There are ships and again there are ships.

[Keith at Tregenna]

Interesting ta, K.

[robpage]

Rob, I seem to remember B&C offering mortgages to their sea going staff.
Vic

I Left in.1973 so it may have been. after that

[j.sabourn]

Re. Mortgages ... another company that did that for their contracted sea going personel was John I . Jacobs. Thinking back it was about 2.5 % when the building society’s were about 8%. I changed mine to theirs . Had less than 3 years out of it as JIJ went to the wall. However they were very good about it and if remember they gave you up to a year to redeem the payment or transfer back to a bank or building society. About the only decent British owned company of deep sea shipping I had the good fortune to sail with. It was about 1974 that they departed the active shipping world but still stayed in the brokerage business. Every contracted member of the company was called individually to the London Office boardroom and put in the picture before it ever reached the media, and help re- employment and financial assistance if possible. Parting was on the best of terms. JS

[j.sabourn]

#6... Thanks your post Lewis , agree a lot with what you say. Apart from the one bad do I had with a foreign flag which was only foreign in the sense of the flag . Never had any trouble with foreign owners they always paid up front. See you mention being with an Irish coasting company. Did you ever come across a southern Irishman called Lundy. Believe he spent a lot of years on the Irish coast and was I believe involved in a shipwreck there. I never ever got the full story , as there was always aggro on the ship which only had 3 Europeans on board in the finish , and two of them were Irishmen of different denominations. Don’t want to get you involved in the politics of religion or you’ll be getting your wrist slapped again, I never saw your post so don’t want to know now. Just the query about the loss of the Irish coaster sometime I would think in the sixties think there was loss of life also. A good friend of mine also worked for the Iranians or the Iraqians can’t remember which about the times you were there during the Iran / Iraq war. Bill Irving a chief engineer ever come across him.? Cheers JS..

[Ken Norton]

B.P. ran a similar scheme up until about 1968 ish. I think that was also about 2 or 2.5% but they stopped it to all new recruitments. Not long after they started cutting the size of the fleet.