Elder Dempster teaching resources

Learn more about Elder Dempster from these resources

To expand your knowledge of Elder Dempster, the following resources may be of interest.

  • Tropical troubles in a risky occupation: Elder Dempster seafarers’ health and West Africa by Dr. Jo Stanley

  • Anatomy of a Voyage: the Shipping Process diagram – drawn by Captain Steve New of the Fourah Bay Reunion Association, the diagram shows the shipping process for typical Elder Dempster voyages in the 1950s and 1960s, the period covered in many of the interviews and memoirs available on this site

  • Anatomy of a Voyage: photograph of Steve New – Steve is on board the Dumbaia, early-1960s talking to a lorry driver. Steve is dressed in the normal deck officers ‘whites’ since at the time he was in charge of the working cargo on the afterdeck – note his soft cap and sandals

  • West African Trade Between 1960 and 1985 – this essay was written by Captain Steve New in 2000 for his MA at the University of Greenwich. It provides an excellent overview of the changes that took place in West African shipping between 1960, the height of Elder Dempster’s involvement in the trade, and 1985 when containerisation and palletisation had considerably reconfigured the trade, and British involvement had steadily declined