BIship
bulletin board for former staff is
the forum for
those who served with British India. Some of the postings which are
of general interest may be reproduced on this site from time to time.
Some
pictures of the Spellard 2000 BI reunion at Penang, April
2000. Posted by Don Wood. Don
has also launched a BI photo
collection starting with some very good shots of Chindwara,
Chyebassa and Tairea.
Andrew
Lansdale's collection of BI ship pictures includes Bamora, Chilka,
Chinkoa, Devonia and Ordia.
Steve
Monks's page of ships, with photos of some BI vessels including
Dwarka.
John
Feltham 's BI page with photos of Purnea on fire at Penang and
Sirdhana
Fred
Waddington's BI pages with some history, pictures of ships and
people, and BI ship class descriptions. There are other pages on more
general merchant navy topics.
Jill
Coulthards site has BI pages mainly devoted to Chindwara
group photos.
The top page has good shots of Chindwara (under Sydney Harbour Bridge)
and Dunera in the fjords.
Sam
Barbour's page of BI pictures
includes Sirdhana at Bombay and the tanker Ellora in the Atlantic.
There is also a picture of one of Devonia's rare 1960s visits
to Bombay and a good one of Chindwara at Basrah.
Extensive material
including personal recollections and interesting photos of Kampala
(shown here in Mobasa), Pentakotta and Mantola are now on
Tom
Barnett's large site. The site is a documentary of a deck cadet's
life 50 years ago with plenty of anecdotes and highlights on the BI
way of life.
Martin Southwood
has embarked on the mammoth task of committing issues of Chantalian,
the house - or should that be ship - magazine of BI's cadet ship Chantala,
to the web. Find these fascinating insights to the cadets' way of
life at http://mysite.freeserve.com/chantalian
Some Chinkoa and
Bankura pictures of 1964/5 are shown on Chris Lovelidge's site at
http://www.geocities.com/exchinkoa/
Ian
Byard has BI pages among P&O companies on his site. The information
includes cabin plans and photographs of Nevasa and Uganda.
With
all cadetships in mind, Paul Wood has created a great resource covering
the five companies which operated cadetships, including BI, plus other
training material. See his BI
page here. (A painting by Robert Lloyd, right, shows Chindwara
at Port Said)
The
Ships List has a short potted history of BI plus a fleet list
(mainly ships which carried passengers) which gives reason for disposal
of every ship listed. The page is primarily for those researching
family history.
British
LSTs. This page is a rich source of information about LSTs, many
of which were managed by British India with its own officers and crew.
Tom Elliot's
BI page with a nice photo of Barpeta underway and a soundclip of "Bye
Bye Blackbird" (This site is not available at the moment)
National
Maritime Museum
at Greenwich (southeast London) holds BI's business records from 1856
and has the company's staff records from 1868 to 1957. Some restrictions
are imposed on accessing the staff records. The museum’s Centre for
Research is open Monday-Sunday, 1000-1700 and publishes a number of
guides which are available on the website or may be ordered from National
Maritime Museum, London SE10 9NF, telephone +44 208 858 4422, fax:
+44 208 312 6632.
The Mariners
site has comprehensive and definitive information about maritime,
ship and crew records. Especially useful for those researching family
connections.
P&O's royal
charter is availble here
(PDF) or on the P&O site