Posted by Andrew Craig-Bennett on 09/11/00 from 172.17.4.90 via proxy home.cosco.com.cn:
In Reply to: Re: Arthur Ransome and Thailand (Siam) posted by Bruce Clarke on July 25, 2000 at 05:24:56:
There were plenty of liners serving Southeast Asia in the days when Ransome was travelling in the region. Indeed the whole of the Far East was linked by liner shipping services, with what would now seem to us rather small ships of a few thouand tons, usually with cargo space, tweendeck passenger space usually taken by indentured labourers, and first and second class cabin accomodation. There were no aeroplanes until after WW2! Liners were the only way for people and manufactured goods to get about. Tramps, then as now, were chartered for the voyage to carry an homogenous cargo from A to B.
There is an extensive literature on the liner ships of the Far East - for example the China Coast liners are covered in "Beancaker to Boxboat" by the Australian Maritime Research Society, etc. You will recall that one of the labels on Captain Flint's trunk (wanted on voyage) was that of the Nippon Yusen Kaisha - NYK - Japan Mail Line, then as now.
The main liner company based on Singapore was the Straits SS Co, covering Malaya, Sabah and Sarawak and extending to Bankok; Royal Interocean Line (RIL) a Dutch company handled Indonesia to points North, the Indo-China SS Co (Jardines) and China Navigation) Swires) handled the China Coast and connecting services to as far away as India (Jardines) and Australia (Swires).
The British long haul liners were P&O as far East as Victoria Point (the southern tip of Burma) and Blue Funnel east of that.
But surely the source for the elephant flag is much nearer to home? Ransome would certainly have read Conrad. Joseph Conrad was an enthusiastic yachtsman, often wrote about the sea, and was already a "literary lion" when Ransome was struggling in pre-WW1 London's Bohemia. In "Typhoon", Captain McWhirr disagrees with Mr Jukes the mate about the elephant flag which the "Nan Shan"s Straits Chinese owners have imposed on them by re-registering the ship in Siam to obtain Siamese cargo preference. I believe that this explanation also deals with the problem of the wronmg colour field of the houseboat's flag!