STRANGE PORTS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIX, Issue 99, 29 April 1938, Page 7

STRANGE PORTS.

I WANDERING TRAMP. CITY OF YOKOHAMA. FROM NEW ZEALAND, WHERE? The arrival or departure of a great passenger liner is almost always the signal for a warm welcome or sad farewell. In some places —the smaller islands of the Pacific and odd corners infrequently visited by deep-water ships —"mail day - ' is the event of the month. Everyone is down on the quay to watch operations and share in the excitement. Xot so with the humble tramp, even i though the average freighter may see more of the world in one year than a passenger ship sees in a lifetime of I service. The City of Yokohama. M.-A.-X.Z. Line, to-day discharging shipments from Canada at Prince's wharf, i> a typical example. Her present voyage has occupied seven or eight months. ' during which she has crossed many oceans, touched at continents and vir-ited outlandish ports. From Liverpool, the City of Yokohama sailed to Antwerp. Rotterdam and Hambuig before returning to London, en route to South Africa. With general cargo and a number of valuable pedigree bulls, cows and rams, she discharged at Capetown, Durban. Delagoa Bay and I the Portuguese East African ports of I Lourenco Marques and Beira. Up through the South Indian Ocean she steamed to Koilthottam. on the southwest coast of India, and near the betterknown Quilon. Here the City of Yokohama loaded a full cargo of black sand, used in the United States for the manufacture of paints. "You Never Know." Ceylon was visited before the ship set out on the voyage to her discharge port of Baltimore, but the route taken was not via Suez, but back round the Cape of Good Hope and through the two Atlantic*. After Baltimore came Xew York, Louisburg. a dreary cold little haven on Cape Breton. Island., and Halifax, Xova Scotia. Again with a general cargo, the vessel turned southward for the Panama Canal and Xew Zealand. Here she will discharge at main ports and sail for Australia, but after that she may gc anywhere. She might go East, or to South Africa again: she may even return to Xorth America, which, of course, will entail a second voyage to Xew Zealand. But that is the way of tramp ships. A member of the ship's executive staff described the position well, if not with strict accuracy, when he said this morning: "When you join a tramp you want to make your will and all arrangements for some years ahead; it might not be even two years before you see your home port again, but you never know."'