New Blog by Paul Strachan - The Flotilla at War

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The Irrawaddy Flotilla may be remembered for opening up a great and rich country to trade and travel, and a prosperity it had never known before or since, but it is not always remembered that it was born out of war and met its fatal demise in war. Whilst never a government monopoly, and most certainly never part of a ship owner’s cartel, the flotilla always enjoyed a semi-official status with the colonial government in Rangoon, carrying the proconsuls of empire and perhaps more profitably benefiting from mail contracts that subvented services on less profitable routings, not unlike the mail steamers on the Scottish west coast routes. It very much suited Rangoon to have so great a strategic resource that could at a moment’s notice be deployed for military purposes... read more