Glasgow And Ships Of The Clyde

Elders & Fyffes TILAPA in Liverpool Bay has a woman passenger suspected of having smallpox

Contributed by Fred of Formby (Merseyside, England)

Sun 4 January 1959

    A woman passenger in the Elders & Fyffes passenger-carrying “Banana Boat” TILAPA, which is expected to arrive at Garston in the Mersey this evening, is suspected of having smallpox.

  An official of the Mersey Docks & Harbour Board, who operate the port, said that their medical officers will board the ship in the approaches to the Mersey and examine the woman.   If smallpox is confirmed then arrangements have been made for the patient to be taken to the Port Smallpox Hospital in New Ferry, Cheshire, and all crew members and the other 9 passengers would be vaccinated.   It is known that smallpox is prevalent in Dakar and that the woman had been in the city.

   The TILAPA had sailed from British Cameroons in British West Africa on 20^th December and had called at Dakar in Senegal on 27^th December.

   The ship was built in 1928 and has a crew of 35 and can carry 12 passengers.

Further update :

   As a precaution the Liverpool Health Authority have spent the weekend vaccinating about 500 men who work in the Docks.

   Port medical officers boarded the ship in Liverpool Bay and examined the woman who had boarded the ship with her husband at Dakar on 27^th December.  At the same time all the crew and the other 9 passengers were vaccinated.

   Also the Port Health Office has written to the Medical Officers of the towns where the other passengers and ships crew will be going to warn them of the risk to which they have been exposed.

Woman’s illness was not smallpox

Monday 5^th January 1959

    The alarm at Liverpool was called off when the Liverpool Medical Officer of Health, Professor Andrew Semple, boarded the ship in Liverpool Bay.   He said that the woman had a bad skin eruption and was very ill but it was definitely not smallpox.

   TILAPA later docked at Stalbridge Dock, Garston and immediately began to discharge her cargo of bananas.

   The woman was carefully taken from the ship and removed to Fazakerley Isolation Hospital in Liverpool.

   Health Officials explained that symptoms of smallpox, which is a dangerous infectious disease, are a characteristic skin rash followed by raised fluid-filled blisters, and praised the Master of the ship for taking appropriate steps to prevent further infection.