SS LOYALTY

WHEN DID INDIA EARN ITS PLACE IN THE WORLD TRADE? CENTURIES BEFORE INDIANS WERE TRADERS FOR THE WORLD BUT BEING IN SHIPPING FIELD HAVE ANYBODY OF US KNOWN THE FIRST SHIP SAILING AROUND THE WORLD OWNED BY AN INDIAN? IF YOU KNOW IT THEN I ACCEPT IT BUT IF NOT THEN TAKE A LOOK AT THE SHIP 'S DETAILS BELOW WHICH BROUGHT INDIAN TRADE INTO LIMELIGHT.THIS SHIP WAS BOUGHT BY SHRI WALLCHAND HIRACHAND AND NAMED IT AS SS LOYALTY.

RMS EMPRESS OF INDIA:

 RMS Empress of India was an ocean liner built in 1890-1891 by Naval Construction & Armament Co., Barrow, England for Canadian Pacific Steamships. This ship would be the first of two CP vessels to be named Empress of India, and on 28 April 1891, she was the very first of many ships named Empress arriving at Vancouver harbor.The Empress of India regularly traversed the trans-Pacific route between the west coast of Canada and the Far East until she was sold to the Maharajah of Gwalior in 1914 and renamed in 1915.

ROYAL MAIL SHIP:

This Empress enjoyed the "RMS", meaning "Royal Mail Ship." This is the ship prefix still in use today by seagoing vessels which carry mail under contract by Royal Mail.In 1891, Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) and the British government reached agreement on a contract for subsidized mail service between Britain and Hong Kong via Canada; and the route began to be serviced by three specially designed ocean liners. Each of these three yachtlike vessels was given an Imperial name.The RMS Empress of India and her two running mates - the RMS Empress of China and the RMS Empress of Japan - created a flexible foundation for the CPR trans-Pacific fleet which would ply this route for the next half century.

 CAREER:

Name:	1891-1914: RMS Empress of India 1915-1923 SS Loyalty
Owner:	1891-1914: Canadian Pacific Railway 1914-1919: Maharaja of Gwalior 1919-1923: Scindia Steam Navigation
Port of registry:	1891-1914: Canada 1914-1923: British Raj
Builder:	Naval Construction & Armament Co., [Barrow-in-Furness
Laid down:	1890
Launched:	30 August 1890 by Lady Louise Edgerton
Maiden voyage:	8 February 1891
Fate:	Scrapped in 1923

 GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS:

Class and type:	Ocean liner
Tonnage:	5,905 tons
Length:	455.7 ft
Beam:	51.2 ft
Propulsion:	Three masts twin propellers
Speed:	16 knots
Capacity:	50 1st class passengers 150 2nd class up to 400 steerage passengers

 HISTORY:

The Empress of India was built by Naval Construction & Armament Co. (now absorbed into Vickers Armstrongs) at Barrow, England. The keel was laid in 1890. She was launched on 30 August 1890 by Lady Louise Egerton, sister of Lord Harrington. The 5,905-ton vessel had a length of 455.6 feet, and her beam was 51.2 feet. The graceful white-painted, clipper-bowed ship had two buff-colored funnels with a band of black paint at the top, three lightweight schooner-type masts, and an average speed of 16-knots. This Empress and her two sister-ship Empresses were the first vessels in the Pacific to have twin propellers with reciprocating engines. The ship was designed to provide accommodation for 770 passengers (120 first class, 50 second class and 600 steerage).

The SS Empress of India left Liverpool on 8 February 1891 on her maiden voyage via Suez to Hong Kong and Vancouver. Thereafter, she regularly sailed back and forth along the Hong Kong - Shanghai - Nagasaki - Kobe - Yokohama - Vancouver route. In the early days of wireless telegraphy, the call sign established for the "Empress of India was "MPI."

Much of what would have been construed as ordinary, even unremarkable during this period was an inextricable part of the ship's history. In the conventional course of trans-Pacific traffic, the ship was sometimes held in quarantine, as when it was discovered that a passenger from Hong Kong to Kobe showed signs of smallpox, and the vessel was held in Yokohama port until the incubation period for the disease had passed.The cargo holds of the Empress would have been routinely examined in the normal course of harbor-master's business in Hong Kong, Yokohama or Vancouver.

On 17 August 1903, the Empress of India collided with and sank the Chinese cruiser Huang Tai.

The vessel was reported sold on 19 December 1914, to the Geakwar of Baroda (also known as the Maharajah of Gwalior). The former Empress was re-fitted as a hospital ship for Indian troops. On 19 January 1915, the ship was renamed Loyalty. In March 1919, she was sold to The Scindia Steam Navigation Company Ltd. Company in Bombay (now Mumbai). In February 1923, the ship was sold for scrapping at Bombay.

CP Empresses of India

In 1921, Canadian Pacific added two German-built vessels to the Empress fleet; and initially, both were confusingly re-named Empress of China. Within months, one of these ships will be re-named the SS Empress of India and the other will be re-named the SS Empress of Australia. A quick explanation will help distinguish these quite different ships which each sailed with the same name.

• The first SS Empress of India was a 5,905-ton vessel, launched in 1890 from Barrow, England. She would be sold in 1914, re-named SS Loyalty in 1915, and scrapped in Bombay in 1919.

  • A CP sister-ship, the first SS Empress of China, was also a Barrow-built, 5,905-ton vessel; but she was launched a few months later, in 1891. She was wrecked on a reef at Tokyo Bay in 1911, and subsequently scrapped in 1912.

• The second SS Empress of India was a 16,992-ton vessel launched in 1907 from Gestemunde, Germany as the SS Prince Freidrich Wilhelm. The ship was purchased in 1921 by Canadian Pacific and then immediately, the ship was re-named Empress of China for only a short time.

  • This second SS Empress of China and of India will be re-named several more times -- as the SS Montlaurier in 1922; and as the SS Montnairn in 1925. The ship was scrapped 1929.

In other words, this vessel from Barrow is the first of two CP ships named Empress of India.

FEW DETAILS ABOUT THE QWNER:

WALLCHAND HIRACHAND:                   

Walchand Hirachand Doshi (23 November 1882 – 8 April 1953) was an Indian industrialist. He established India’s first modern shipyard, first aircraft factory and first car factory.

SHIPPING:

In 1919, after the end of World War I, he bought a steamer, the SS Loyalty along with his friends, from the Scindias of Gwalior, a royal family; His underlying assumption was that the post-war years would also spell massive growth for the shipping industry just as the war years had done. However, British companies such as P&O and BI (British India shipping) were strong in the shipping industry and most of the attempts by domestic players till then had failed. Walchand named his company The Scindia Steam Navigation Company Ltd. and competed with the foreign players. It was recognised as the first Swadeshi shipping company in the true sense of the term and was referred to widely in Mahatma Gandhi’s columns in Young India and Harijan on Swadeshi, boycott of foreign goods and Non co-operation movement. It barely managed to survive after entering into agreements on routes and fare wars with its foreign competitors. However, Walchand still supported new indigenous shipping ventures, as he believed that a strong domestic shipping industry was the need of the hour. In 1929, he became the Chairman of Scindia Steam and continued in the same position till 1950 when he resigned on grounds of ill health. By 1953, the company had captured 21% of Indian coastal traffic.

SHIPYARD:

To face competition in the shipping business from the British and other foreign businesses, Walchand entered allied businesses such as insurance. He also believed that there was a strong need for a shipyard in the country and started work on it in 1940 at Visakhapatnam. It was named Hindustan Shipyard Limited and its first product, the ship Jalusha was launched soon after independence by Jawaharlal Nehru in 1948. However, the shipyard came under government control a few months later (due to the presumed importance of the project to country’s security and economic growth) and was fully nationalised in 1961.