The gift that kept on giving…

An intriguing chapter in the recent maritime history of the Caribbean began in January 1958 when the short-lived West Indies Federation was formed by islands that were British colonies. A symbol of those idealistic times was the two handsome, brand-new multipurpose ships – ‘Federal Palm’ and ‘Federal Maple’ – that were gifted by Canada to the fledgling federation to boost intra-regional shipping services. Prominent CSA member Roland Malins-Smith, who has fond memories of a voyage in the ‘Federal Palm’, offers CM readers this ‘short history’ of the sister ships.

It is said that the British colonial administration initiated an inter-island shipping service in the Eastern Caribbean with chartered coasters in 1947, of which little is known today. Some 10 years later, when the West Indies Federation was being conceived, the importance of strengthening regional shipping appeared to be critical to the success of integration efforts and so the Canadian government stepped in and offered to custom-build two cargo/passenger ships as gifts to the federation. These two ships were named ‘Federal Palm’ and ‘Federal Maple’.

Both ships were launched in 1961, the ‘Federal Palm’ built by Port Weller Docks [in Ontario] and the ‘Federal Maple’ by Vickers Engineering, Montreal. With but minor variation, each ship was about 3,171 gross tons, 1,930 summer deadweight, an LOA of 91 meters and a speed of 14 knots. The ships carried 50 cabin passengers, 200 deck passengers and 1,500 tons of breakbulk cargo, which was handled by two 3 ton electric cranes, two 5 ton derricks and a heavy lift derrick of 20 tons. They were smart ships in their day, [with] very comfortable passenger accommodation and functional gear, given the state of our ports and the prevailing technology. I had the personal pleasure of sailing on the ‘Federal Palm’ in 1968 as a student, returning home to Grenada from Jamaica, briefly visiting several intermediate ports.

When the ships were handed over to the federal authorities in 1961, Furness Withy & Co, Trinidad, were initially assigned to manage them. Later that year the federal government passed the West Indies Shipping Corporation Act of 1961 establishing a statutory corporation to operate the donated ships. It is my belief that when the federation collapsed in 1962, the management passed to the corporation, which continued operating under enabling legislation of member states, specifically that of Trinidad & Tobago, where the head office of the corporation was located.

Integration

Despite the failure of the federation, it is felt that the ships contributed handsomely to the development of regional trade, travel and functional integration during the sixties and early seventies. Certainly, the perceived value of the service grew with the initiation of trade and economic integration discussions in 1965, leading to the formation of the Caribbean Free Trade Association (CARIFTA) in 1968. This Free Trade Association evolved into the Caribbean Community and Common Market (CARICOM) with the Treaty of Chaguaramas of July 1973. Under both CARIFTA and CARICOM, the West Indies Shipping Corporation (WISCO) was treated as a related regional institution, a vital part of the integration mechanism, which required policy direction and development.

Under the community framework, the board of directors of WISCO reported to the Standing Committee of Ministers of Transport which met twice a year. Those meetings were serviced and supported by the Secretariat of the Community. WISCO lost money consistently and was subsidized by member states, which were not happy about the annual subsidies. In the early seventies the secretariat persuaded the ministers to grant more discretion to the board and management of WISCO to raise rates and charges, to pursue a development program and to raise capital for this purpose, all reflected in the successor agreement establishing a West Indies Shipping Corporation, ultimately adopted in 1975. The secretariat and the management of WISCO recommended that the combination of passenger and cargo operations in the same vessel was dysfunctional and expensive, that containerization appeared to be the way to lower freight costs, and that the federal ships should be replaced. Air travel was also beginning to make inroads into the passenger business.

The ‘Federal Palm’ was reported to have been sold to the government of Nauru [north-east of Australia] in 1972 and renamed the ‘Cenpac Rounder’. It was ‘wrecked’ on 28 March 1979 and was found to be at the breakers in Pusan [South Korea] on 6 June of that year.

Withdrawn

The ‘Federal Maple’ was withdrawn from service and laid up at Chaguaramas from 1976 to 1980, during which time she was advertised for sale. There was a contract of sale to a Taiwanese company executed in 1976 but the buyers never took delivery or consummated the sale because of a dispute over the absence of the International Passenger Certificate and the seaworthiness of the ship. It is believed that the ship never had an international passenger certificate, having been built for trading within the West Indies Federation, a coastal trade. By late 1977 WISCO attempted to resolve the dispute by offering to discount the original sale price of $500,000 to $400,000, but the Taiwanese countered at $300,000 and claimed deductible expenses of $275,000 so WISCO referred the matter to arbitration in NY. The arbitrators awarded the buyers $100,000 while canceling the sale. The vessel remained at anchor in Chaguaramas until 1980 when it was sold ‘as is’ for $50,000, having deteriorated with inactivity and minimal maintenance.

Subsequent history of the ‘Federal Maple’ is vague. It was reported that she was used, or buyers attempted to use her, in the Cuban Mariel boat lift of 1980 and that the ship was eventually lost on the coast of Nicaragua. The ‘Federal Maple’ was removed from the ships register in 1997 with the remark “continued existence in doubt”.

With the retirement of the federal ships, WISCO built, bought and chartered container ships for the regional service. The corporation continued to lose money, although there is evidence that the switch to container ships did help to reduce the losses in the years immediately after the withdrawal of the passenger ships. WISCO ultimately succumbed to its accumulated debt in 1992 and was closed by the member states. An era in Caribbean shipping came to an end.

Beautiful

It is now clear to many of us in the industry that intra-regional shipping is difficult if not impossible to make commercially viable on its own without the support of extra-regional imports and exports. It may be argued that the intra-regional business is a cross-trade, supported and made viable only with the distribution of larger volumes from foreign ports. Scale is critical to profitability in shipping. The federal ships were a beautiful boutique business which was expensive to preserve but was probably worth preserving for its indirect social values, including training of officers and seamen, social integration of the islands and farmers’ market distribution capacity. I regret today that we did not find a way to afford to keep them going. They were, indeed, beautiful ships.

West Indies Federation

The West Indies Federation was a short-lived political union that existed from 3 January 1958 to 31 May 1962. Various Caribbean islands that were British colonies, including Trinidad & Tobago, Barbados, Jamaica and the Leeward and Windward Islands, came together to form the federation, with its capital in Port of Spain, Trinidad. The aim was to create a political unit, independent from Britain, similar to the Canadian Confederation. Before that could happen, however, the federation collapsed due to internal political conflicts over how it should be governed. The territories that would have become part of the federation eventually became the nine contemporary sovereign states of Antigua & Barbuda, Barbados, Dominica, Grenada, Jamaica, Saint Kitts & Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent & the Grenadines and Trinidad & Tobago; with Anguilla, Montserrat, the Cayman Islands and Turks & Caicos Islands becoming British overseas territories. British Guiana (Guyana) and British Honduras (Belize) held observer status within the West Indies Federation.