TRAMP STEAMERS “ADOPTED”

Evening Star, Issue 22233, 10 January 1936, Page 9

TRAMP STEAMERS “ADOPTED”

NOVEL SCHEME FOR SCHOOLS What do tramp steamers do? Yon don’t know much about them, do you? Except that they carry the bulk of Britain’s overseas trade. Well, London school children are going to learn all about them in a most practical way. Captain Sir Arthur Rostron, R.N.R., ex-Commodore of the Cunard Line, thinks it’s a splendid idea. The London County Council Education Committee has recommended the grant- of £2OO a year, so that 100 schools, elementary, technical, and secondary, may “ adopt ” one tramp steamer apiece. The school will be kept in touch with the trade route, *ports, and destination of its- adopted tramp, and nature and sources' of its cargoes exported ■ and imported. Already ' four steamers have been adopted by as many, London schools. Sir Arthur Rostron told an interviewer: “I am more than pleased that at long last there are signs that the country is coming to realise what it owes to the splendid body of men who man your tramp steamers and the tremendous importance of their work. “ The voyages of > Britain’s tramp 'steamers make an epic story. It will be indeed a fine thing for British school children to learn something about them, God speed the yenturej.”