Collection includes: Company Reports, financial reports, and legal documents; Correspondence; several individuals' diaries/accounts of the events of January to April 1942; fleet lists for certain years; papers on company history, local history and geographical information about the Irrawaddy area; Publicity material and press cuttings; Photographs.

Administrative / biographical background
The Irrawaddy river runs for almost 1,100 miles across modern Burma (Myanmar) from Rangoon all the way to the Tibetan border. The Irrawaddy Flotilla Company was formed in 1865 as the Irrawaddy Flotilla and Burmese Steam Navigation Co Ltd, in contract with the Government of British India to convey troops, stores and mail from India to Burma and to encourage trade between them. Initially comprising 4 steamers to carry commodities such as rice, teak, cotton and salt, the regularity of services made possible by steam, also obliged the company to fit passenger decks to some of its vessels, to accomodate increases in passenger traffic. The IFC was Scottish-owned, and was managed by P Henderson & Company from Glasgow. The company carried as many as 8.5 million passengers in 1928. By 1942 the company ran 644 vessels ranging from large express steamers to pilot launches and 'flats' (rafts towed by or lashed alongside steamers). The entire fleet of 600 vessels was sunk in February and March 1942 as the Japanese advanced on Rangoon.The company was reconstituted after Burmese independence as the Government Inland Water Transport Board in 1948.