The Panama registered SD14 type SILAGA, was photographed in the Kiel Canal on 29 June 1980, bound for Cuba in ballast, shortly after leaving the new Holtenau-north lock. She had just been purchased at Szczecin by COMPONAVE - Companhia Portuguesa de Navegação, Lisbon.

SILAGA was purchased to fulfil a long term contract to transport sugar in bulk from Cuba for the state Portuguese state owned company AGA - ADMINISTRAÇÃO GERAL DO AÇUCAR e do ALCOOL.

All Componave ships were named with the prefix SIL from the owner, Mr. SILva plus AGA in this case.

She was from 1983 chartered by Cia. Nacional and used southbound with general cargo from Europe to Mozambique and Northbound with sugar. Componave went bankrupt in 1987 and SILAGA was sold.

SILAGA was built by A&P at Sunderland in 1972 for London & Overseas Freighters, ordered as LONDON HALBERDIER but delivered as LONDON CAVALIER. She was initially sold at Cardiff in 1979 to briefly trade as ASIAN LINER, managed by Vroon of Holland. On her sale in 1987 to An.G.Politis of Piraeus, she was renamed SOCRATES, as which she was beached at Alang on 11 June 2001 for scrapping.

scanned from a negative in my collection by Gerhard Fiebiger.

information kindly supplied by Gerhard and by the Portugese maritime historian Luis Miguel Correia