replacement for the lost Britannia in 1941. She was originally designed to be a much larger passenger liner, but because of the coming independence of India, a third sister to Circassia and Cilicia was launched by the Marchioness of Linlithgow at the Fairfield yard on 12th March 1947. She was completed on 23rd March 1948 and replaced Castalia of 6,715 grt and built in 1906 by Barclay, Curle & Co. Ltd on the Clyde on the Bombay service. The design of the larger passenger liner was later used for the Colonial company of Portugal liners Patria and Imperio. Caledonia was the fifth ship of this name in the Anchor Line fleet.

Caledonia was identical to her earlier sisters in every way, except externally the steam pipe abaft the funnel reached the top of the funnel, that of her sisters stopped halfway, Internally, she differed in that she had accommodation for marginally less passengers (304) and a slightly greater deadweight cargo capacity of 10,417 dwt, 150 tonnes more than her sisters. Later, she had the great improvement of air conditioning installed in her Dining Room for the benefit of passengers while in the Red and Arabian seas. Ceiling fans and punkah louvre ventilation and widely opened windows were the only way to reduce the heat in the other public rooms, identical to that of her sisters. There was a children’s playroom and outdoor play area enclosed by specially designed protective ‘palisades’. A cinema was provided for the enjoyment of the passengers and crew.

Caledonia suffered one serious incident on her 66 outward voyages of twenty days to Bombay. On 27th January 1953, during a foggy night in the Suez Canal with her Canal forward lamp working overtime, she collided with two other vessels and ran aground, blocking the important Canal. She was refloated with little damage and continued on her Indian trade to Karachi and Bombay until she sailed from Glasgow and Liverpool for the last time in late 1965. Caledonia was sold for use as a training hostel for students of Amsterdam University (Stichting voor Studentenhuisvesting) on the last day of 1965. Cilicia had been sold a month earlier for £170,000 for the similar use of a training ship for stevedores to Stichting Vakopleidingen Havenbedrijf and was moored at the Parkhaven in Rotterdam. Cilicia was converted for this role by the Verolme Dockyard in Holland and renamed Jan Backx.

Circassia made the final Anchor Line sailing to Karachi and Bombay on 13th January 1966 under Capt. Angus Colquhoun. She made her final sailing from Ballard Pier in Bombay in February to an emotional send off from all Indian expats and others that had sailed in her. She arrived back at Liverpool on 15th March 1966 with 300 passengers and 187 crew and flying a long white paying off pennant. She then discharged at Glasgow, and made a short cruise to the Western Isles carrying past and present directors of Anchor Line. She was then sold for breaking up and arrived at Alicante on the Mediterranean coast of Spain on 25th April 1966.

Postscript

Cilicia and Caledonia continued in their Dutch training roles for a few more years, Caledonia being towed to Hamburg in March 1970 to be broken up by Ritschers in Hamburg. Cilicia lasted another ten years until she left Rotterdam on 8th August 1980 in tow of Dutch tug Zwarte Zee for breaking up in Bilbao. She was given her original name of Cilicia for this final voyage, and still had her black Anchor Line hull but with the addition of a broad orange band.

The Anchor Line trio could be summed up as very traditional and solid British passenger ships that sailed successfully on their Indian voyages for nearly thirty years in the case of Circassia and Cilicia, and twenty years for Caledonia. They could easily have sailed on for several more years had their diminished trade allowed them to continue.

The name of Caledonia was used again in the Anchor Line fleet for a Panamax bulker of 62,500 dwt built in 1975 at Copenhagen by Burmeister & Wain, and which traded worldwide for Anchor Line until sold in 1980. Typical voyages included coal from Gladstone (Queensland) via the Cape of Good Hope to Hamburg.