Hi Piers, This is Ian in Hong Kong. Thank you so much for the really helpful explanations about Borealis and Cutty Sark. Exactly what I needed. I shall print it all out as my own personal guidebook for my visit to the Cutty Sark. My great-grandfather and ship's steward, was William Shepperd, born in Colchester in 1842, died in Tavistock in 1922. As to the steward's job and alcohol, I had at one time thought that my great-grandfather's taking proprietorship of the Temperance Hotel in Tavistock on coming ashore in 1878 after 20 years at sea was perhaps by way of penance for past excesses. Not so. He was a Baptist. In the lengthy newspaper description of the 1899 wedding in Tavistock of his daughter (my grandmother), he is described as a 'lifelong teetotaller'. I think he must have been much sought-after by owners and masters looking to run a disciplined and sober ship. He was with Borealis for at least a decade. By the way, I have indeed read the relevant and useful pages in The Men of the Merchant Service. One of the voyages of Borealis took her from Shanghai to New York - direct, it seems. She carried a single passenger that time, one Andrew Reston, whom the master duly registered with the New York authorities as an immigrant. A bit of a backstory there, one would imagine. Then there were 1300 tons of coal from Sydney to Shanghai. And lots of contract jobs for Jardine Matheson in Hong Kong, up and down the coasts of East Asia: from Rangoon to Yokohama. Rice, for instance, from Saigon to Shanghai. All fascinating stuff. A great coincidence for me is that the maiden voyage of Borealis in 1864 took her from Rotherhithe to Hong Kong, but I have not been able to find a crew list for that voyage, so don't know if William was aboard. My UK family never mentioned to me his seafaring or his links to the Orient, despite the fact that Chinese blackwood furniture and a carved ivory junk under a glass dome were passed down to us. I arrived in Hong Kong in 1973 and am still here. Thank you again Piers. Your help is incredibly valuable to me and to my family. Ian