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Yangtze Reminiscences

Graham Torrible was born in 1904 and joined The China Navigation Company as a deck officer in 1925. He served on the China Coast and Yangtze River during the 1920s and 1930s and was interned at Bangkok during the Second World War. He was Acting Marine Superintendent of C.N.Co. at Shanghai from 1948 until 1950. Torrible returned to sea in 1950 to take command of C.N.Co.'s new passenger liner Chungking III, on charter to Messageries Maritimes for their Marseilles/Tahiti/Sydney service. In 1953, he was appointed Marine Superintendent of C.N.Co. at Hong Kong and retired from the Company in 1961. He initially returned to the UK for his retirement but is recorded as having told a friend "how unhappy and unsettled he felt when he retired back to the UK....He said he felt that he was on a different wave-length from the British who had not ventured abroad, and found them very insular..." When the opportunity arose Torrible lept at the opportunity to return to Hong Kong and he died there in 1995 Click here for more...