R.M.S. "TRANSVAAL CASTLE"
1962-1966
R.M.S. "S.A. VAAL"
1966-1977
"Transvaal Castle" sailing from Cape Town, maiden voyage 1962
Builder: John Brown & Co. (Clydbank)
Yard No.: 720
Official No.: 302850
Launched: 17 January 1961
Maiden voyage: Arrive Cape Town 1st February 1962
Dimensions: Length 700ft x beam 90.2ft
Engines: Pametrada designed double reduction geared steam turbines by builder.
Twin screw. 40,000 s.h.p. trial speed 24.7 kts
Name Changes
S.A. Vaal 1st of January 1966 Owner Safmarine Corp.
Festivale 1977 Owner Carnival Cruise Line
Islandbreeze May 1996 Charterer then 1997 Owner, Dolphin Cruise Lines
Big Red Boat III 2000
Big Red Boat June 2003, sold for scrap
Sailing from Cape Town on her maiden voyage, she was to have a very long life. Built by John Brown & Co., Glasgow she was a one class ship, in itself an innovation for the Company. She claimed another first, employing stewardesses in the saloon, they were for some inexplicable reason called stewardettes.
During her life the "Transvaal Castle" carried a number of names with a similar number of colour schemes non of which suited her other than her first, the Union-Castle lavender (its official name was London Grey!) hull.
1969 Renamed "S.A. Vaal" on transfer to South African Marine Corp. (Safmarine). Hull painted all white with grey funnel with blue/white/gold stripes.
1977 Renamed "Festivale" on being sold to Carnival Cruise Line. Painted in their bizarre colours. From there on the poor old ship slipped down the cruise ship ladder. She became the "Island Breeze" with Dolphin Cruise colours, then with the same name in Thomson colours before hitting rock bottom. She ended her days in 2003 at the ripe old age of 42 painted bright red with the name "Big red Boat III", possibly the most ignoble end of any of the Company's ships.
A couple of good stories. On her trials John Brown's chairman was overheard saying to Sir Nicholas Cayzer, "I hope this is the last ship we build for you". The remark referred to the problems experienced with the woman in charge of the interior decoration. By the time it came to fitting the bathrooms of the upper grade passenger cabins John Brown had learned their lesson, they had the deck mosaics for one bathroom completed and asked for its approval before continuing with the rest. This done the tiler arrived and completed all the bathrooms. The grout was barely dry when the interior designer came back aboard, no she said, not good enough and the whole lot had to be ripped out and done again.
For much of the ship's life with the Company her master was Captain N.M. Lloyd. Now I will not try to pretend that Captain Lloyd was everyone's favourite master but unquestioningly he took great pride in his ship. Being the man he was he was invariably the first ashore to inspect his pride and joy, no tarnished brass, no dirty port hole glasses and horror of horrors, no oily stains on the paint work.
The "Transvaal Castle" berthed at Las Palmas to take on bunkers, Captain Lloyd bounded down the gangway his countenance one of quiet satisfaction. That is until he got about half way down the ship when his eye (one could never be quite sure which one hence his nick name 'Swivel Eye' Lloyd) spotted this filthy port hole. Face puce with indignation a now very unhappy captain ran back aboard, it took several journeys up and down to the quay side with an ever increasing posse, by now the Hotel Manager, Chief Steward, Chief Officer and sundry others were all involved before a quiet still voice of an assistant purser was heard.
"When we were allocating cabin numbers we could never quite get them right, we seemed to have one number too many."
Measurements were taken, sure enough the distance between two supposedly adjacent cabin doors did not seem to completely correspond with others. The ship's carpenter was summoned from his cup of tea with the bos'un with orders to drill a hole in the bulkhead. There lo and behold was a complete cabin, well complete all but for the door!
The "Transvaal Castle" had a long life, but under a number of names. The first change was when she and the "Pretoria Castle" were sold to Safmarine on January 1st 1966, she took the last mail ship sailing in October 1977 when she was sold to Carnival. rebuilt in Kobe, Japan she immerged outwardly still recognisable as the old "Transvaal Castle" but internally completely changed and able to carry double the number of passengers. She continued to sail for Carnival until 1996 when she was sold to Dolphin and renamed "Island Breeze". From then on the old ship started a steady decline, in 1997 operated by Thomson and finally in 2000 she became the "Big Red Boat III" before being scrapped in 2003 as the "Big Red Boat".
"Island Breeze" in Dolphin Cruises colours0
"Island Breeze" in Thompson colours