The long established Henderson Line of Glasgow produced some very fine combined passenger and cargo-liners in the inter-war years, starting with Amarapoora and Pegu of 1920/21, then the three ship series of Kemmendine, Sagaing and Yoma in service between 1921 and 1928, and ending with Prome and Salween of 1937 and 1938. They were very similar in appearance to the smaller anchor Line of Glasgow liners engaged in the Indian and Eastern trade, but could be distinguished by their all grey masts and derricks. They traded to Burma and were named after forts, rivers and places on the great Irrawaddy river, indeed Henderson Line had first begun trading in the area in 1865 with river craft owned by the Irrawaddy Flotilla Company on this wide and fast flowing river. The deep sea ships carried manufactured goods outwards and rice, paddy (rice in the husk), tapioca, teak, cotton, blocks of jade, lacquerware, silk, cane sugar ‘jaggery’, tamarind, woven mats, tobacco, timber, precious stones, native products, and oil cake and oil products homewards.

‘Paddy’ Henderson, as the line was affectionately known, had first entered the New Zealand trade in 1857, and then formed Albion Line in 1864, and along with Willis, Gann of London they pioneered the trade to the new colony of New Zealand, which had been formally annexed by Britain in 1840. They increased the trade especially from Otago in South island, and were joined by their rivals of Shaw, Savill & Company in 1858, with trade accelerating due to the discovery of gold in Otago in 1861. Shaw, Savill & Company carried over 100,000 migrants to New Zealand between 1858 and 1882 to develop the new colony, and Albion Line was taken over to form Shaw, Savill & Albion Co. Ltd. in 1882. The Henderson family then developed the trade to Burma because of the difficulty of finding homeward cargoes from New Zealand and because of the friendship between James Galbraith and Glasgow merchant T. D. Findlay with interests in Burma. James Galbraith became the senior partner in Henderson Line after Robert Henderson died in 1868 as the last of the Henderson family in the business.

Lascar crews began to be used on Henderson Line ships from 1905, particularly in the engineering departments in order to meet competition to India with P. & o., British India, Bibby Line, Brocklebank, Clan Line and anchor Line, which already employed Lascar crews. In 1914 an integrated timetable and berth sharing prevented competition with Bibby Line of Liverpool becoming an obstacle to progress. Ellerman Line intervened in the Burma trade a year later when they bought heavily into shares of Burmese rice mills. The subsequent agreement between Henderson, Bibby and Ellerman allowed Ellerman vessels to load rice at Rangoon for discharge at Colombo and Madras.

 Design of Prome and Salween

in 1921, Henderson Line had seven passenger and cargo-liners, all built by the famous Dumbarton yard of William Denny & Brothers, and which between them could carry seven hundred passengers out to Burma. One of the partners at this time was John a. Galbraith, a director of Galbraith, Pembroke & Co. Ltd. and a descendant of James Galbraith. The design of the seven passenger and cargoliners completed during the inter-war years was a logical development of the previous vessels delivered. Amarapoora and Pegu of 1920/21 were the latest passenger and cargo-liners with accommodation for 150 passengers and were an improved version of Burma of 1914. The pair were delivered by Denny of Dumbarton at the staggeringly high combined price of almost £850,000 due to the continued high wartime labour rates combined with the huge order book of British shipbuilders. A very temporary boom in freight rates was followed by an even greater slump. Amarapoora and Pegu had a deadweight carrying capacity of 10,200 tonnes and dimensions of overall length of 465.8 feet, beam of 59.3 and depth of 30.5 feet, and were a development of pre-war passenger and cargo-liner Burma of 1914. Pegu had to be sent to Le Havre for completion on 15th July 1921 due to a joiners strike and she entered service five months later.

Kemmendine was completed in March 1924 by Denny at a much reduced price of £182,755 and could be identified from her later near sisters of Sagaing and Yoma by her six lifeboats on her superstructure and another pair aft above the counter stern. Sagaing of 1924 was named after the hills just to the south of Mandalay, and differed in the layout of her lifeboats with only two on her port side and three on her starboard side, and in service she was slower than Kemmendine. Yoma of 1928 was the only one of the three near sisters with a raked stem and a more modern single knuckle stern. She also had more verandah space under the third pair of lifeboats, and was fitted with electrohydraulic steering gear and a Denny balanced rudder. She could burn coal and oil and cost £227,891 and could carry 10,290 tonnes of cargo and 146 passengers with a crew of 137.

Two years before Yoma was completed the Denny yard had run out of orders and built a cargo ship of 8,455 dwt as a speculation. She was named Yomah with two Henderson Line directors owning ten shares in the ship and Henderson Line as managers. She was taken on charter for her maiden voyage to Australia and New Zealand by the Commonwealth and Dominion Line (later Port Line) and wore their red and black funnel colours. At the end of this voyage in London she was sold to the Australind Steamship Co. Ltd. (Trinder, Anderson & Company, managers) and renamed Ashburton. The new owners were so impressed with her that they placed orders with the Dumbarton yard for three more sisters.

The design of Prome and Salween, the latter named after a great river that forms for much of its length the border between Burma and China, was very much a logical development of that of the third member of the Kemmendine class, Yoma of 1928. One foot was added to her length to give an overall length of 462 feet, moulded beam of 59.2 feet, depth of 30.4 feet and draft of 27 feet to give a deadweight of 9,360 tonnes. Unlike the Kemmendine class, Prome and Salween were turbine driven, powered by three single reduction three stage Parsons steam turbines with steam produced by four Scotch boilers arranged for burning coal and fitted with the closed ashpit system of forced draft to give 4,469 shp at 91.15 rpm and an adequate service speed of 14 knots. However, provision was also made for the later installation of oil burners. They had bunker capacity of 2,500 tonnes of coal with more in reserve in spaces near the boiler room, and when changed to oil firing they carried 1,076 tonnes of oil fuel in tanks. Without exception up to this point in time, the engines and ships of all Henderson Line ships had been supplied by the famous Denny yard of Dumbarton.

Prome was launched first on 12th February 1937 and sailed on her maiden voyage to Burma in late April 1937, with Salween launched on 22nd October 1937 and sailing on her maiden voyage in February 1938. The pair had three passenger decks in Boat Deck, Promenade Deck and Bridge Deck with accommodation for 76 First Class passengers in mostly single and double cabins on Bridge Deck, but with also a dozen three berth cabins as well as three unaccompanied children in the nursery. However, they were designed so that extra cabins could be fitted if demand on the trade dictated, indeed their Bridge Deck of length 172 feet was only fifteen feet less than Yoma of 1928 which carried 146 passengers. They had a fo’c’stle of length 44 feet and a poop of length 46 feet, and had two complete steel decks beneath Bridge Deck. They had five holds served by five hatches and eight derricks plus a heavy lift derrick on the foremast with a general cargo capacity of 44,545 cubic feet.

The directors of the British and Burmese Steam Navigation Co. Ltd. (Henderson Line, managers) had announced good financial results during 1937 and no expense was spared in the fitting out of Prome and Salween. A final dividend of 5% less tax was the same as for each of the two preceding years. The Irrawaddy Flotilla Company and the fifteen passenger and cargo-liners engaged in the Burma trade had made a good profit of £34,267 thanks mainly to the higher price obtained for unhusked rice, which represented the greater part of their cargoes. The average price charged by Denny for Prome and Salween was £225,000, and it is interesting to compare this price with the first Prome of 3,580 grt completed by the Denny yard in 1893 for £46,010 for the newly formed Burmah Steamship Co. Ltd. with Henderson Line as managers.

Public Rooms of Prome and Salween

Henderson Line had nine high class passenger and cargo-liners in service in late 1937 in Chindwin of 1910, Burma of 1914, Amarapoora of 1920, Pegu of 1921, Kemmendine of 1921, Sagaing of 1924, Yoma of 1928, and Prome and Salween of 1937. The carried only First Class passengers and the main public rooms of all of these ships were of a high standard, and on the latter pair consisted of the First Class Lounge and the First Class Smoking room on Promenade Deck, and the First Class Dining room on Bridge Deck. These were of very elegant design.

The First Class Lounge was panelled in local Burmese woods as was the stairwell to the First Class Dining room below. The room was beautifully carpeted with sofas and easy chairs in a multitude of colours and wavy patterns, and had plenty of bright ceiling light holders as well as art Deco patterns on the double glass entry doors. The windows were large and were fitted with thick fabric curtains, and the round tables with four adjacent carver wooden chairs were always decorated with bunches of fresh flowers. A grand piano in the corner provided the music for dancing away the night in the evenings.

The First Class Smoking room had a beautiful raised skylight with filigree patterns of leaded lights filling the rectangular patterns of the skylight. The room featured some deep, wide and sweeping alcoves with curved leather seating on the window side of the room. The fabric patterns of the chairs at the round tables were art Deco, and the wall light holders featured appliqué murals of Burmese scenes. This was a very elegant room and was furnished with other types of seating e.g. cane chairs and loungers.

The First Class Dining room was of the full width of the ship and could accommodate seventy passengers in a single sitting at tables from two to six people. The elegant room had a modern decorative scheme with the main kitchen and pantries immediately abaft the room. It was accessed by beautifully panelled stairwells from the Lounge above on Promenade Deck. The Chief Steward on Henderson Line ships was always referred to as the ‘butler’.

Passengers passed the long outwards voyage of six weeks from Glasgow and Liverpool via Gibraltar, Palma, Marseille, Haifa, Port Said and the Suez Canal, Port Sudan, Aden, Colombo to Rangoon with a variety of entertainment. These included checkers, reading and writing, tenpin bowling, deck quoits and studying in the well equipped library.

Passengers disembarked at the Sule Pagoda Wharf at 0800 hours on the morning of arrival, with their bags carried up to the magnificent colonial Strand Hotel in Rangoon, formerly called Yangon by the royal family of Burma, and this name was restored after Burma became independent in 1948.

Yangon means ‘end of strife’ after it had been completely destroyed by fire in 1841, and was then rebuilt with magnificent pagodas and temples. Return voyages ended at Tilbury to disembark passengers, with some of the cargo e.g. oil cake discharged as 80 tonne lifts into Thames spritsail barges and taken to great Yarmouth to be processed at mills at Norwich.

Irrawaddy Flotilla Company

Passengers and cargo for loading on to Prome and Salween came down the mighty Irrawaddy River from Mandalay to Rangoon in two and three deck river steamers of the Irrawaddy Flotilla Company. This Irrawaddy Flotilla and Burmese Steam Navigation Co. Ltd. was founded in December 1864 with a capital of £100,000 in two thousand shares of £50 each by James Galbraith, Robert Henderson, Peter Denny and T.D. Findlay to provide a link with the Henderson deep sea ships trading between Burma and the U.K. it took over six Irrawaddy steamers of between 200 and 300 tonnes, as well as the towing steamer Ava of 341 tonnes, which towed cargoes across the gulf of Martaban from Moulmein.

The flotilla quickly grew to assemble a formidable force of two and three deck passenger and cargo low draft river steamers of up to 1,700 grt and 326 feet in length. in 1888, two years after the huge area of Upper Burma had been annexed, it had a fleet of 65 steamers and 101 barges or ‘flats’ together with 17 creek steamers for Irrawaddy delta ferry services. The twin screw double decked creek steamers were licensed to carry between 250 and 500 passengers and were 115 feet in length. They provided services from Rangoon to Bassein, Henzada, Yandoon, Myaungmya, Bogale and as far upstream as Prome. Prome was the upstream headquarters of the company, while Rangoon had an impressive five storey white stone Head office completed for it in 1933.

The flotilla river steamers also towed special oil barges, one on either side, down the Irrawaddy from the oilfield at Yenangyaung, discovered in 1887, and at Chauk oilfield, discovered in 1902. The original refinery at Duneedaw in Rangoon became too small for the increasing volume of crude oil and operations were moved to Syriam in the delta. Oil well construction materials were loaded direct from Henderson Line deep sea ships onto the decks of oil barges for delivery to Yenangyaung, and the towing river steamers had extra tall funnels to reduce the fire risk. A pipeline was built from Yenangyaung to the refinery in 1908 for the Burmah oil Company operations, thus reducing the amount of oil barge towing. However, the indo-Burmah oil Company owned by Steel Brothers built another refinery at Seikkyi, a few miles down the river from Rangoon and the oil carrying fleet was soon back in business.

The Flotilla Company fleet in 1916 reached a size of over five hundred steamers, with almost two hundred powered steamers as well as 320 barges or ‘flats’. The largest powered steamers were seven units of the Siam class of 1,300 grt that were reassembled at Dalla between 1903 and 1909. Some 89 of these vessels were requisitioned by the British government for the Mesopotamia campaign along the Tigris River. They were well boarded up to protect their open decks and low freeboard for the Indian ocean passage, but only one side paddler and one stern wheeler were lost at sea. By the end of the 1920s decade, the fleet was carrying 1.25 million tonnes of cargo and nine million passengers on 267 powered vessels and 355 barges or ‘flats’.

The Denny yard built the twin screw double deck Irrawaddy river steamer Weeno in 1929, and had also completed twenty small dumb river barges during the previous year. Weeno was powered by a compound two cylinder steam engine and was a passenger creek steamer. The frequent groundings of these craft led to the construction of Thumingala in 1939, a twin screw diesel double decker fitted with several electrically operated ballast tanks capable of adding buoyancy forward or aft to extricate the craft from the mud. The size of this river fleet grew to 650 craft in 1941, all built by the Denny yard and then disassembled into sections for transport by Henderson Line steamers, and then reassembled by the Irrawaddy Flotilla Company yard at Dalla near Rangoon, which employed three thousand men. They served in the Irrawaddy river trade between Rangoon and Mandalay, with the flotilla upstream headquarters half way up the river at Prome (now Pyay), which had sprung up in the early 19th century as a transhipment port half way between Rangoon and Mandalay.

World War II Service Of Prome and Salween

Whereas the Burma trade had continued during World War I, it almost ceased after the Ministry of War Transport took over the direction of all British shipping in 1940. Some of the seven Henderson Line passenger and cargo-liners continued in the Indian Ocean trade to Burma, but all of the eight cargo ships were ordered to join convoys for many other destinations. Salween had a narrow escape from destruction on 10th September 1940 in the Indian Ocean when the nearby Benarty of Ben Line reported she was being attacked by the scouting plane of the raider Atlantis. Salween was fully laden with passengers and cargo, and immediately sent out the ‘RRR’ (attacked by raider) signal when a warship approached from astern. However, this was the British cruiser Neptune, and Atlantis, heading for Salween, then made off realising a British cruiser was in the vicinity.

Salween was then converted on the Clyde in early 1941 into a naval troopship for 1,400 men and commissioned as H.M.S. Salween. She sailed on her first trooping voyage to the Suez Canal via Cape Town, then evacuated New Zealand troops in April 1941 from Port Raphtis (Greece) and also Greek refugees to Suez and Mombasa. She then remained as a naval troopship in East African waters for the remainder of the war on voyages to India. Prome, her sister, was damaged in an air raid at Liverpool on 21st December 1940, repairs then removed the top of her funnel, and she carried this shorter funnel for the remainder of her career. She completed a conversion into a naval mine storage and depot ship in early 1941 and was commissioned as H.M.S. Prome, and served at Trincomalee until the end of the war in this capacity.

The Japanese invaded Burma in January 1942 and took over all of the southern part of the country, with Rangoon captured two months later. The Irrawaddy Flotilla was scuttled at Mandalay to avoid capture and only two tugs, Kamakyi and Panhlaing, and the double decked creek passenger steamer Weeno reaching safety, first at Akyab in the Bay of Bengal and then in India. Burma was later retaken by troops of the 14th army under General William Slim after fierce fighting in the northern part of the country, particularly at Kohima in the North Eastern States of India. This was the civil administration centre and military depot in Nagaland, and the siege of Kohima was the bloodiest of all the long Burma campaign battles, those troops that survived fully earned the decoration of the Burma Star. Rangoon docks were thankfully not destroyed, but only spasmodic sailings were resumed by the Henderson Line passenger and cargo ships Salween and Prome in 1946.

Salween and Prome were the only survivors of the Henderson Line pre-war passenger and cargo-liner fleet able to resume the trade. Amarapoora survived after she became a hospital ship at Scapa Flow for the Navy, and then a troop ship in North Africa for the operation Torch landings and at the Salerno landings, where she was damaged by air attack. After a conversion in the Tyne in July 1944 for use in the Far East she became base hospital ship at Trincomalee, and after Rangoon was retaken in 1945 she carried wounded troops to India. She was then acquired by the Ministry of War Transport in august 1946 and used as a ‘maid of all work’ on hospital ship and trooping duties until she was converted into an austerity emigrant carrier in 1948 for the New Zealand emigrant trade.

Post-War Years

As a consequence of political changes in Burma in the early post-war years, the trade of ‘Paddy’ Henderson to Burma was severely affected. Burma became an independent nation on 4th January 1948 and within six months the remaining refloated vessels of the Irrawaddy Flotilla Company were nationalised. This fleet numbered 580 craft of all types but mostly dumb barges, and it took nine years before accountants in Glasgow had completed the final winding up of the company. Thus, only four deep sea Henderson Line ships with passenger accommodation were required to operate the trade between Rangoon and Glasgow and Liverpool.

These were Prome and Salween with accommodation for 76 passengers, and the new turbine powered Yoma and Martaban of 9,920 dwt from the Denny yard with accommodation for only a dozen passengers. Yoma was completed in April 1948 and sailed on her maiden voyage from Birkenhead to Rangoon with a deck cargo of locomotives for the Burma railways. Martaban sailed on her maiden voyage on 3rd February 1950 from Birkenhead to Rangoon with a similar deck cargo. Yoma and Martaban were an updated version of the war built Pegu from the Denny yard in 1942 and which was sold in 1950.

The ‘K’ class Henderson Line cargo ships of Kindat of 1938, Kalewa of 1947, Katha of 1947, Kanbe of 1948 and Kaladan of 1950 were placed on charter to Elder, Dempster & Co. Ltd. for their West African trade. They were formally transferred to the ownership of Elder, Dempster & Co. Ltd. in January 1952, and they wore their yellow funnel and livery. Kindat of 1938 had been sold in 1949 and was replaced by a new Kindat in 1950, and the new Koyan, Kadeik, Kohima, Kentung, Kandaw and Kaduna were all employed on the West African trade from their completions up to 1956.

Capt. George Sinclair of Glasgow commanded both Salween and Prome between 1946 and 1953, as well as the cargo ships Kanbe and Pegu. He was born in 1918 and was apprenticed to Henderson Line as a cadet in 1933 and sailed on the Mandalay of 1911 and Burma of 1914 until the outbreak of war in September 1939. He was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross for meritorious war service at Dunkirk, North Africa and on the North Atlantic, and particularly for the part in opening up supplies to the port of Tobruk in the hard fought North African campaign against the German forces commanded by General Rommel. One of his post-war Henderson Line voyages was from Rangoon to Vladivostok. Later, Prome collided with the outbound Blue Funnel cargo-liner Cyclops off Anglesey in October 1955 near the end of her fully laden voyage from Burma.

The establishment of a Burmese State shipping line (Burma Five Star Line) plus an act that decreed that half of the trade had to be carried by the national flag carriers, together with the virtual disappearance of the Indian trade after Indian independence in 1947 marked the beginning of the end of the trade for Henderson Line. Four Henderson ships loaded alternately at West Float berth in Birkenhead with four Bibby Line ships throughout the 1950s. The joint service could certainly not sustain a sea passenger service to Burma, and Salween arrived at Hong Kong on 30th May 1962 for scrapping by Shiu Wing Hong. Prome managed one more round voyage to Burma than her sister, arriving at Bruges in Belgium on 30th September 1962 for scrapping by van Heyghen Freres.

The Burma trade had declined by such an extent by 1964 that only four Henderson Line cargo ships were sufficient for the trade offering. These were Bhamo of 1957, Pegu of 1961, Kaduna of 1956 and Prahsu of 1958. A final ship was transferred to the ownership of Elder, Dempster to Henderson Line in November 1965, this was Daru, completed in 1958 by Scotts of Greenock and renamed as Yoma with a black hull and a black funnel. She definitely sailed to Burma at this time, but the Henderson Burma trade was further reduced in early 1966 and finally ceased in June 1967 when the Suez Canal was blocked by the Arab/Israeli War. Bhamo of 1957, Pegu of 1961 and Yoma were transferred to the ownership of the guinea gulf Line and Elder, Dempster. Arrangements were made with Bibby Line to handle the Henderson Burma requirements, but this service also terminated at the West Float in Birkenhead in 1971.

Postscript

Burma was renamed as Myanmar in 1989, and today the Burma Five Star Line is called the Myanmar Five Star Line with a big fleet of 25 cargo-liners including eight multi purpose cargo-liners of 13,100 dwt built at Bremerhaven in Germany. They can carry 400 TEU of containers and are equipped with five cranes of 25 tonne capacity to handle general cargo or containers from four holds via four hatches. This octet have the place names of Bago (formerly Pegu), Coco Gyun, Dawei, Kengtung, Magway, Mandalay, Sagaing and Thamee Hla.

Britain and the Netherlands lost their last big deep sea cargo and container line, P & o Nedlloyd, in 2005 when it was purchased by Maersk Line of Denmark for 2.3 billion Euros in cash. These State owned shipping companies such as Burma Five Star Line, Nigerian National Line, Black Star Line of Ghana and others demanded half of their trade with Europe for themselves when they were just starting out as fledgling shipping companies. it was fairly soon seen that the fleets of the oldest shipping nations such as Britain and the Netherlands could not operate with only the other half of the trade that they once enjoyed.

The Myanmar oil Corporation as the State controlled oil and gas producer and refiner was established in 1963 to control the former oilfields of the Burmah oil Company, whose tanks had to be destroyed by the retreating British on 16th April 1942 when Japanese troops took the southern part of Burma. The oilfields at Yenangyaung lie upstream of Yangon on the Irrawaddy and were rebuilt after the end of the war. I can remember seeing a tanker called Yenangyaung of 8,700 dwt built in 1937 repairing at the North Shields yard of Smith’s Dock Co. Ltd. in 1956 with a white funnel with a black top of the Burmah oil Co. Ltd. This repair yard was closed in 1999 and now blocks of apartments will be built on the site of the yard. My grandfather was a senior foreman at this the largest ship repair yard in the world, and he would be turning in his grave at this prospect.

The Yenangyaung and Chauk oilfields are still in production, and a fleet of ten powerful tugs continue to tow oil barges down the Irrawaddy River to the refinery. The offshore Yadana natural gas field provides large amounts of gas for Myanmar consumption in a consortium of the Myanmar oil Corporation, Total, Chevron and PTT of Thailand. How times have changed!