Oldendorff Centenary Book - Flipbook - Page 191
GREAT LAKES AND
GROUNDNUTS
The 1950s saw different types of vessels for
different cargoes, important new innovations
– such as radar – and a burgeoning of trade to
North American industrial centres.
The types and composition of cargo offering also underwent changes. Coal
was still being carried but mainly in much larger ships. Of course, the timber
trade is quite lively to this day but tramp vessels leaving the Baltic Sea with
a full deck cargo of sawn timber have virtually disappeared. Pit props had lost
their market due to reduced European mining activities and modern techniques.
The forest industry of Sweden and Finland no longer supplies raw material
for paper manufacturing, but exports finished products instead. Except during
the rainy season Oldendorff vessels at times took northbound cargoes of
groundnuts from Senegal, a much sought-after cargo for freighters in the
2,000 to 3,500 tdw bracket which had carried generals on the southbound leg.
Typical loading ports would be Kaolack, some 75 miles beyond the bar and
situated on what is misleadingly called Saloum River but is in fact an inlet
resembling an estuary, as also Lyndiane and Ziguinchor on the river Casamance.
Loading operations right into the 1950s were peculiar by European standards:
native workers would carry the full bags by the headload, negotiating narrow
wobbly gangplanks of which up to 20 would link ship with shore, and then
bleed the contents into the hold, but occasionally ships would also load
bagged groundnuts, at a maximum rate of 30 tonnes per gang per hour, later
increasing to 50 t/h through the use of elevators.
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