The Captain's teeth

 

An event in the Indian Ocean

We were heading SE from Aden to the southern tip of Ceylon, right in the middle of the Indian Ocean.

There was a gentle NE’ly swell from the NE monsoon, and we rolled easily in a blue Indian ocean with hardly a cloud in the sky, the sort of day a seafarer dreams of. The flying fish were jumping and there was no traffic and a clear ocean horizon.

I was now a third officer proudly displaying my single gold bar on my epaulets having successfully passed my Second Officers certificate.

So I was the watchkeeping officer on the 8-12 morning watch on the bridge.

I had risen at 07:30, had a quick shower and a breakfast of fish kedgeree with that aromatic flavour of curry with hard boiled eggs and rice. Then, up to the bridge for 07:55 to relieve the chief officer of the watch. Handover was easy, no traffic and the C/O had fixed our position with the stars at dawn, so everything was in order.

Started checking bridge instruments and chart position before winding the two chronometers in the chartroom. The captain would be up shortly after his breakfast for his daily tour.

Uniform etiquette is clear. Full appropriate uniform for eating in the saloon and always in port. Deepsea was a little different, a more relaxed approach, shirt outside your shorts, long socks rolled down, that sort of thing. However Captains could be an exception to even these rules and our short rotund Liverpudlian Captain was likely to turn up in oversize “empire builder” shorts, flipflops and an aertex singlet and so he did.

Good morning third mate, all well was his morning greeting. Everything OK, I replied as he moved to the port wing of the bridge to catch the NE monsoon breeze in order to cool down.

Then it happened!

There was a gasp from the captain, he turned and ran down the portside ladder to his cabin. The only thing I saw was that his face seemed to have changed, sort of collapsed.

He returned to bridge shortly after looking quite normal. “Third Offither, thend for thippy”! What is this, his speech seemed odd. Has he had a stroke I wondered. “Third Offither, thend for thippy”, he repeated. OK, who is thippy? Then it dawned on me that he wanted Chippy, our carpenter. But what for? What could Chippy do for our captain’s speech impediment and why had it happened?

Of course, he had dentures and must have yawned over the side of the ship and his dentures fell into the Indian ocean. Now wearing a reserve set that seemed to affect his speech he wanted Chippy to make some adjustments to his dentures to improve his speech so he could at least communicate with us.

[1]Chippy arrived on the bridge in his usual style. A small muscular man around 50 years of age dressed

in a grubby T-shirt tucked into oversize blue shorts supported by a broad leather belt into which was stuck a hammer, his constant companion. This was topped off with a pair of cut-off wellington boots.

He also had dentures which he rarely wore and as a result his bulbous nose and his chin nearly met! A more Popeye type of person is difficult to imagine.

He came from Newcastle and had a broad Geordie accent slurred by his alcoholism so that he was very difficult to understand.

So here we have the scenario, a Liverpudlian rotund captain with a sibilant lisp and a Geordie carpenter trying to communicate around the problem of the captains dentures. Chippy disappeared to his workshop to reappear with saws, knives and an assortment of rasps and files.

Whilst I was banned from the port wing of the bridge, I could hear everything.

Repeated work on the dentures was followed by a fitting and an attempt to speak.

“Thally thelth thea thhelth on the thea thhore”

This was repeated numerous times and it took some time before I could decipher it.

“Sally sells seashells on the seashore”. A tongues twister we all knew from childhood but being used here to test the status of the Captains speech defect.

Slowly things improved but what if they did not and the captain had the conn, controlling the ship. What would “starboard ten degrees” sound like or even worse “full astern”.

Well, after a couple of hours of work the captain was satisfied and Chippy was dismissed.

The captain came through bridge smiling on his way to his cabin.

“Thank you third offither Douglath!

OK, much better.

 

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[1] ‘Popeye - Google Search’, Texas State Historical Association, accessed 27 March 2023, https://www.google.com/search?q=popeye&sxsrf=APwXEddlvRAdJnwHRIvecdfbJUeVVq9-CQ:1679909946717&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjHsoOd6Pv9AhUlYPEDHblNAW4Q_AUoAXoECAEQAw&biw=1542&bih=696&dpr=0.8#imgrc=xuw9h-bcUWpN3M.