m.s Gladys Bowater

Gladys Bowater rolling home with a following sea. The sea came up from the starboard quarter and punched the logs so hard the port side barrier and snapped the uprights and loosened the palisade logs, seen hanging on the wires, so the deck logs then went overboard. The neat stacks that we left with can be seen in a mess. We were weather routed home, right into a big storm that nearly took us to the Azores before we could head for the Channel. We left London and were weather routed around the top of Scotland, to Iceland, Greenland and Labrador before we arrived in the top of Newfoundland to load at a place called Rodicton. The engineers had inadvertently pumped out most of the fresh water so we loaded more logs than normal and took on water in St John's to get us home then lost most of the deck cargo. The Chief Engineer's usual three days of fuel in the tanks but not in the books was used before we arrived in the Thames, having lost suction in the tanks.

Courtesy of Tom Kearsey.

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