The Matson Ship Lurline carried the circus to Honolulu. The computer had a picture monkey in a life jacket next to ships life ring on the engine room computer desktop. One time some Bechtel workers in Dhabol, India asked our ship to bring them some steaks ( in our reefer boxes) as there was no beef for sale in India. Some big shot from the project (coal electrical gen plant) came out on a tug boat to see the beef we brought them. We hauled some general cargo in LASH barges for the project.
I don’t know that this is a strange cargo but I was attending a Maersk box boat several months ago that was delayed in port because the stevedores at the previous port had loaded a container of cocoa butter low in the hold next to the (heated) fuel tanks, and the cocoa butter melted. They had a crew scraping cocoa butter out of the container hold. It smelled great! Probably cosmetic grade. The Chief Mate was in the office and he grinned and said, “Hey at least it wasn’t a load of frozen chicken” or some such. Good point!
Friend of mine worked for Yutanna barge lines in the early 80’s and told me of receipt posted in the office. It was for the delivery of 300 Reindeer (carcasses) to North Pole Alaska.
[QUOTE=hawsepipe;104082]Friend of mine worked for Yutanna barge lines in the early 80’s and told me of receipt posted in the office. It was for the delivery of 300 Reindeer (carcasses) to North Pole Alaska.[/QUOTE]
That’s not a story you want to tell little kids.
“Hey, son. We delivered frozen reindeer meat to Santa because the elves got real hungry and ate Rudolph and his buddies!” 
“WAAAAAHHHH!”
Rubber ducks from Italy to Milwaukee, in bulk.
Condoms from Chicago to Alexandria, in bulk.
MARJORIE LYKES. What a fun easy to run steam ship…
Go figure
[QUOTE=+A465B;104085]Rubber ducks from Italy to Milwaukee, in bulk.
Condoms from Chicago to Alexandria, in bulk.
[/QUOTE]
I see the makings of a great party here…
My Buddy was first on a Box Ship that was off loading and loading so the Mates wanted to fill a couple of the Ballast Tanks. He had it set up to Gravitate and told the watch to keep an eye on the pump and secure the valves once the pump stopped. Well, he came back down a couple of hours later and saw the pump still turning. He secured the pump and called the mate to ask if anyone had sounded the tanks as he had a real bad feeling. Well, his feeling were right, the hold was flooded up over two levels of Containers. All of the boxes were loaded with U.S. Mail! They had to cut holes in the boxes to drain them as they were too heavy to lift.
Not really on topic but thought it was worth sharing.
As for the Strangest Cargo, I have to go with the Poison mentioned the other thread especially as it ended up in my room.
We brought in a helicopter that went down in one of the East Cameron blocks last year. PHI was waiting at the dock with black plastic to wrap it all up and throw it on an 18 wheeler.
I was on a box ship that hauled sand (Silica) from Saudi Arabia to Dubai each week.
Tourists.
Enough said.
Hauled sand from Yokohama to Diego Garcia for use as aggregate to make concrete.
The pigs heads we hauled from Singapore to Diego Garcia were strange, we hand loaded them in plastic bags into our ships freezer and they weren’t alway frozen when we picked them up. The workers in D’gar made lechon and sisig from them. As I recall it was $5 per head, that’s a bargain anywhere in the world.
Are Nuke’s considered “Strange”?
(Not in SF# 14 in the 80’s). “If you see the guys in the bunny suits running, bend over and kiss your ass goodbye…”
I was just the Derrick barge driver, Hard to sleep when there’s Nuke bombs flying over the wheelhouse…
Peace
(Thank you Benny for doing a fine job!)
Almost forgot about the Sealand Expedition. We were loading in Newark and the bottom fell out of a container onto the dock that was loaded with window glass. There had been a hurricane in Puerto Rico and they needed the glass badly. Later on that same ship the bottom fell out of a box of frozen chicken onto the ship in San Juan while unloading. The longshoreman had all their relatives come down to the ship for free chicken. They cleaned that spill up quickly.
“Triple screened PGA golf course sand”, or at least that was what the BOL said! We hauled it from Fairport, OH to Detroit, MI and it was beautiful stuff. We had a PGA official board the boat and inspect the hold before loading. If I recall it was only 2000 tons or so and that was probably the fastest unload we had that season!
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Maybe not strange but unusual yes.
[QUOTE=Jeffrox;104110]Hauled sand from Yokohama to Diego Garcia for use as aggregate to make concrete.
The pigs heads we hauled from Singapore to Diego Garcia were strange, we hand loaded them in plastic bags into our ships freezer and they weren’t alway frozen when we picked them up. The workers in D’gar made lechon and sisig from them. As I recall it was $5 per head, that’s a bargain anywhere in the world.[/QUOTE]When I was on the Singapore to Diego run, we had the chandler bring us pig heads for the Philipino stevedores in Diego. We gave them to individuals who did a particularly good job. One night a few of us brought some beer and booze over to the village and partied with these guys. We ate that stuff. It wasn’t bad really as long as you could wrap your brain around what you were eating.
I can’t really call it strange cargo but we used to haul boxes of cattle hides - raw and wet - out of Seattle to Kaohsiung and by the time they got there the decks were running with “hide juice” and stunk like a slaughterhouse.
The opposite was molasses and pineapples from Honolulu to Oakland. The ship smelled like a piña colada all the way home.
[QUOTE=Jeffrox;104110]Hauled sand from Yokohama to Diego Garcia for use as aggregate to make concrete.
The pigs heads we hauled from Singapore to Diego Garcia were strange, we hand loaded them in plastic bags into our ships freezer and they weren’t alway frozen when we picked them up. The workers in D’gar made lechon and sisig from them. As I recall it was $5 per head, that’s a bargain anywhere in the world.[/QUOTE]
Love me some sisig!!!
Month-in the ocean dead body? Goddamn still haunts me when I see someone in red shorts.
Used to haul “foreign” garbage that we would manually have to load into cargo nets. Needless to say on the 15’ steam “some” of it disappeared over the stern
In 2005 aboard the Cape Trinity, our last piece of cargo we loaded in Kuwait was a Sherman tank the Polish special forces found in the desert. It was pretty well stripped clean and pretty beat up but there was very little rust as I recall. They brought in a crane to put in on the deck then about 100 Polish folks came aboard for a picture. It was headed for a full rebuild and a spot in a WW2 museum. This load was the last of the Polish equipment as they pulled out from Iraq. It was one hell of a scenic fall ride up the river to Szczcecin.
just googled it and apparently it not totally a Sherman.
http://www.militaryphotos.net/forums/showthread.php?135937-Sherman-tank-in-Iraq