Part of our Guyana history that has vanished in recent times was the era of the broad, squat steamship, the S.S. Queriman, which was at one time in operation as the ferry between Georgetown and Vreed-en-Hoop on the opposite bank of the Demerara River. She was a fixture for me as a youngster, living first at Hague on the West Dem and later Vreed-en-Hoop when I was going to school on scholarship at Saint Stanislaus College on Brickdam, making the crossing to and fro in early morning and late afternoon for classes and later occasionally even on weekends for purely social visits to town.

We country folks would park our bicycles on the lower deck and take the stairs up to first-class with abundant seating and breezes as opposed to the space below, where the heat from the ship’s steam engine could be at times unbearable.  In later years, the Queriman gave way to the smaller and more maneuverable diesel-powered ships, like the Lady Northcote, where owners of vehicles would sometimes find no space to accommodate them on a particular trip and would have to wait on the wharf for the next crossing.          Continue reading →