A sailing we will go
by Published on 11th March 2021 08:14 AM
What made me go to sea in the first place? Well, if Britain had not gone to war with Germany in 1939 I would probably never have given it serious thought, but in the first years of the war, Britain wasn't doing all that well against Germany In fact we were getting our backsides well and truly kicked.
I left school early in 1941 and started work as an office boy for a firm of exporters in Liverpool. Merseyside took quite a hammering from the Lufftwaffe air raids, particularly in the May Blitz of 1941, which was seven nights of hell when Merseyside was heavily bombed. Merseyside was a frequent target of the Luftwaffe with nearly 70 air raids between 1940 and 1942 but that May Blitz was by far the worst.
(According to Wkipedia's account, on those seven nights the enemy pounded Merseyside with 2315 H.E. bombs and 100.000 incendiary bombs. The docks suffered great destruction with 69 out of 144 berths incapacitated, 18 ships sunk and 25 other ships badly damaged.
Out of 282,000 house in Merseyside, 10,840 were completely destroyed and 184,000 damaged. There were about 4,000 total dead in the whole of Merseyside.)
So it was a case of all hands to the pumps if Britain was to survive, and being young and stupid I wanted to get into the action.
After enduring all those air raids I had a personal desire to get into the fight but I was too young for any of the armed forces.
Not far from where I lived was the 'Mariners Home'. This was a large hostel type building, set in large grounds, and it was a home for elderly indigent seamen. Many of them would have sailed on the old square riggers and they were a fascinating lot. They all wore a square rig uniform of peaked cap with shiny black brim, brass buttoned jacket and black trousers. The home overlooked the river, and the old shellbacks spent a lot of time sitting outside, yarning away to each other. I liked to sit nearby listening to their stories. They were real men, with hands the size of shovels. It was from them that I got the idea of going to sea. Being young and stupid I had no idea of the danger involved and thought that I was invincible! . I pleaded with my Dad to let me go, but he absolutely vetoed the idea. However I kept at him for months and eventually he agreed to do what he could to help. We had a close neighbour who was a shipping master at the Board of Trade and he was one of Dad's pals. Mr Hutchinson also wasn't very keen on the idea as his only son had been lost at sea as 3rd mate on a ship that had been torpedoed in the Atlantic, but eventually he agreed to help. Some months passed and then one day my Dad said "Are you still determined to go to sea? I said "Yes" and he then said "OK. Mr Hutchinson will sign you up on Friday and you sail on Saturday". I went to the office next day in a state of great excitement. I knew I would have to tell them I was leaving but was unsure how to handle it.
The problem was solved for me when one of the Directors called me into the inner sanctum. He told me that they were very pleased with my work and were going to raise my wages by half a crown (25cents) a week. I thanked him very much, but said I would have to hand in my notice because I was going to sea in a few days time. They were astonished of course, but very supportive and gave me time off to go shopping for what I needed for my new career. This was mainly dungarees (jeans) and work shirts. Signing on day was 10th November 1941. I fronted up at the Board of Trade in Canning Place and Mr. Hutchinson signed me on as an Ordinary Seaman (O.S.) on the "Monarch of Bermuda" (a troopship of 22,000 tons). When the person chosen for the job by the Shipping Pool showed up, he was turned down and sent back to the Pool. I was in by the back door!
Early next morning, my Dad and I set off for the "Monarch of Bermuda" which was berthed in the Gladstone Dock in Liverpool. In those days there was an overhead railway that ran the full length of the docks, and we had to fight our way onto a train at the station closest to the Pier Head. That was because all the dock labourers were also going to work and the crush was really fierce. At each stop the people nearest the doors had to get off to allow room for the ones who were wedged in, to get off. Then you had to be quick to get back on, because there were other workers at that station also waiting to get on. It was absolute mayhem, but the dockers were a cheerful lot and made a game of it!
Eventually we got to the Gladstone Dock and there we had to say goodbye. Dad wished me luck, bade me to take care and then watched as I struggled through the dock gate with my heavy suitcase, and out of sight.. I staggered along the quay and climbed up the gangway. I had been told to report to the bosun, and a crewman on duty at the top of the gangway directed me to his quarters, which was in the fo'c'sle. I knocked on his cabin door. He opened it and I was looking at the toughest looking man I'd ever seen. He absolutely filled the doorway, indeed his upper body and shoulders were so wide that he had to turn sideways to get out. He took me down a couple of companionways to the crew quarters and showed me my berth, which was just a cubby hole with four bunks in it, and four steel lockers. This was right up in the bow where the sides of the ship flared in from the deck to the waterline. The steel plates were dripping with condensation but this was going to be my home for a while.
We were towed out of the dock and down to the Princes Landing Stage, right next door to where the ferry boat from Seacombe used to deliver me when I was a mere landlubber.
Here we embarked several thousand soldiers and, that done, we pulled out into the river and lay at anchor, where I could almost see my home on the Wallasey shore. There were several other troopships also anchored and as soon as everything had been sorted we sailed out of the Mersey and up the coast to the River Clyde in Scotland This was the assembly point for our convoy, where the ships were formed up in columns before sailing out into the Atlantic.
When everything was ready, we weighed anchor and got under way.
The first week was the worst one of my life. As soon as we sailed into the open sea and the ship started rolling, I was violently seasick. I was the sailors 'peggy'. That's the name given to the one whose job it is to fetch the food from the galley and clean the mess-room and crew quarters. The name originated in sailing ship days when the job was reserved for sailors who had lost a leg and been fitted with a wooden peg. The job also involved scrubbing out the 'heads', i.e. lavatories. The toilet facilities provided were basic and the toilet training of some of the seamen left a lot to be desired! We had to use seawater for cleaning because with so many troops aboard, fresh water was strictly controlled. Sickness was no excuse for not working. I had to do it, sick or otherwise. No sympathy from anyone and if the job wasn't done properly I was liable to have someone’s sea boot connect with my nether regions! Everyone was my boss because the peggy is the lowest form of animal life afloat, (even lower than the ship's cat!! )
The deck crew were a mixture of nationalities but mainly Scouse. (Liverpudlians). The Bosun and several of the Quartermasters were Yanks and had been with the ship in peacetime when it was a luxury cruise liner sailing between New York and the Bahamas. They had their own quarters and mess-room. The rest of the deck crew lived in 'glory holes' with ten or twelve to a room. They were a hard lot and I found their language to be quite frightening. I didn't exactly have a sheltered upbringing but that level of obscenity was new to me. However,it was sink or swim, and by the end of the trip I was swearing and blaspheming as foully as any of them. Things improved somewhat as we sailed south into the warmer weather and I got over my seasickness. For the first time, I saw that the sea really was blue, and there were lots of flying fish skittering away as we ploughed through the ocean, and dolphins aquaplaning off the bow wave. At night, in the tropics, I could doss down on the forward hatch and watch the constellations in the clear night sky. There were a number of troopships in the convoy and it was strongly defend by a battleship and several destroyers. There may also have been an aircraft carrier with us for the first few days. With thousands of soldiers on the several troopships, the convoy was a prime target. Occasionally we would hear one of the destroyer escorts whooping on its siren as it hared off chasing a suspected submarine or some other underwater noise it had picked up on its sonar. It took over three weeks, sailing a very circuitous course, to reach our first stop at Freetown in Sierra Leone, where we lay at anchor in the harbour and there was no shore leave. There we took on fresh water and supplies before proceeding down the coast and round the Cape of Good Hope to Durban, where the troops disembarked. They were destined for the war front in Egypt and we had to go the long way round because it was too dangerous to go through the Mediterranean. After weeks at sea, in cramped, uncomfortable conditions, the troops (and crew) were more than ready to let off steam and there was a high old time in Durban that night. For most of the soldiers it was their first time out of England and they really let their hair down. The bar room brawls and street fights were of epic proportions! Some days later we sailed back down the coast to Cape Town and lay at anchor for a few days before sailing out, unescorted this time, to Port of Spain in Trinidad. Again we anchored and waited until enough ships were collected to form a convoy, before sailing back to the UK. We paid off in Liverpool on the 22 January 1942 and my first trip was over.
My Ships. -021.001 11-12-2008 7-07-02 PM 800x484.jpg
QTEV Monarch of Bermuda.
