The Army Starts a Meat Run

The RASC Fleet’s latest vessel carried meat
fish and passengers about the Middle East

The Royal Army Service Corps Fleet is nothing if not versatile. To its freighters, landing-ships, target-towing craft and launches, it has now added anew type of craft, a refrigeration ship.

Her name is Prospect and her first posting is to the Middle East for three years. She will ply between the “meat stations” – the principal ones are Malta and Cyprus – and the rest of the Middle East, carrying frozen meat and fish.

The Prospect started life in Canada. She was launched in Ontario in 1942 and joined the Royal Navy as an “Isles” class trawler, one of the small craft which, among other duties, escorted the Murmansk convoys armed with depth-charges.
Last year she went into a Scottish dock-yard for a complete refit and to be converted from coal to oil-burning. Then her deep forward hold became three refrigeration chambers. Just before Christmas she joined the Army.
At Sheerness, the Prospect took on stores, a complicated business since there were no fewer than 2500 items. Most of them, including emergency apparatus such as light signals and rockets, came from the RASC Fleet’s No. 1 Boat Store Depot at Barry, Glamorgan, which can supply any-thing from a new ship’s engine to a tumbler . Other stores like bedding and cordage, were provided by the Royal Army Ordnance Corps, and the Royal Navy completed the list with items such as cabin carpets. At Sheerness, too, finishing touches were put to the Prospect’s paint-work and in due course she was ready for a War Office inspection before sailing for Port Said at the beginning of January.
Posted to take command of the RASC Fleet’s newest vessel was the master of the Fleet’s oldest ship (and incidentally the oldest ship on Lloyd’s Register), the 70 year old coaster, Marquess of Harlington. He is Mr. A.C. Clarke, who has been 14 years in the RASC Fleet, he has been stationed in West Africa, Iceland and Orkney as well as at home ports.

Mr. Clarke’s new command is small and compact and to the landsman, presents a bewildering series of vertical ladders to climb. She displaces 482 tons gross, is 165 feet long and 26 feet in the beam. She cruises at nine knots, but on her trials touched 13. She burns seven-and-a-half tons of fuel oil in a day and carries 94 tons, giving her a range of more than 2500 miles. Her crew totals 19 and she also has “officer accommodation” for ten passengers. The passengers sleep in staterooms, eat and relax in a saloon as compact as the rest of the ship, and have the only sloping stairway on board.
“She is a beautiful little ship” says her master. “She is lively in rough sea, but she will go through anything”.
Equally satisfied with his new ship is her chief engineer, Mr. E. Isaacs. He has served in RASC vessels of all kinds and considers the Prospect’s triple-expansion steam engine the most reliable afloat.
The Prospect’s refrigeration chambers will hold 40 tons of meat, which does not seem a great deal at first. However, the Inspector of the RASC Fleet, Major E.J. Robinson (recently transferred to the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers as part of REME’s Phase Two) points out that at half a pound a man, 40 tons of meat represents 179,200 rations, enough to keep a small garrison going for some time.

“The Prospect” adds Major Robinson, “has the advantage that she draws only about 15 feet and can visit places which cannot take bigger ships. She is intended to serve smaller garrisons, but she could do the run from Cyprus to Port Said, for instance, twice in about a week”.
The temperature in the refrigerators can be brought down to ten degrees Fahrenheit, which is low enough to keep meat and fish indefinitely. It is also low enough to put the Prospect into the frozen fruit and vegetable trade if necessary. The refrigeration plant is normally powered from the ship’s boiler, but there is also an auxiliary diesel motor which would keep it working during boiler-cleaning.