The Ning-Po is a fictional cargo vessel, owned by Osato Chemicals and Engineering. Since Osato is a member of SPECTRE, the vessel, travelling from Kobe to her home port Shanghai on a regular basis, is used to transport supplies to Blofeld's Volcano lair, including liquid oxygen, used to fuel the rockets.
The Ning-Po secretly stops at one of the Matsu islands [Wikipedia], where the lair is located. Since SPECTRE wants to keep this absolutely secret, they murdered a female American tourist, who took a photograph of the surrounding scenery, with the ship visible on it.
History[]
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Helga Brandt has a very luxurious cabin on the 'Ning-Po', rather unusual on cargo ships.
The Real Ship[]
Two different ships have been used to portray the Ning-Po: The one on the photographs could not be identified yet, but the one visible during the harbour scenes appears to be the Yamagata Maru, a general cargo vessel, built by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries at their Nagasaki shipyard in 1965. The ship's name can be seen during the close-up of the Ning-Po letters, barely visible underneath the movie name.
The Yamagata Maru remained under Japanese flag until 1979, when it was sold to Ashaye Shipping Co in South America, and renamed African Express, sailing under the flag of Panama.
Not much is known about the vessel in general, but the ship finally broken up in Shanghai in January 1984 where the ship's fictional name is registered.