Leaving school

 

In the fifth form at Acklam Hall Grammar School, I was faced with a dilemma.

GCE examinations were to take place, the result of which were crucial in deciding whether to continue to sixth form for two years and another set of exams. The A levels are precursors to applying for a university place. Therefore, results in both GCSE and A level exams were important.

By only creeping past 11 plus exams by interview after failure in the exam itself, coupled with my poor academic performance at grammar school, did not bode well for further study.

On the other hand, it would mean two more years of rugby! The results of my GCE examinations would be crucial here. I got five passes out of eight subjects. It seemed OK. However, my brother got 7 out of eight sitting a year earlier as a fourth former! On reflection, the thought of five more years of study at school and university if I were successful in A levels which are much more specialised and harder was not appealing and I decided to leave after fifth form at the age of 16.

But what to do?

As the eldest in the family and a boy, you might think there would be pressure to seek a well-paid career path. But there was no pressure. Neither was there any real interest in specific careers. However, our family came from a long line of Mariners, so going to see became an obvious choice. Father was at sea and Grandpa, who lived with us, was a retired captain. For some reason I decided to try for the Royal Naval Officer College in Dartmouth. I do not know why, but I did.

You need to keep in mind that the year was 1956 and I was a middle-class Yorkshire Grammar School boy.

I was instructed to attend HMS Eaglet in Liverpool docks. Not sure how I got there, but late morning. In 1956 I climbed the gangway into the hull of a retired Royal Naval Man of War. A Petty Officer took me down into a large room where I discovered there were four of us, a grammar schoolboy from Lancashire, myself, and two youths dressed in Penguin suits, well, that's what it looked like. Black uniform and hats. Later I learnt was either Eton or Harrow public schools. Remember in the UK a public school is really a private school for the rich. So, it looks like there was a competition between grammar school and public school.

The Petty Officer explained that we must first undergo an intelligence test and that would be followed by an interview.

There were a lot of questions, and you will not be able to complete them all in the allotted time, he told us. So, we started on this multiple-choice type question and answers and myself and the Lancashire lad finished them all in time. Not so the two other boys. Hope this means we are OK. Then I was led into a large room with a long table on one side. Behind the table was a dizzy array of gold braid belonging to at least 6 Royal Naval or Royal Naval Reserve officers. On the other side of the table, was a single chair for me. Somewhat intimidating. It started with a range of questions about my background, academic and sport achievements. And then the bombshell!

What did I think of Hornblower! Well, I had read the books and enjoyed them, but what to say?? A good captain, a bad captain, so I garbled out the sort of answer knowing that it was not enough.

Thank you and wait in the next room, said one of the officers. Sometime later I was called in to hear that I had not made the grade. The same was true for the other grammar schoolboy from Lancashire, but the two public school boys were through! Such was life in the 1950’s, but no regret.

Sometime later Dad was on leave and suggested I try for the Merchant Navy, and he thought Thos. & Jno. Brockbank’s based in Liverpool was a respected shipping company. So I applied, got an interview and Dad and I took the train to Liverpool to meet the Marne Superintendent Captain Cadwallader. I must have made a good impression and /or my fathers presence helped because I got an acceptance letter soon after and my career as a Merchant navy officer was to begin.

Trincomalee and tea

 

Last port of call

Half full of jute from Chalna we were now approaching Trincomalee on the east coast of Ceylon to fill up with tea. This could be exciting.

Outward bound we had been in Colombo for a few weeks, both at anchor waiting a berth and then in port. It had been one of the most enjoyable port visits on the voyage, not least because of the opportunity to meet people ashore especially good-looking girls in the swimming club.

[1]                                                                                                                       

     Now we were to enter one of the largest and safest harbours in the Indian Ocean, Trincomalee on the east coast of Ceylon (now Sri Lanka). Having been fought over by many European maritime nations because of its strategic location it was now a naval and commercial port run by the navy.

The immaculately dressed naval pilot arrived even wearing white gloves, now a little soiled after climbing the pilot ladder to be greeted by our Captain who, surprisingly was also immaculate. Not an aertex singlet to be seen!

Well, Captain, we are taking you to an anchorage so you can load tea directly from barges. This did not sound too good, no shore leave, well well.

We anchored in a large bay with a sandy beach behind which was a tropical jungle where even with the naked eye you could see monkeys jumping in the trees.

There is a club on the beach, said the pilot, that is available to you to relax whilst you are loading. This sounded a lot better, I thought. Who knows who we will meet.

We anchored in 20 fathoms and laid back on the anchor until it took hold. Right laddie, said Jock, the second mate, we need to find some transits for our position. Transits, what are they, I innocently asked. You stupid Yorkshire boy, they are a simple way to check that we are not dragging the anchor and you will need them as you will be doing the night anchor watch alone! What alone on the bridge! Yes, said Jock and we need both daytime and night-time transits. So patiently he took me through the process.

[2]A transit bearing is when two fixed objects are in line. They will have a transit bearing only when they are in line. So we need to search for such objects now that we are stationery at anchor. They need to be visible day and night to the naked eye and fixed on the chart. We need at least two, better three such transit bearings to fix our position. We also need to keep in mind that the vessel swings with the tide and there can be some variation in the chosen bearings. Only experience will tell you whether it is because of the ship swinging with the tide or that we are dragging our anchor. That will keep you on your toes on the night watch!

So we searched around the coast and found some good transits, church spires with prominent hills, lit buoys with lighthouses, all on the chart.

OK, draw them on the chart and note the bearing and then check with the gyro bearing compass and report back. Dutifully did that and then came the examination! Was there a difference between the bearing on the chart and that you took with the gyro compass. Yes, I replied. OK why is that Jock pressed me for an answer. Luckily, I had spent some time with my correspondence course which normally was incomprehensible to me but on coastal navigation I seemed to grasp it.

The bearing on the chart is a true bearing and the difference with the gyro is the compass error. Good he replied and what if you had used a magnetic compass? It still would be the compass error, I replied made up of variation because the magnetic pole is not at the true north pole and deviation because of the local magnetism of the steel ship. Before he could ask another question, I said, and variation can be found in the compass rose on the chart. Wow, replied Jock, not such a numb skull after all!

[3]

So started a couple of weeks whilst barges came and went and loaded chest after chest of tea whose fragrance pervaded the whole ship. Best of all we were put on night anchor watches and mine was midnight to 06:00 leaving me free in the afternoons. This a dream job, very little to do on night anchor watch, hanging over the wing of the bridge to catch what little wind there was and check the transit bearings from time to time. A little anxious when we swung with the tide as the transit bearings came out of line a little. Were we dragging anchor or was it just the natural catenary of the anchor chain changing position. Apart from that I just dreamed of those girls at the Colombo swimming club. What lucky chap was chatting them up now whilst I was stuck at the other side of the country!

The Chief officer said we would put the motor lifeboat in the water for runs ashore and to teach the apprentices small boat handling. This was going to be fun. Of the four lifeboats we had only one had an engine and this was lowered from its stowed position to the embarkation point on the boat deck and we

scrambled in. Once in the water the chief officer decided a run ashore to the club on the beach would be an excellent introduction to small boat seamanship. You need to know that the lifeboat was like a giant bathtub and handled like one so manoeuvring was not easy but slowly we mastered the basic actions and were rewarded by a beer on the veranda of this club that seemed remarkably deserted except for the hundreds of monkeys racing through the trees.

[4]Some days we tried to water-ski in the harbour on the chutes made to contain water escaping onto the tea barges behind the lifeboat. This was not very successful as soon as we stood up the lifeboat did not have enough power to keep us up and we gently subsided into the water again. A lot of fun anyway.

Far too soon the hatches were battened down and chippy started wedging the hatch covers and the tea exporter gave us all a small tea chest of orange pekoe tea and we left that lovely harbour and started our voyage back over the Indian Ocean to Aden.

The southern tip of Ceylon is renowned fishing grounds, so we needed to keep a good lookout for the small wooden outrigger boats that fished well offshore and were difficult to spot especially at night as not all of them displayed any sort of light.

This area is also known for the concentration of whale sharks especially in February and March and they are slow swimmers so avoiding them is imperative. So visual lookout was a prime job for us junior apprentices.

Once we cleared Ceylon and entered the Indian Ocean, Jock turned to me and with a broad smile and said, now laddie we have 10 days of ocean voyage in relatively calm seas, time for you to start learning Celestial Navigation. I was dreading this as quite apart from the practical work of using a sextant that I felt competent at, the notion of mathematics and trigonometry left me quite numb. I was bottom of the bottom class in my year at school for three years running for maths. All those X’s and Y’s and negative numbers meant nothing to me!

Let us keep it simple and concentrate on the “noon sight” to find latitude and longitude. You do know what latitude and longitude is? You have used them on the chart so what if we do not have any coast, only sea and need to find our position?

So we have the sun, and we know it rises in the east and sets in the west every day. At a precise time every day it reaches its zenith, its highest altitude. This time we will call local noon for wherever we are. Greenwich in the UK is the prime meridian where longitude is zero degrees, and the time zone is called GMT (Greenwich Mean Time).

Now we know the earth rotates 360 degrees in 24 hours, one day. So that means it moves at 360/24= 15 degrees of longitude per hour. How can this help us? With an accurate clock, that’s how and we have two chronometers thanks to [5]John Harrison, a Yorkshireman in 1730. He invented a clock that could keep accurate time even at sea with all the movement of the ship. We have two and we check their accuracy every day against the “Greenwich radio pips” and note any error. They are adjusted to keep Greenwich time wherever we are in the world. Savvy so far?

So we get an accurate chronometer time for the time the sun is at its zenith for our position. We then use our Nories Nautical tables to find the time the sun reached its zenith at Greenwich, the prime meridian (0 degrees). So now we have the times for noon at Greenwich and for our position. The difference between them is converted to longitude at 15 degrees per hour to give us our approximate longitude. It is only approximate because it is difficult to measure the exact altitude for the zenith as the sun moves ever so slowly as it passes through noon. Nevertheless it can be accurate within 15 nautical miles, enough out in the ocean.

So now we need to calculate latitude for the same time. We can do this with our noon sight also. The altitude of the sun at its zenith means it is on our meridian of longitude, due south or north, and it becomes relatively easy to measure its declination. The suns declination is the angular distance of the sun north or south of the equator and we can read its value from our nautical tables for precisely this time. You will remember that the sun wanders north and south in the year because of its tilt axis between the winter solstice when there is the shortest day and the summer solstice when there is the longest day in summer. We need to know the angular distance when the sun is directly overhead, the zenith distance. This is simply 90 degrees minus our observed altitude. Latitude is then a matter of arithmetic.

If the declination and approximate latitude are in the same hemisphere and the latitude is greater than the declination, we add the zenith distance to the declination.  For the same hemisphere if latitude is less than declination, we subtract the declination from the zenith distance. If latitude and declination have different names, we subtract declination from the zenith distance.

OK, I see your eyes are glazing over so enough for now but every noon sight you can calculate our approximate position alongside us.

Go and find our approximate position from the start to be sure what hemisphere we are in and find the declination for today from your pristine new [6]Nories tables. Also find the table for converting time to longitude and the time of meridian passage at Greenwich.

Steaming northwest across the Indian Ocean you also cross a much older traditional trading route between Africa and the Arabian Gulf and we often saw sea-going dhows on passage. A refreshing sight.

References

‘Bossoir_a_gravité.Jpg (960×1280)’. Accessed 9 April 2023. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/77/Bossoir_a_gravit%C3%A9.jpg.

‘Chronometer Watch’. In Wikipedia, 10 August 2022. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Chronometer_watch&oldid=1103608912.

‘OLD EDITION Norie’s Nautical Tables’. Accessed 19 April 2023. https://www.imray.com/product/old-edition-nories-nautical-tables/ib0095-1/.

Small crates and tea chests. ‘Small Crates and Tea Chests’. Accessed 8 April 2023. https://farthinglayouts.blogspot.com/2015/04/small-crates-and-tea-chests.html.

‘Transit Bearings - Google Search’. Accessed 7 April 2023. https://www.google.com/search?q=transit+bearings&tbm=isch&chips=q:transit+bearing,g_1:navigation:4C6g_BECbgg%3D&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiAzo_835f-AhWWxyoKHWWvDpkQ4lYoAHoECAEQJg&biw=1501&bih=686#imgrc=HEjzrQFdswtcsM.

‘Trincomalee: India’s Call’, 27 April 2017. https://www.vifindia.org/article/2017/april/27/trincomalee-india-s-call.

 

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[1] ‘Trincomalee: India’s Call’, 27 April 2017, https://www.vifindia.org/article/2017/april/27/trincomalee-india-s-call.

[2] ‘Transit Bearings - Google Search’, accessed 7 April 2023, https://www.google.com/search?q=transit+bearings&tbm=isch&chips=q:transit+bearing,g_1:navigation:4C6g_BECbgg%3D&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiAzo_835f-AhWWxyoKHWWvDpkQ4lYoAHoECAEQJg&biw=1501&bih=686#imgrc=HEjzrQFdswtcsM.

[3] ‘Small Crates and Tea Chests’, Small Crates and Tea Chests (blog), accessed 8 April 2023, https://farthinglayouts.blogspot.com/2015/04/small-crates-and-tea-chests.html.

[4] ‘Bossoir_a_gravité.Jpg (960×1280)’, accessed 9 April 2023, https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/77/Bossoir_a_gravit%C3%A9.jpg.

[5] ‘Chronometer Watch’, in Wikipedia, 10 August 2022, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Chronometer_watch&oldid=1103608912.

[6] ‘OLD EDITION Norie’s Nautical Tables’, accessed 19 April 2023, https://www.imray.com/product/old-edition-nories-nautical-tables/ib0095-1/.

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.

The Red Sea

 We dropped the pilot at Suez and set off down the Gulf of Suez before entering the Red Sea. On each side the coast was of sandy coloured hills and mountains and a blue, blue sky over an azure sea. We finally had left Europe and were now entering the Middle East with the Arabian Peninsula to port and Africa to starboard and India sort of round the corner.

 Colin called us into our messroom. Boyo’s, he said, we are now in the tropics and EVERTHING changes. With day and night-time temperatures around 30 degrees centigrade you need to take care of yourselves.

First you need to take one of these as he held up a large white pill, salt tablets to replace the salt you lose through sweating. Do not forget to take them.

Then he held up a glass of an evil looking liquid. Lime juice to be taken every day to prevent scurvy!

Why all these precautions?

It is only with hindsight that the precautions Colin was describing were put into context. We were embarking on a 1300 nautical leg of our voyage to Aden in tropical seas in a ship from the 1920’s.

A steam reciprocating engine needs a lot of fresh water and the provision of fresh water for the crew was not always of the highest priority. Whilst we had enough to drink, washing in salt water with special soap was not unusual.

There were no refrigerators or freezers on board, no air-conditioning and thus we had to adapt to the natural hot climate in various ways.

Production of ice was crucial to maintain our store of food and not least beer! Once the ice boxes could no longer be kept cool, we were down to tinned food and warm beer. The only solution was to buy locally at every port we visited. This was a challenge for the purser, responsible for catering on the ship.

Keeping clean in the tropics became a challenge for us young apprentices unused to the combination of heat, sweat and physical work in a scorching sun from 6am to 6pm. Regular change of clothing, sometimes twice a day was the norm and this Yorkshiremen often found it difficult to adapt to it! The result, the dreaded “dhobi rash”, a fungal rash especially under underwear and difficult to overcome. Of course, the problem was the tight clothing we use in the west. The solution might lie in the Indian “lungi” worn often by the Indian crew in their off-duty periods. It is nothing more than a length of cotton about waist high that is wrapped around the waist and tucked into the waist band. Nothing underneath makes it cooler and more appropriate to sweaty conditions! Must get one when we get to Aden.

However, there is an art in tying a lungi. Done correctly, it provides a simple and elegant solution to everyday informal dress. Done incorrectly, can result in an embarrassing situation with the lungi around your ankles and you are showing the world your “nether regions” as we say in Yorkshire. With increasing skill, it can also be tucked up under the waistband to provide a sort of shorts version.

Another issue that arose quite quickly was the problem of sleeping in our bunks in such high

temperatures. We had “punkah louvres” in the cabin up under the ceiling that were supposed to deliver a stream of cool air over us. However, these faded yellow Bakelite nozzles were often stuck in one position and the air was neither cool or had sufficient force to make any difference even when we slept naked on the bunk sheets!

So, another solution was required.

Hammocks on deck is the answer, said Colin. Not only is it cooler on deck but you will learn some essential sail making skills. Ah, I thought, now I will get to use the sailmakers palm and needle that Grandpa insisted I needed in my “ditty bag”.

Go to the “cassab” in his store under the fo’csle and ask for 2 metres of no. 2 duck canvas, a skein of thread for all of us and a few metres of rope used for awnings, said Colin, and come back and we get started.

So started my training into the world of round and flat seams, cringles and grommets and rope splicing, proper seaman like activities! We found out soon enough that a wooden stretcher at each end holding the edges of the hammock apart gave us more space although the risk of falling out was increased!

The ship proceeded south with every day the same, blue sky and sea and hot, hot, hot. You soon learnt that the best times of the day were just before sunrise, around 06:00 and at sunset around 18:00. Being on the graveyard watch meant that midnight to 04:00 was fine with a slight breeze and the stars very bright overhead. The problem was the 12:00 to 16:00 watch where the full source of the sun beat down on us. Even with awnings over the bridge wings it was difficult to stay cool. Hanging your arms over the bridge front helped but every so often you had to go into the bridge itself and that was warm!

The midnight to 4 am watch was my favourite. Sometimes called the graveyard watch because everyone on the ship is asleep and you are alone, well with your Glaswegian second mate who seems to spend a lot of time in the chartroom.

Imagine, you are steaming south in the Red Sea, the temperature has cooled off from its burning daytime heights and there is a cooling breeze from the south, right in your face. The only sounds are the thump of the engine and the swish of the waves parted by the bow. Now and again, there is a splash as a flying fish lands on deck or sometimes a larger fish plays in the bow wave.

The purri wallah, the Indian lookout, is out on the leeside bridge wing and you have checked the bridge instrumentation. No ships on radar and none in sight. You move out to the windward bridge wing and hang your arms over the bridge front to catch the breeze. Magic.

Suddenly there is a click from the VHF and a voice says, “British ship heading south, this is the German ship Hansa, vi haf your Captain on board”!

What is this some sort of joke!!

The Scottish second mate replies, “I will check and call back”. Purri wallah, call the Captain and ask him to come up on the bridge.

Five minutes later, sorry sahib but the Captain is not there!!

Hell’s teeth, what has happened. Purri wallah, wake up the Chief Officer and ask him to come up on the bridge.

He arrives, take over and a thorough search reveals that indeed we do not have a Captain on board!

Frantic VHF exchanges result in that our Captain is uninjured after 3 hours in the shark invested waters of the Red Sea and the German ship heading south behind us will drop him off in Aden!

But what happened?

It was normal for the captain to visit the bridge around the change of watch at midnight and then spend a few minutes cooling off on his deck below the bridge. An inspection of this area revealed that the chain rail between the lifeboat davits and the permanent shipside rail was not hooked on leaving a gap over the side of the ship. It looks as though on his nightly walk he managed to walk over the side of the ship and survived about 3 hours in the water of the Red Sea! A real mystery!

Another challenge for us Northern Europe folk when working in the tropical sun is how to stop sunburn. Well without suntan protection oils we resorted to coconut oil and steaked our bodies brown! Today we would know better, and it is only in later life did we come to realise the dangers of over exposure to the sun. But, in those carefree days been brown was both healthy and we thought attractive to all the girls that were waiting for us at every port!! Ha Ha.

Once we reached the tropics, we seemed to relax more in our off watch periods. With 12 hours of sun every day and fair weather every day it is not surprising that we spent a lot of time on deck. Whilst the day workers followed a 9 to 5 routine with after dinner activities, watch keepers must snatch what leisure they could. For me on the 12 to 4 watch it meant that leisure came after 4pm until bedtime at 8pm.

One of the first things done was to erect our “swimming pool” on the boat deck abaft number three hatch. Well swimming pool is a posh description. It was a wooden box bolted together and lined with a homemade canvas bag with a drain tube in one corner. Measuring around 3 metres square it was less a swimming pool and more a large social bathtub! Once filled with seawater from the fire hydrant we
could relax in tepid water as we drank our Tennant’s lager. Apprentices, deck, and engine officers, all enjoyed a beer around the pool. On those rare occasions we had an engine breakdown we would lower a rope ladder and swim in the Red Sea! It was important to have someone keeping a lookout for sharks, but I never experienced any problems and the joy of floating in the deep blue of the Red Sea was a lifetime experience for a 16-year-old.

This social life was strictly segregated. White officers did not socialise with white petty officers and not at all with the Indian crew. In a way it was run on naval lines, but it seemed to work in those days.

Soon, we neared the Bab Al Mandep straits that separates Africa from the Arabian Peninsula and Jock, the second mate wanted me to check the bearings as we rounded Perim Island and exited the Red Sea.

So, on the port bridge wing I searched for Balfe Pt. tower on the western end of the island as according to our plan we would change course twice with bearings from the tower.  So this was an important task. Shout out when the tower is abeam bearing 054 degrees and then we will alter course to 161 degrees . Then when we have it at 3 nautical miles distance we will come round to 103 degrees and head out of the Red Sea and enter the Arabian Sea on our way to Aden. What excitement, not only being a part of the navigation team as we rounded Perim Island but new opportunities in Aden. What to expect?

 

 

 

 

 

 

Port Said

 

First Really foreign port – Port Said

Now, said Colin, watch out after the gangway was lowered in Port Said!

The first thing that happened was that we were surrounded by people in colourful clothes trying to sell us stuff.

The problem was we did not know what they were saying as they spoke a sort of pidgin English with words that had no meaning like “gulli gulli man” and those that were more explicit “feelthy pictures”!

They crowded around us, so it was difficult to get away. One guy cornered me with his gulli gulli shout. He squatted on the deck and produced 3 coloured balls. Rapidly hiding and showing the balls as he moved them around, he covered them all and asked us where the red ball was. Piece of cake, I thought, but no it was not and then began the betting. £5 if you can guess where the red ball is. £5 lost and I realised that I was been duped and on a salary of £10 per month I had just lost 2 weeks’ pay!

Enough. I told you so said Colin with a big grin. But it was too late. Ralph had bought a “Rolex” watch for a bargain price and when he got it back to his cabin, he found it ran in an anti-clockwise direction and after a couple of hours stopped all together!

Of course, we could not resist looking at these “feelthy pictures”. We gathered round and he produced some well-worn prints. There is one with a donkey he said. Our eyes widened and our sexual education took a whole new direction!

However, our attention was diverted by a shout from Colin. Mail has arrived and we dashed up to him

to collect the airmail letters from home, the first of the trip. There was one from Mum hoping I was being a good boy and drinking my lime juice! As the daughter of a Captain, she knew far more than me of life aboard ship, especially in the tropics and was lucky enough in the 1920’s to get ashore in Port Said and see the pyramids. That is her on a camel.

If you have letters to go, then hurry as the port agent will not be long on-board shouted Colin. I had written a short letter so put it in an airmail envelope and then what I shouted. Take it down to the purser’s office said Colin.

The purser’s office was full of Egyptians, all wanting to talk to Percy, the purser, at the same time. Put your letter on the table over there shouted Percy above the hubbub of sound.

Back in our mess for a little peace after all the chaos of arriving I asked Colin on the whole business of port agent and letters.

Boyo, said the slim senior apprentice from Wales through a cloud of smoke from his pipe, that is a bit of a challenge, and you will learn a little more when you start your correspondence course! But here is some background.

There are different types of shipping services in the world. For conventional cargoes such as tractors and beer and camels and jute there are 2 distinct services. One is called tramp shipping where a ship is hired to take cargo from one port to another and then must seek further cargoes. This might mean that a tramp ship must go empty or in ballast to a third port to find a cargo. Such a service can take these ships all over the world.

The other type of service is the liner service where a shipping company places its ships on a scheduled service between areas of the world. We are in the liner trades offering cargo services between Western European ports and Indian ports calling at ports between. We also offer a service from India to the east coast of the USA and then back to Western European ports. Such liner services are highly organised with dedicated docks and cargo handling equipment allowing shippers of goods to assemble their goods in warehouses before loading on the next available ship. The schedule is fixed and enables a shipping company to offer secure regular services unlike the tramp trades.

Many liner shipping companies join into what is called “liner conferences” to stabilise freight rates and avoid competition within a conference. The counter argument is that conferences bar other countries and shipping companies to offer services on the same routes. This has been especially true for developing countries because most shipping lines are from the European countries, and they carry cargo from developing countries denying competition from developing countries who must pay freight to the liner companies to export their own goods. Partly because of this the United Nations formed a new agency called UNCTAD (United Nations Conference on Trade and Development) to control the liner trades and regulate the share of liner services between nations.

Operationally shipping companies hire agents in all the ports they call. Their job is to arrange for cargo to be loaded and discharged and the ship to receive stores, fuel and water as well as handling our mail.

A liner service generally has a home port at each end of the service and for us it is Liverpool and Calcutta. Here there are permanent Marine superintendents to control the port activity and arrange local labour to offset the work of the crew.

So, there you are, liner services in a nutshell!

Now we need to get back on our watch system as we join the southbound convoy through the Suez Canal in an hour.

The Suez Canal offered a convoy system both southbound and northbound and as it was not possible to pass ships in the Canal the southbound convoy must anchor halfway down in the Bitter Lakes to allow the northbound convoy to pass. (Authors note: the Suez Canal has been widened to accommodate larger vessels and enable ships to pass at certain places without anchoring today).

I do not remember much about the Suez Canal except the long straight canal passing through an immense desert. Sand everywhere. It reminded me of a joke I was told about two Irishmen who arrived in the desert to do a job of work. As they descended from the plane one of them commented,” Oi Paddy, I hope they have enough cement!”

However, the Bitter Lakes have a special place in my memory as my father was stationed there in the Second World War. In the photo he is on the left. On the backside of the photo are his notes stating he was running a navigation class. After been captured at sea by the Germans and released in Norway he was transferred to the RNR (the Royal Navy Reserve) and stationed at HMS Saunders in the south of the Great Bitter Lake. The station was part of a Combined Operations setup by Churchill to carry out offensive operations. In the case of HMS Saunders, it was primarily to train personnel

in the use of landing craft for assaults in the Mediterranean theatre of war. Later it also became a camp for Italian prisoners of war.

We anchored in the Bitter Lakes to allow the northbound convoy to pass and then we continued south to exit the canal at Suez to proceed south down the Red Sea. Now, said Colin, you will learn what it is like to be onboard ship in the tropics, a whole different existence, he said, with a broad smile. What are we in for now, I wondered?

 

 

Really foreign

 I puzzled over what Colin had told us last night. Whites tomorrow! Well, as we neared the eastern end of the Mediterranean and Port Said, it was certainly warmer. Grandpa had helped me with my uniform shopping as Dad was at sea, so I had some white clothes. Time to dig them out and get ready for tomorrow.

First there was the short sleeve shirt with holes for epaulets on both shoulders. Attaching the epaulets was relatively simple, the laces go through the holes and are tied on the inside of the shirt. Quite grand with a single gold bar along the length of the epaulet much better than the lapel flashes of the blue winter jacket.

Then there were the shorts. Seemed to be a little long as they came to my knees but apparently that was the style.  Fastened with two buckles at the front, “Empire builders” Colin said. Especially important that they were not too short but also that they were not too wide. He told us that once as the ship came into port, the Captain with his wide empire builder shorts caught the heel of his shoe in the back of the shorts and went “arse over  tit” as we say. Just as he was about to greet the pilot!

No, mine were fine. Then there is the long white socks and the white suede shoes. Do not forget to “blanco” them, said Colin! What does that mean us first tripper shouted?

He passed us a bar of what looked like white soap and said: Get a brush, a little water and brush this white compound onto to your shoes. When it dries, they will be white and beautiful!! Cleaning shoes was never my most popular activity but to have white shoes, what next. Soldiers have used blanco for centuries so today we call it “to blanco your equipment”, said our much more experienced 18- year-old senior apprentice as he lit up his pipe. In your case your shoes. You will need to do it nearly every day!

Well there is a first time for everything, but I am not liking this bit at all.

Next morning, we duly dressed in our whites and all the officers similarly shone in their bright clean tropical uniform.

Here we all are. Note some lacked the white suede shoes and not everyone had their socks rolled up.

Nevertheless, we were now in our tropical rig. This is a later voyage and I am the one with a pipe, now a third mate. The apprentices are sat in front.

Later I learnt that “whites varied” from company to company. For instance, P&O and the Orient Line had quite different and very formal rigs. Perhaps because they were passenger ships, they had long white trousers, a white jacket with a white shirt and black tie. Must have been uncomfortably hot in the Red Sea!!

Of course, “whites were for watchkeeping” and not for daywork., For this we had khaki uniforms identical to our whites but khaki in colour. Much more practical for working on deck or in port. For really dirty work we had white boiler suits except Grandpa had neglected to mention this to me, so I was left with my khaki uniform for all work!

Tomorrow, Colin said, we will arrive in Port Said and I need to prepare you for this port arrival. It is nothing like Gibraltar and is really your first tropical port and you will need to take some precautions. That sounded ominous.

The approach to Port Said is relatively featureless with one exception. The ancient lighthouse at the entrance to the port (The Illustrated London News, No. 2255, Vol. LXXXI, July 22, 1882).

Other than that Port Said is on the eastern edge of the huge delta of the longest river in the world, the river Nile. Of course, in 1957 my knowledge of such things had not been covered in geography lessons at grammar school, so I was ignorant of Egypt, its history, and the role of the Nile. “Never mind, said Colin, your correspondence course will be arriving by mail here and then you can start studying”. Study, I thought that was all behind me now. Think again, boyo, you are to learn “on the job”, Colin said in his lilting Welsh accent. Bugger, that I had not thought of!

The fairway buoy marks the seaward end of the channel into Port Said and is so far offshore you do not even see the land! The pilot boat was there waiting for us and a swarthy overweight pilot clambered up the rope pilot ladder and was helped onto the main deck and escorted to the bridge. The Captain greeted him, and the pilot took over the pilotage of the ship. “Half ahead, he said, and the distinctive chimes of the telegraph rang out as the message to the engine signalled our intention to enter Port Said.

“Boy, said the Captain, what is your name again?”. “Douglas, I replied. “Ah, yes the apprentice who does not know his weather side from his leeward side”. “Go down and tell the Chief Officer we will be mooring to buoys fore and aft”. “Yes sir, I replied dutifully, happy to escape the bridge and probability of making more silly mistakes. I was later to learn that mooring to buoys was a common method of mooring on our voyage especially in rivers and sometimes with chains when there was a lot of current in the river.

The channel is also the entrance to the Suez Canal and as we approached the port city you could see the Suez Canal stretching away south into the desert.

We moored up on the starboard side in the city and what difference to Gibraltar. On the water everywhere were small colourful boats, some clearly ferrying people to the eastern banks of the canal whilst others seemed to be full of goods. “What are they doing, I asked Colin. “Bumboats, he replied, wanting to sell us useless things such as fake watches and cheap clothing! Lock your cabin doors, the circus is about to begin!

Looking ashore, I had never seen so many people. The streets were heaving with humanity and a breeze brought a very distinctive odour. “What is that smell”, I asked Colin. Spices and camel dung, replied Colin, sarcastically. Well, well, we are really foreign now.

Aft with my Glaswegian second mate I soon learnt the Egyptian mooring method. Two ropes from each quarter were passed to a mooring boat that towed them to the mooring buoy where they were fastened with quick release wood pins through the eye of the mooring ropes.

Mooring completed, the accommodation ladder was lowered to just above the water level and the pilot disembarked. The quartermaster on gangway duty muttered something about chaos and swarms of Egyptians clambered up to the main deck.