Tod & Macgregor Shiplist

Notes:

          Requisitioned for Crimean trooping as soon as ready for sea. Her first P & O sailing did not take place until May 1858 when she went on the Suez-Calcutta route. Two years afterwards Candia towed her into Aden with a broken shaft.

[British Passenger Lines of the Five Oceans, Commander C.R. Vernon Gibbs]

          In 1856 the European & Australian Royal Mail Line chartered the Simla from P. & O. to cover the newly won Royal Mail contract between Alexandria and Australia.

          Prior to the opening of the Suez canal, mail and passengers were carried up the Nile in barges to Cairo. From there passengers were transported across the desert in coaches and omnibuses drawn by horses, mules or donkeys. The cargo was carried on camels. As many as five thousand camels were required to carry the cargo of one ship.

          The cost of "overlanding" cargoes was enormous and this, combined with mismanagement, caused the company to go into liquidation in 1858 with debts of £700,000.

[Pacific Steamers, Will Lawson]

         A few menus have been preserved. One was from the Simla for the 15th of January 1862, on a trip between Suez and Ceylon:

[The Story of P. & O., Howarth & Howarth]

          All the joints were brought whole to the saloon and carved there; and perhaps the best joke on such a list of solid foods is to find them described as "too recherché".

          Such a cuisine required an extensive stock of "live provisions", as no more than a day or two's supply of dead meat could be shipped because it would not keep, so that all the rest - as well as a cow or two for milk - had to be carried alive until their turn came for the table.²

² [One Hundred Year History of the P. & O., Boyd Cable]