RMS Transvaal Castle

My latest drawing - The first passenger liner in which I served - joining in early 1965 when the ship was only three years old!

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Hi Bob,

I have a recollection of seeing one of the these ships in Southampton docks many years ago, very distinctive with their coloured hull. Am I right in thinking their route was down to South Africa?

My father was a draughtsman. He would certainly have appreciated the work done with your drawing.

Jim.

Hi Jim,

Thanks. Yes, the route was Southampton, Las Palmas, Cape Town, Port Elizabeth, East London, Durban, and back the same way with an added call at Madeira on the way back. The Union-Castle Line was formed in 1900 by the merger of the Union Line and the Castle Line. They were all sold in 1978 because of rising fuel costs, as most of them were steamships. I then moved to St Helena Line that took over the passenger/cargo mail service. The Castles were very famous in their day. We had a round Africa Service as well, from London, through the Med, down the East African coast, and back via Durban, Cape Town, St Helena and Ascension Island

Here is a model of one of the old ones, built by myself - Braemer Castle. With declining interest in such things, I am now well into phasing out my model shipbuilding activities n favour of drawing, because although there is not much interest in them either, they are much easier to store, and I can run off a print quite easily.

Bob

Edited By Bob Wilson on 28/01/2023 11:08:41

Bob, was there a particular reason at all as to why the hulls were painted that colour? In your sailing days most hulls were black I think.

Jim.

Jim

The Castles were always painted that colour, but the Union Liners were black. When the companies merged, they just decided on lavender grey as it looked good, and chose Castle names for the ships. Union Line had rather unnattractive names such as Gaul, Goth, Gaika etc. The most popular hull colours when I first went to sea in 1961 were black, white and grey. I never liked white hulls as they often got marked by fenders or rust. I felt that grey was rather too drab to be really effective. I preferred black or green myself. But sailed in black, white, lavender, yellow, green and blue hulls, but oddly enough, never a grey one that were almost as popular as black. Can't beat black with a white stripe, in my opinion -

Bob

Edited By Bob Wilson on 28/01/2023 11:34:22