Bulk carriers carry three billion tonnes of cargo every year and are indispensable to world trade. Yet the enormous growth of the bulk carrier fleet has been accompanied by a frightening toll of ships lost.

This magnificently illustrated book looks at the evolution of pure refrigerated ships and fruit ships, and at the histories and fleets of the major owners involved in the reefer trades, including Lauritzen, Salen, Maritime Fruit Carriers, P&O, Blue Star, Geest, Seatrade, United Fruit and Fyffes.

This story covers fifty six years of maritime history, from the last six months of the second world war until the year 2002. In December 1944, a young Scot began a seagoing career with one of Britain’s oldest shipping companies, Alfred Holt &. Company, the Blue Funnel Line of Liverpool, which took him around the globe to many remote places. From the Molucca Islands in Indonesia; to Matadi, one hundred miles up the Congo in Africa; to the creeks and thousand islands of Burma and Thailand; to New York, Sydney, Tokyo, Hamburg; Broome in West Australia; Jeddah in Saudi Arabia; to Shanghai, Yokohama and to little known parts of North Borneo; around the Pacific Islands and finally to New Zealand.