maritime

  Report on board S.S. Mahout 1400 GMT Birkenhead Friday latest. I don’t remember much about the journey to Birkenhead except it was raining. It would have been one of my first train journey’s alone as a sixteen-year-old boy off to sea. In 1957 the options for getting across the river Mersey were by ferry or by the tunnel. Probably used a taxi and the tunnel to arrive at Birkenhead docks. The ship was berthed in the Vittoria docks, the main dock for ships trading with the Far East. Clan Line, Blue Funnel and Brocklebanks all used this dock. The entrance to the quay where the ship was moored was through a warehouse so I gingerly went through a large door into a world of noise and apparent chaos. Stack of boxes, steel pipes, tractors, cement blocks all lay around in this vast space. There were dockworkers everywhere loading tractors with goods and driving them out to the quay. “Get out of the way, you stupid sod”, shouted a man by the door to the quayside. “You will get...