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For decades, the white diatnond and three horizontal stack stripes distinguished a fleet of ships which pioneered and then dominated the banana trade between this country and Central America. Kept in splendid shape and manned by topflight crews, the ships had long, useful lives—both in peacetime and during two World Wars. The author, who served in the SS Atenas, below, provides a nostalgic look at the conmiercial version of the Great White Fleet.
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UNLESS OTHERWISE CREDITED. PHOTOS ARE FROM UNITED FRUIT COMPANY. COURTESY OF ROBERT CARL
T
-Lhe Great White Fleet of the giant United Fruit Company was part of an almost legendary commercial enterprise that rose to prominence from inauspicious beginnings. The venture began in 1870 at Port Antonio, Jamaica, when Lorenzo Dow Baker, captain and owner of the two-masted schooner Telegraph, home ported at Wellfleet, Massachusetts, purchased a cargo of 160 bunches of bananas for 14 cents a bunch. He delivered the cargo 11 days later at Jersey City, where the bananas sold for $2.00 a bunch.
In 1876, Baker and Andrew Preston of the firm of Seaverns & Company of Boston formed the Boston Fruit Company. Joining later was Minor Keith, a remarkable pioneer who built railroads through jungles and across mountains in the most difficult terrain of tropical Costa Rica. These three enterprising men rapidly expanded domestic U. S. markets as a result of this country’s growing demand for bananas. They also increased the number of ships in the trade and acquired additional property in Central America for the growing of bananas.
On 30 March 1899, the trio formed the United Fruit Company whose assets included 112 miles of railway, 212,934 acres of land, and $11 million in capital. From that beginning, the company grew into a colossus. In its heyday of the 1930s, the company and its subsidiaries controlled vast Central American rail systems, communication networks, and huge sugar and banana plantations. There were United Fruit- built hospitals, commissaries, and schools in the countries of Colombia, Jamaica, Ecuador, Cuba, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Panama, and Honduras.
At the outset in 1899, Preston chartered four new ships—the Admiral Dewey, Admiral Schley, Admiral
Sampson, and Admiral Farragut—originally built for the U. S. Navy and declared surplus as a result of the termination of the Spanish-American War. As reconfigured, each was capable of carrying 53 passengers and 35,000 bunches of bananas. So successful were these ships that in 1903 the United Fruit Company chartered the first successful refrigerated ship in this trade—the SS Venus.
By 1904-1907, the fruit company had grown sufficiently to build three ships of its own design, the San Jose, Limon, and Esparta. (The San Jose and Esparta were torpedoed and lost in World War II.) In 1908, contracts were let with Workman and Clark in Ireland to build 13 of the 5,000-ton Atenas class.
These iron-hulled ships were technologically ahead of their time. Originally coal burners, they were converted to oil in the 1930s. The author sailed in the Atenas in 1939-1941 and the veteran of World War I service was again to be prominent in World War II. When I left the Atenas in 1941, her hull and engines were still sound, and she continued in service until 1949- The fleet continued its shipbuilding efforts with the Calamares class of 7,622 tonners in 1913, the Toloa and Ulua in 1917 followed by the San Benito, Mayari, and Choluteca in 1921 and La Playa in 1923.
During World War I, United Fruit Company ships actively participated in this country’s war effort. Although smaller than most other merchant ships, they compiled a fine record, including transporting of doughboys to France and serving as Navy auxiliaries. The record growth of the United Fruit Company in the late 1920s and the 1930s saw the expansion of the
Great White Fleet to the size of a small navy. The ships were distinctive by their coloring and were painted all white with a stack of buff, red, and black with a white diamond in the center.
More new classes followed in rapid order: the Telda, Iriona, Castilla and Tela (1927); the Aztec (1929); the Platano, Musa (1930); the Orotava (1936). In addition, the Fruit Company chartered a considerable number of additional freighters for general cargo needs on southbound runs.
In 1932, the fruit company acquired six new turbo-electric passenger ships, the Chiriqui, Jamaica, Veraqua, Talamanca, Quiriqua, and Antiqua. Supplemented by the smaller Pastores, they became the elite of the Caribbean cruise trade. Carrying 125 passengers each, they served Cuba, Jamaica, Colombia, Honduras, and the Canal Zone on a 15-day turnaround.
United Fruit Company ships maintained tight schedules, and heaven help the captain who arrived with a cargo of spoiled, unsalable bananas. From time to time, mischievous pursers would change the caption on the passenger folders from "Every Passenger, A Guest” to "Every Passenger, A Pest—Every Banana, A Guest”.
The ships would arrive usually at an out-of-the-way banana port about noon, with sailing posted for early the following morning. All night long, the freshly cut green bananas rolled in from up-country plantations via the single track railroads alongside the ship. Dockers would carry them from the train to conveyors which moved them into the refrigerated holds where they were stacked and braced for the homeward voyage. It was a precise and rapid operation.
Once the ship was loaded and hatches secured, the refrigerating engineer (a very important position) would insure the proper temperature was set, and the captain would sail. Woe betide passengers who failed to be aboard at the posted time; bananas would wait for no one. During the homeward voyage, hold temperatures were held at specific levels, and when the ship arrived at New York, Boston, New Orleans, or a West Coast port, the banana cargo was discharged as promptly as it had been loaded, usually in eight to ten hours. Some of the cargo went into waiting trains, svhere it was dispatched all over the United States, lots being sold enroute to jobbers in major cities.
During the mid-Thirties, the Clyde-Mallory Line servicing Florida and Texas ports was confronted with an excessive orange crop which could not be carried in its entirety in the existing fleet. So the line chartered some reefer vessels from the United Fruit Company. The year after these charters, the fruit company formed the Refrigerated Steamship Line operating from New York to Jacksonville, Fort Myers, and Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and put its finest ships in this service at the height of orange season. Ships like the Atenas carried 43,000 cases of oranges at a clip, loading the crates on roller conveyors in hours.
Clyde-Mallory, faced with this stiff competition and labor problems, gave up and left the field to United Fruit Company. By the late 1930s, rail and truck transportation in turn competed with United Fruit Company. Vicious rate wars, uncontrolled by the Interstate Commerce Commission, caused the fruit company to abandon this coastal service—the beginning of a decline in all our formerly important coastwise and intercoastal service. Fruit company vessels in the orange trade went back into the more lucrative banana, coffee, and sugar business.
It was the people who manned the "Banana Navy” that made it great. Most of the United Fruit Company skippers grew up in square riggers, and they were a colorful lot. Captain Trygve Angell, master of the Atenas in 1942, slugged it out with two submarines, sinking one and causing the other sufficient damage to withdraw. The fruit company captains were a strong-willed class of men.
It was a proud boast that no officer who attained some seniority with the company need worry over loss of employment. Occasionally, though, someone might have to serve as a cargo or night mate when some ships were temporarily laid up. As a result, the fruit company attracted the elite of deck and engineering officers. Discipline was firm, and each ship was maintained in superb condition.
Pursers represented the company on board ship and in foreign ports, thus achieving training for executive positions ashore. Hull and machinery inspections and yard work were scheduled on a regular basis. All of this was, of course, costly, but the results over the long haul enabled the company to keep its ships running efficiently long beyond their normal life expectancies. Thirty to forty years of service was normal, and even when a ship was finally sold because of the arrival of newer replacements, the buyer might squeeze another profitable ten years out of her.
Pay on board ship in the early 1930s (pre-union) was very low (ablebodied seamen, $42.00 per month; third mates, $125.00), but employment was assured and the fruit company led in retirement and other benefits. Food and accommodations for the crews in all American merchant ships in the early Thirties left a lot to be desired. In fact, the crew of one United Fruit Company ship painted out her name on the bow and substituted SS Hungry just as she passed lower Manhattan—in sight of hundreds of spectators out for their noon walk. The bitter days of company and union squabbles gradually lessened and wages, accommodations, and food vastly improved.
In World War II, ex-merchant ships became active Navy support vessels. Others aided the war effort by delivering refrigerated supplies to this country and our Allies, often without convoy. For the fruit company, World War II began in 1940 when it chartered a number of ships to our Allies to carry needed foodstuffs. The fruit company officers and men stayed with their ships throughout the war unless called into Navy or Coast Guard service.
After World War II, the United Fruit Company built what was to be the last of its American fleet as a new class of reefers emerged to replace aging prewar vessels. The new ships were the Comayagua, Junior, Metapan, Yaque, Fra Berlanga, and the sugar ship Manaqui. For the carriage of dry cargo, the United Fruit Company obtained several C-l ships from the Maritime Administration.
But bad times were on the horizon for the Great White Fleet. The passenger ships were abandoned because of rising labor costs, and in 1954 the federal government filed a civil antitrust suit which required that, by 1958, the United Fruit Company agree to divest itself of major control of the banana trade. The year 1955 marked the apex and the beginning of the demise of the U. S.-flag United Fruit Company ships. In that year, the company operated some 62 vessels—50 of which were reefer ships handling about 2'/2 million pounds of bananas and completing 982 voyages and about 5.2 million nautical miles.
These ships averaged 255 steaming days per year.
With the breakup of the company organization and the advent of refrigerated container services, the days of U. S.-flag reefer ships were numbered. By 1970, the United Fruit Company bore only small resemblance to its former self. Eventually, the company’s newer reefer ships were sold or transferred to foreign interests. Today, the United Fruit Company operates no U. S.-flag ships.
During its many years of commercial service, the company served as a training ground that was able to provide the U. S. Navy with many reserve officers and ships that were used in the movement of vital commodities, particularly during World Wars I and II. With the demise of the company’s U. S.-flag ships in the Car- ribean, the American merchant marine lost a strong foothold on the ocean highways to our South and Central American friends, and the Navy has lost the services of a well-trained nucleus of reserve officers.
Mr. Carl is Special Assistant for Transportation to the Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Installations and Logistics. He has a background of more than 40 years in transportation, both government and commercial service.
Above, wicker furniture in a smoking room on board the SS Calamares contrasts with a social room and library, right. The latter hardly gives the appearance of being part of a ship. Below, the SS Chiriqui departs New York in the late 1930s. During World War II, she served as the USS Tarazed (AF-13).
One of the first post-World War I additions to the banana naiy was La Playa, top, built in 1923. She was joined soon after by the Iriona, above, built in 1927 by Workman and Clark of Belfast. She was in service until the 1950s when such ships as the Almirante, below, formed the last generation of United Fruit Company vessels. At left is a dining room alcove on board the SS Calamares. The cut flowers on the tables reflect the line’s motto, "Every passenger, a guest."
Cristobal, Panama Canal Zone, was the turnaround port for East Coast United Fruit Company ships, such as the three shown at the top of the page. Flere external white paint was applied to the ships each voyage. Above, the SS Atenas shows her age. She was built in 1909 and remained in company service until being scrapped in 1949. Above right, the SS Turrialba is seen in Boston Harbor in the 1930s. Like the Atenas, she was built to carry 90-100 passengers, but Coast Guard regulations later limited her to 12. Five ships of the United Fruit Company lined up at New Orleans docks, right, around 1930.
EWING GALLOWAY
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In 1941, the Quirigua was chartered by the Navy and commissioned on 14 June of that year as the USS Mizar (AF-12). She is shown above at Norfolk in camouflage in December 1941 and in the two bottom views at San Francisco in January 1945.
U. S. NAVY
Just as she had donned her warpaint and naval guns for World War II service, the Quirigua/Mizar was able to doff them just as easily when the war came to an end. Her days of supporting Navy and Marine forces in the far Pacific were over, and so it was back to the East Coast banana trade. At top is her cruiseship/cargo appearance after the war. In the early 1950s, her after superstructure was cut down, and she became an express freighter. At left, she loads bananas in Barrios, Guatemala, for the trip north to the United States.
When war came to the United States, the SS Talamanca above, became the USS Talamanca (AF-15), top. Such wasn’t the case, though, for the SS Antigua, shown below gaily steaming into Havana Harbor with her flags flying in the late 1930s. She was taken over by the War Shipping Administration, got her hull painted black, right, and was scheduled to become AF-17. But the Navy never actually acquired and commissioned her, eventually deciding she could be better put to other use.
JAMES C. FAHEY COLLECTION
A few of the fruit company’s ships served in both World Wars. Above, the USS Pastores, built in 1913, carried troops and dodged submarines as a World War 1 Navy transport.
From 1919 to 1941, she was back again as a banana boat.
In February 1942, she was recommissioned as a Navy ship,
AF-16, and served in both oceans. She’s shown, below, under Coast Guard air protection off the East Coast, and, bottom, in October 1944 prior to the Leyte invasion.
U. S. COAST GUARD
Loading bananas aboard ships of the United Fruit Company liners was a day-and-night proposition because of the perishable nature of the cargo. The fruit was brought into port on railroad cars and then loaded by gantries and conveyor belts into refrigerated holds. The conveyors had canvas pockets for the individual bunches of bananas.
These pictures provide an idea of the scope of the fruit company’s operations. At top, the bananas are graded in a terminal at Mobile, Alabama, before being loaded into railroad cars and shipped to the rest of the nation. At left is a closeup view of the conveyor leading into a ship’s hold. Above, bananas move along a conveyor at New Orleans before going to rail transportation.