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[David Fox]

Following John Taylors' email from VGSA about Pauline Dowlings book on meeting her husband Stuart Ross and later sailing on a banana boat the Avelona Star, reminds me I was on the Avelona Star when I met my wife in Tampa Florida, she had just come off the Standard Fruit banana charter, the Avelona Star, not the wife in about 1982. Perhaps the Potassium in bananas had some cupid effect.

Ronnie Brownbill was Old Man and John Lineham as Chief Engineer, both of which are no longer with us, but glad to say Jean Lineham is still in good health having had lunch with her in October.

The Avelona went Reefer tramping from then on. Tampa to Alexandria Egypt with frozen chickens, lightship to an obscure port in Brazil before returning to the UK for modification for the Falkland crisis. As I got off in Brazil I am not sure she brought a cargo back. After I spent 3 weeks in Tampa before returning home I went down to Portsmouth to recover some personal effects to find they had been delivered to BSSM in Liverpool but was able to observe the work that was being carried out for her role in the Falklands.

The cartoonistic book cover looks typical of some of the obscure banana ports we used to visit, Guyaquil in Equador cames to my mind, the ship larger than life with the typical BSL long focsle bulwarks to keep the foredeck dry, down by the stern being light ship ready for loading with the blue boot topping showing.

Perhaps too late now, but I am sure Wally Tricket could have added some caricatures for you as chapter headings of the famous and infamous characters you came across.


The MN that helped to put the 'great' into Great Britain, both of which have long sinced gone.

Good luck with the book.