The 'E' Type Forum

Two pictures of an E type in the cargo hold on this page, must be a story, can someone translate?
http://www.snesejler.dk/bill57.htm

Google translates it for you if you ask. Although the E-Types are pictured there is no exact information as to date or port - South Africa in 1968 most likely (six FHC's went there that year and five can be seen). Good photos though - I will add them to the Collectors Corner thread.

What is interesting is that they are LHD cars ( unless the negative has been printed back to front) which militates against their ultimate destination being South Africa . Mozambique?

Could be almost anywhere I suppose, there is little to go on in the accompanying text. Maybe the US?

The neg has not been reversed. Look at the NO SMOKING sign!

My '68 E (presumably one of the six) was sold as a personal export to South Africa and dispatched on the 15th July 1968. However mine was built RHD, series 1.5 and finished in Cream. The two cars in the photographs are both LHD which would appear to be odd if they were being exported to South Africa which was, and still is, a RHD country. Perhaps not South Africa? BTW the original owner repatriated my car back to the UK in 1995, sold it in 2003 and I bought it from the second owner in 2016 with 49000 miles.

Michaelg wrote:The neg has not been reversed. Look at the NO SMOKING sign!

Ah yes...well spotted!

christopher storey wrote:What is interesting is that they are LHD cars ( unless the negative has been printed back to front) which militates against their ultimate destination being South Africa . Mozambique?

I'm not so sure that LHD rules out SA. That would probably hold if they were factory deliveries, but they may also have been from owners who took a (temporary) posting in SA and wanted to take their E with them. (Or someone returning to the UK from a posting or vacation for which they had brought their E with them).

My dad sailed with Blue Funnel to SE Asia in the mid '50s. They would leave Liverpool with motorcycles and sewing machines and go to either Hong Kong or Singapore first then spend about a month moving various cargoes around the area until they had a reasonable load to bring back to the UK. Dad said that they often had private and factory cars and that loading the holds so that they could be flexible about changing cargoes and not damage the cars.

He also told me that with Blue Funnel it was the Captain's responsibility to decide what was tramped around the far end, and that even the return load wasn't always a pre booked full cargo. The Old man got most of the charges for deck cargo, and a cut of whatever he brought back which the agent hadn't arranged.

He said most of the time they brought Teak and Manganese back to the UK, but everything else was a completely mixed bag - I got the impression that it was such an informal arrangement that we'd hardly imagine it would turn a profit from todays information age perspective.

Surely the six noted as being exported to South Africa would come from the factory records and thus be factory deliveries. There were official Overseas Agents in very many countries in Africa in those days most of which had ports. There were 59 agents noted in SA alone on the April 1968 list plus, of course, the subsidiary company in Cape Town. My bet is that the ship was going somewhere else!