Head Wetting Incident
by Published on 28th March 2022 08:09 AM
Head wetting incident
1962 en route from Portishead to Boca Grande Florida for a bulk cargo of Sulphur. The ship was the MV Macaulay of Chine Shipping.
Accommodation and engine was aft with 5 forward hatches. This was my third trip on this great little ship and I had recently been promoted to Bosun.
Initially I joined her in Manchester together with a good seafaring mate Fred McDermott. Fred and I had spent several years together sailing with Manchester Liners, Prince line, Haines and Royal Mail lines.
Outward bound we were light ship routing a familiar course, possibly for the last time since recently being accepted by the NZ shipping federation to work from their Wellington office. My fiancé Ann and I were moving down there on completion of this trip.
By the third day the weather was reasonably moderate with an increasing stronger westerly, directly on the nose. Reports were coming in of a massive depression building to the southwest of us. By the time the second mate started his 12 to 4 the depression had grown to full hurricane strength.
It was estimated that if we maintained our current course and heading, we would avoid the main body of the hurricane. By the time of the third mates am watch started, the hurricane veered significantly and headed straight toward us. The Skipper thought the hurricane would continue to veer northwards but as usual “the best made plans of mice and men” didn’t come to fruition.
We hit the full force by noon the following day.
The Skipper was permanently on the bridge, stood by the engine room telegraph in his slippers quietly giving the the man on the wheel orders either “port 10”, mid ships or “starboard 10” to keep the bow directly into the weather and at the same time pushing the telegraph to either “full ahead” or “stop engines”. As each massive roller rose up above the knights-head, he’d apply “full ahead” to climb the mountain of water that grew above us. At the crest of the roller he’d apply “stop engines” as we surfed down the opposite side.
It was totally fascinating looking out over the foredeck as these massive mountains of water approached surrounded by streams of white salt foam like huge railway lines covering the whole surface area. Solid green water constantly flooded across the foredeck which at times appeared to have disappeared.
In an effort to break the air of fear and concern, the Skipper, with a wry smile remarked, we would all have our occupations changed from merchant seamen to marine alpinists.
During that first night a deep thumping sound developed from the bow section of the ship and as time wore on the sound increased in volume and was now accompanied by thud which reverberated throughout the ship.
As he finished his “4 to 8”the mate called a meeting on the bridge with myself the Skipper and second mate to discuss the anomaly,.
He stated that as he observed the bow during his watch period, striking an oncoming wave the crash and thud appeared at the same time. He deduced one of the anchors had slipped on the windless brake which may have not been fully deployed or possibly faulty and was no longer tight in the hawsepipe which obviously could cause damage to the hull, but even worse, if coming completely free altogether and plunging into the sea would be totally catastrophic, since it was shackled on the final chain link in the chain locker.
The plan was to breakout a heavy duty bottlescrew, a section of chain, a 2 pronged anchor chain claw and a couple of 10 ton shackles. Tools needed, a long marlin spike and a steel conduit pipe together with a couple of lunatics to do the job.
As the ships Bosun and the gravity of the situation, it was obviously my place to do the job.
It was agreed that the ships speed would be kept to the absolute minimum, just enough to maintain steerageway. The ships horn would be used to indicate when a monster wave was about to hit engulfing the focsle in green water.
Fred and I prepared ourselves for the task. We both wore heavy duty wet weather gear of trousers and jacket and in addition we tied rope whammies around our ankles over our sea boots and around our waists and hips in an effort to stop the high powered wind getting into our wet weather gear.
After waiting for a reasonable break we ran forard temporary taking cover between the hatch combings till we reached the lamp trimmers locker under the focsle head to pick up the equipment we needed. The noise under the focsle was tremendous as the anchor struck the hawsepipe aperture.
Finally with hearts in our mouths we ascended the companionway to the focsle head. Moving forward was either on our knees or on our stomachs grabbing hold of anything solid en route.
Once under the windless we lashed ourselves to the windless housing.
As the bow leapt into the air, one felt the g force on the rise and the negative g as she plunged back into the trough.
We had just shackled the chain and bottlescrew to a deck eyebolt when the bridge sounded the fog horn. We both crawled as far under the windless as we could. The bow was unable to fully ride over the looming monster and as the solid green sea swept over the focsle head, it was touch and go whether we could maintain our grip on the windless base.
After several similar events we managed in stages to locate the claw through one of the link sections of the anchor chain then attaching it to the open bottlescrew, we slowly turned the marlinspike in the bottle screw until it was necessary to put the conduit onto the marlin spike to attain more leverage. Slowly the chain was drawn up and into the spurling pipe and the banging and crashing ceased. After checking the windless brake we made our way aft with a deep overall feeling of accomplishment and relief and perhaps, a little wet.
Wonder what the health and safety executive would make of this.
