Hi Derek

Agree with comments you have quite a nice shot here, I took her several years later in Napier as Pisang and her colours were virtually the same except some seahorse funnel motif. She was then owned by the joint venture Sembawang-Johnson along with sister Durian, and chartered by Blue Star to carry lamb to Iran. On one voyage the letter of credit hadn't come through but the vessel was loaded, and she spent 86 days in port before she was cleared, someone must have had deep pockets for extra charter hire.

As to her type, based on her business in these parts, Pisang made 4 visits between 1981 and 1983 loading frozen lamb, she was being operated as a tramp reefer. I do not know if she had general spaces but her 13,000 M3 of insulated spaces would certainly take up a substantial amount of her capacity. Lots of reefers these days take general cargo on the positioning leg to another frozen or chilled cargo as she obviously did then back to the California area.

Lloyds confused things decades ago with the universal term "general cargo (ref)", I guess because there weren't that many specialist refrigerated vessels and most perishable cargoes were carried by ships partly refrigerated on liner services. And when the "reefer" term was finally accepted by Lloyds, qualifying ships were already in existance but seems their descriptions were never updated.

I know it is important to have the official classification, and Wikipaedia describes the reefer as a type of ship typically used to transport perishable commodities which require temperature-controlled transportation, mostly fruits, meat, fish, vegetables, dairy products and other foodstuffs. This ship and many like her fit this description and to me it is only the Lloyd's descritpion that falls short on accuracy.

Thanks Martin

regards
Derek

Thanks Rogerio,

These were lovely ships, I agree
regards
Derek