As a child born in the 1950s, I feel privileged to have witnessed the shipping of that era passing through the port of Southampton. Famous shipping companies prevailed, including Cunard, P&O, Shaw Saville, Sitmar, Union-Castle, French Line, British India, Elder Fyffes and many more, all of whom had offices or agents in the town. During the holidays we boys would plague these offices for photos or information regarding their ships to add to our collections. We would then take the steam-powered Itchen floating bridge and spend a few crossings sorting out all our acquired spoils.

We witnessed the mighty Cunard Queens, United States, France, P&O’s finest, as well as the lavender-hulled Union-Castle ships and emigrant ships of Shaw Saville and Sitmar. They all made for