4th January 2019 marks exactly 43 years since, with the help of Palm Line Agencies, I hired a boat to photograph as many as possible of the c300 ships anchored off Lagos, Nigeria, mainly loaded with cargoes of bagged cement. In eight hours I was able to photograph around one third of the ships. The historic SAS, built at Sunderland in 1940 as HINDUSTAN for Common Bros, my main target, was anchored closest to the breakwater.

SAS had arrived off Lagos on 5 November 1975 with a cargo of cement, berthed on about 15 July 1976 and sailed on 29 September for Dakar and then her home port of Piraeus.

The name SAS derives from the initial letters of the members of the joint venture, i.e. S (Sigalas), A (Antoniadis –Apesakis) and S (Stafilopatis). The ship was however transferred in 1972 from the Stafilopatis partnership into the sole ownership of George Th. Sigalas (of Santorini) without change of name.

Trading as the Swedish ALMEN from 1954 to 1963, SAS served her Greek owners from 1963 until scrapped at Santander where she arrived under tow from Piraeus in July 1979.