Last week I received an email from a friend that had attached to it several pictures of a bell. They were taken by a friend of his who had recently been traveling in Pakistan and had come upon a bell in a church compound in Larkana, a city in the province of Sindh.
Yes, you are reading that correctly — the inscription is “Crocodile!” A friend who saw the photo thought it looked liked a bell from a ship. Sure enough, there was an HMS Crocodile. Here’s what the Wikipedia entry has to say about it:
She was built for the transport of troops between the United Kingdom and the Indian sub-continent, and was operated by the Royal Navy. She carried up to 1,200 troops and family on a passage of approximately 70 days. She was commissioned in April 1870 under Captain G H Parkin.
Crocodile was re-engined rather later in life than her sisters, with her single-expansion steam engine replaced with a more efficient compound-expansion type.[Note 1]
Crocodile‘s last voyage began at Bombay in October 1893. On 3 November, as she was approaching Aden, the high-pressure steam cylinder exploded and the ship came to a halt. The next day she was towed to an anchorage near Aden. [2] Most of the soldiers and their families were brought home on other ships. Crocodileeventually arrived back at Portsmouth on 30 December 1893, having travelled using only the low-pressure steam cylinder, and was not further employed for trooping.[3]
In 1894 it was sold for scrap.
There is a place along the coast in Pakistan, in Gaddani, where ships are scrapped. Maybe they were already breaking up ships there in the late 1800’s. Maybe that’s where Crocodile was scrapped and from where the bell began its journey up country to Larkana.
Maybe…..
So, it seems like I may need to plan a bell-hunting trip to Pakistan. Who wants to join me?
And of course, you can read stories of church bells China in my book The Bells Are Not Silent: Stories of Church Bells in China.
Note: this post was originally titled “A Bell in Sukkur” because I mistakenly thought the bell was in the city of Sukkur. The title has been edited, and a section about Sukkur has been removed. I apologize for the confusion.
JoAnn, I wonder if the bell was taken from a ship called “Crocodile”?
Joann, we just gave a brass bell to our son-in-law Jeff on his birthday. We bought it in Karachi some years ago. We were told it came from the “old ship graveyard” at Gaddani. It has no markings on it and we surmise it was a bell used for calling the crew to meals. I love bells and had/have a small collection of small ones, mostly from Pakistan. I love your interest in church bells and look forward to your findings.