Kolkata Port Trust Museum
Team Chronicle
Sandwiched between the city’s Ghats and warehouses and office buildings, Strand Road is one of Calcutta’s oldest thoroughfares. During peak office hours you will certainly miss the Kolkata Port Trust Maritime Archives and Heritage Centre, which is tucked inside the remodelled Fairlie Warehouse. The Museum was inaugurated by Anup Kumar Chanda – Chairman, KOPT, on June 17, 2009.
The 100-year-old heritage building with its thick red walls and big shady trees offer a respite from the jarring traffic and the summer heat. The balcony overlooks the B.B.D. Bagh railway station on its right.
KOPT’s Maritime Archives and Heritage Centre seeks to preserve the documentary heritage of the premier port in India and provide an opportunity to know the history of this grand organisation from its inception to its present status, to understand its ethos and to appreciate the quality of the people who formed it. Kept in the repository are thousands of documents, maps, charts, photographs, memorabilia and audio-visual recordings of the organisational development of the Kolkata Port Trust.
On the first floor, you will be astounded to see a series of huge archaic halls. These sport some of the old balcony windows with their wooden slats. The walls have information panels which present the Maritime Heritage of Bengal, the Genesis of Kolkata Port and Mart, the Birth and Consolidation of the Kolkata Port Trust System (1870 – 1947), the Recovery and Resurgence in the Post-Independence Era, the Socio-Cultural Dimensions of the various Ghats of Calcutta, and Vignettes from Old Calcutta.
Although the Calcutta Port Trust (as it was known until the city changed its name) played an important role in the development of shipping and trade in India, its contribution has remained largely unknown to the general public.
Port Trust System: Birth & Consolidation (1870 – 1947)
1870 marked a defining moment. The Port of Calcutta made its appearance as a coherent organised system with the institution of the Port Commissioners to regulate and improve the port system. Dynamic leadership provided stimulus to the many-sided development of the port. Port facilities were expanded with a railway network, bridges, an oil jetty at Budge Budge and the dock system at Kidderpore and Garden Reach. The New Howrah Bridge (1943) stands proud as an icon of Kolkata’s past glory.
Exhibits
The most striking displays are the replicas of the various ships.
- Vir Bahu – the Floating Crane: Since all transit sheds are not provided with heavy cargo handling equipment, Floating Cranes are requisitioned by vessels for off-loading heavy lifts over-side into lighters.
The lighters are moved to Heavy Lift yards where they are off-loaded either by shore-based cranes or by Floating Cranes. The capacity of Vir Bahu is 30 tons. It is self-propelled and can move from one dock to another.
- Despatch Vessel – Nadia: Despatch Vessels were earlier used inter-alia to carry food provision and other materials to the Attended Light Vessels. Now they are chiefly used for lifting and fixing buoys in the navigational channel. They are often used to tow or assist a vessel in distress.
- Suction Dredger – Churni: This is a steam-powered Centre Bow Well Suction Dredger. Apart from its propelling machinery, the vessel is fitted with a dredger pump. During a dredging operation, the suction pipe is lowered on the river bed and bed materials (sand and silt) along with water are sucked up and collected in its hopper. Once the hopper is full of collected bed materials, the latter is disposed at the disposal site by opening a sluice valve fitted in the lower part of the hopper. The dredger is capable of dredging at a very slow speed and is very effective in dredging localised lumpy shoals.
- 200-ton Cantilever Crane – This is a shore-based electric crane erected on cantilever principles for loading and unloading of cargo from a vessel. Its main hook can hoist up to 200 tons from the vessel and can deliver both in shed and in barges over-side. It has got an auxiliary hook of 30 tons capacity. It is the heaviest shore-based crane in an Indian port. This crane has been extensively used for off-loading locomotives, EMU coaches, roters and stators of power stations, mill housing, etc.
Other Exhibits
There are display cases of original artefacts. The replicas of lighthouses, boat compasses, steering wheels, buoy lights, shore lights, revolving lanterns and so on, which will never stop to amaze you.
The documentation holds some interesting trivia. A copy of a deposit money receipt, dated August 19, 1947, made out in the name of one Arun Kumar Chatterjee who had joined the Port Commissioner’s office as a cashier. A non-event really, except that this same Arun Kumar Chatterjee went on to become Uttam Kumar!
There is a measuring tape that played a key role in the construction of the third longest cantilever bridge in the world in 1943, now known as the Howrah Bridge (Rabindra Setu). The steel precision tape was made in England in 1936 in a manner that it would see negligible length variation with temperature change. The construction of the Howrah Bridge began from the two anchor spans at two ends and advanced towards the centre, which necessitated zero error matching under Calcutta weather, which this tape ensured.
The Kolkata Port records preserve invaluable archival material about the maritime past of the Hooghly. It inspires and obviously motivates the Kolkata Port Trust employees to realize that there is a tradition that they belong to and that they can fall back upon.
Kolkata Port Trust Museum
Vigilence Department, Kolkata Port Trust
6, Strand Road, BBD Bagh, Kolkata 700001
Days closed: Saturday / Sunday / Government holidays
Timing: 10:30 am – 4:30 pm
Entry: Free
Parking: Available on the premises|
Photography: Allowed