Asbestos

[j.sabourn]

Those same open steam winches were usually the apprentices job to climb through and scrape the muck and oil off the base and deck underneath Des. It was heaven to get on to oil covered in winches or better known as oil baths of more modern ships at the time. I was fortuanate enough to have 2 ships serving my time 3 years on the first and 1 year on the second .it must have been a Physocological move on the company’s part to send me off with not too bad an impression of their ships. Cheers JS.

[Tony Taylor]

Those same open steam winches were usually the apprentices job to climb through and scrape the muck and oil off the base and deck underneath Des. It was heaven to get on to oil covered in winches or better known as oil baths of more modern ships at the time. I was fortuanate enough to have 2 ships serving my time 3 years on the first and 1 year on the second .it must have been a Physocological move on the company’s part to send me off with not too bad an impression of their ships. Cheers JS.

used to be hilarious watching winch operators trying to dodge flying bits of Cardium compound (black sticky crap used to lubricate open gears), awful stuff to get off.

[Keith Adams]

In the 1950’s when we had held weekly Board of Trade Sports (Fire and Boat Drills) the junior deck person had to don the one piece asbestos Fire helmet and vest and venture down into the accommodation hauling an asbestos breathing hose as well as a fire hose. Talk about direct breathing contact ! To me, the most grievous stuff was fiber glass insulation used to insulate accommodation deck head ventilation ducts. Had to wrap and stitch canvas surrounds to complete a ripped repair job. Resulted in a sore through for many days — bet Engineers had to do a lot of that too.