m.s Nina Bowater

The usual cargo on a Bowater motor ship was pulp, paper or logs. On this occasion one carried two thirty ton boilers.There was a drought and the hydro electric power station could not produce electricity so the mill purchased two boilers from a scrap yard that had just removed them from a US military ship they were taking apart. It was loaded in the Norfolk scrap yard and we had to make a trip down from Baltimore over the week end to load it then go back to Baltimore to discharge the newsprint. We were told the boiler was to be left in the open with a second hand steam turbine driving an old generator under canvas until the rains came.

Boiler on deck, crew checking the lashings. The boilers were loaded on the bulkhead between number 2 & 3 hold so the deck did not buckle. The scrap yard told us 'take what you like' so the engineers stocked up on tolls and other goodies they found on the ships being scrapped in the yard.

We were in Norfolk on the 2nd of October 1966.

Courtesy of Tom Kearsey.

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