There is one thing I remember as a young teenager, I went for a 24hour shift on her as my Dad was her chief engineer then. I remember going up on the flying bridge and the master was sitting on a wood stool and he used a tiller arm to control her no steering wheel. The tiller was about 1/2" thick 3" deep and about 3.5 ft long, the VHF unit was a small basic one with a metal speaker. It was interesting as we were the stern drag to a Royal Mail vessel, we went up the dock and through the swing bridge into the Vic. It was as we were going through the cutting that the Royal Mail stern counter lifted and came down and hooked a lighter. Soon we were dragging a large number of lighters and the whole was held until a tosher tug could get in and drag the lighter clear. In those days lighters and barges could enter the docks 14 days before and 14 days after a ship enters and leaves dock charges free. Also then any cargo not landed but went overside into a barge did not pay landing charges. When PLA insisted on all cargo be landed and go into the shed, then all the lighterage work finished and container work took over at Tilbury. Also containers could be stuffed over 10 miles from the docks did not need port registered workers, so that finished break bulk work in the docks plus when APL built their 5 large container ships such as the Priam. 55 break bulk ships went to the scrap yard, they at first carried 27,000t of bunkers and 17,000t of cargo. The engineer was given a cassette tape before sailing to tell which fuel tank to use and how to transfer fuel to maintain stability. They eventually had their steam plants removed and diesels fitted, but they were 14 days U/k to Japan, my friend of some time ago was chief mate on the Priam becoming a junior captain in the company(blue funnel) used to tell me about them over a pint.
