The Fleet

Navigating the Irrawaddy River, amongst shifting sandbanks and through the occasional whirlpool, can never have been easy and a number of steamers came to grief, like the Rangoon, which became stranded and broke her back in 1873 only a year after her arrival fresh from her builders R Duncan of Glasgow.

Her engines were by Rankin and Blackmore who were to provide the machinery for a British paddle steamer called the Waverley three quarters of a century later.