Report on board S.S. Mahout 1400 GMT Birkenhead Friday latest
Wow that was quick, only 2 weeks to get all the necessary clothes and equipment together. Good job Grandpa went to sea and can now help me as Dad is back on his ship.
What gear do I need Grandpa?
Grandpa had always been a part of the family. We lived in
his big red brick house that was built in the 1920’s most probably from the
proceeds of many successful voyages as Captain. As his wife died our young
mother decided to look after him and it was therefore natural that we all lived
together once he had retired.
Grandpa or Gramps as we called him was my mother’s father.
Born in Lincolnshire in 1879, his father was a coastguard based in Sutton
Bridge, he grew up around the sea. He went to sea in 1894 at the age of 15 and
spent the whole of his life at sea working for a shipping company out of
Whitby, Yorkshire and settling in the fishing village of Robin Hoods Bay. He
retired as Captain and it as a pensioned seafarer that I knew him until I went
to sea at the age of 16 in 1957.
Throughout his seafaring career he saw 2 World Wars with
many adventures and incidents. For instance in the 1st. World War he
told me a tale of being bombed. He was on a small sailing ship leaving the
Thames in ballast with the hatches open for cleaning. He heard a strange noise,
a sort of buzzing in the sky. Looking up he saw a small aeroplane circling the
ship and then finally diving down towards the ship. Then a small object fell
from the plane and went straight down an open hatch to be followed by a loud
explosion. The ship immediately started to take in water and it is not clear
what the outcome was but he had a small newspaper clipping of the incident, now
lost. However this was one of the first incidents of aerial bombing in that
war.
Later in the 2nd. World War he had his moment of
glory when his ship was stopped and sunk in mid Atlantic by a German pocket
battleship and he was captured to be released under caution some 2 weeks later.
He spent the rest of that war in the Royal Navy Reserve.
In 1951 he moved with us to a new house in Middlesbrough for
the remaining years he had.
He was a portly, some would say stout person, short in height and broad in the shoulders. A sort of roly-poly figure, his face was ruddy and dominated by a large red veined nose that was more than once the first body part to be injured in his various adventures.
He wore glasses that sometimes were held together with
sticking plaster as they also suffered from either a hard contact with an
object or from falling off his head.
His monk like hairstyle was most often topped off with a
trilby hat on his outings whilst firmly clamped between his teeth was a pipe.
He was inseparable from his pipe. It was an essential part
of who he was. Always at an angle in his mouth it was an essential accessory
indoors, outdoors, everywhere.
Smoking his pipe involved many different actions before he
was satisfied and clouds of smoke issued forth.
First the pipe must be cleaned. He knocked out the ashes and
remaining tobacco into an ash tray and took out his clasp knife from the
capacious trouser pockets he had to scrape the bowl clean of residue. Now and
then he needed to ream out the pipe completely and for this he had a
cylindrical file that fitted exactly the pipe bowl and after a few twisted the
wooden pipe was renewed.
Then with a pipe cleaner, a wire wrapped in cotton, he would
thread it through the mouthpiece to clear out the gunge that lay there in the
channel to the bowl.
With a clean pipe he would turn his attention to the
tobacco. He often blended different tobaccos to taste but his favourite was
Walnut Flake that came in a hard rectangular block with, I remember, a diamond
shaped yellow metal plate advertising the brand.
Out came the clasp knife again, this time to cut slivers of
tobacco from the plug and set it into a leather pouch where often there was a
slice of apple to “freshen it up” as he would say. Then he would roll the
tobacco between his fingers until he had a satisfactory mix and texture tamping
it down in the pipe. Ready for firing up , out came the Swan Vestas and soon
streams of blue/white smoke surrounded Gramps.
As Captain at sea he got what he demanded and this followed
him into civil life. No meek request or submission to others suggestions. No,
he issued commands. “Dolly” as he called his daughter, my mother. “I am going
out to meet some friends at the Bodega”. We all knew what that meant.
He maintained an extravagant lifestyle even as a pensioner
wanting grouse and jugged hare from time to time. This was hard on the
household budget as Dad had just returned to sea after an unsuccessful attempt
to work ashore as a compass adjuster. So he and mother often had “discussions”
on his extravagance.
So what clothes do I need Grandpa to go to sea?
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