Typescript papers relating to Charles Victor Groves, master of the SHEAF SPEAR (1919) and then the SHEAF MOUNT (1913), cargo ships owned by Sheaf Steam Shipping Co. Ltd. (managed by W.A. Souter & Co. Ltd.), between 1920 and 1924. There is also a typescript journal kept on the SHEAF SPEAR by his wife Ellen Groves:

Private journal entitled ‘My Second Voyage in the S.S. Sheaf Spear’ kept by Ellen Groves, including some photographs. It covers a voyage from the River Tyne to Perim Island in the Gulf of Aden, beginning on 11 December 1920. The writer disembarked at Durban on 23 April 1921 and later took a passage in the passenger/cargo liner UMVUMA (1914), Natal Direct Line. The journal concludes with her arrival in London on 5 June 1921.

Description of Christmas Island, south of the Straits of Sunda in the Indian Ocean, by Groves, master of the SHEAF SPEAR, December 1921 (6 sheets).

Copy of a letter to W.A. Souter & Co. Ltd., sent by Groves from Boston, USA, dated 21 February 1923. It discusses a hurricane in the North Atlantic between 31 January 1922 and 14 February 1923. Together with a list of the damage caused to the SHEAF MOUNT during the voyage, extracts from the log and copies of relevant wireless messages (15 sheets).

Certificate entitled ‘At the Court of King Neptune’ recording the admission of Malcolm Firth to the ‘Order of the Fishy Deep’ on the SHEAF MOUNT, Christmas Day, 1924.

Two verses of a poem entitled ‘Burning Oil Fuel’, undated (1 sheet).