I don't know if anyone is reading this self indulgent rubbish - but the more I write, the more I remember, so I'll keep going until someone tells me to stop!
The “deck crew” were an interesting lot – mostly Scots plus a few Englishmen. One of the ABs, known only as Scouse (I wonder why?) arrived back on board in handcuffs about an hour before we sailed. He had jumped ship on an earlier voyage, so to make sure he didn’t do it again, Immigration came and took him away each time we entered an Australian port and there he stayed until we departed.
Thus it was that sometime in January of 1966, at about the same time that Harold Holt was taking over from Bob Menzies as the Australian Prime Minister, I made my first trip to a foreign destination. Our first port was Osaka, arriving from a hot northern Australian summer to a cold wintry Japanese city.
I made my first trip ashore with big Dave and like all sailors since the beginning of time, headed immediately for a bar.
What an eye-opener it was for a boy from a small country town in North Queensland to arrive in Japan in 1966. Osaka was a bustling, busy city with bright lights, bars and lots of distractions for young lads.
We were in Osaka for at least a week and later went from there to the city of Kobe a few hours sailing away.
One of the problems with alcohol rationing on board ship is that when the ship eventually does get to port many of the crew make gluttons of themselves. This was a problem on the Baron Jedburgh. We sailed from Osaka to Kobe with many of our crew missing, having decided that attraction of the bright lights and the bars were much more appealing than putting up with Fat Archie and his bullying bosun.
From Kobe we sailed to Yokohama, still missing a substantial number of our deck crew. We later learned that they all eventually rolled up at the agent’s office and were shipped overland (at their expense) to the next port of call. In this case they were all put on the Bullet Train, bound directly for Tokyo with just one stop, at the inland city of Kyoto. They all got off the train at Kyoto, headed for the nearest bar, and consequently missed the train’s departure for Tokyo – a unique case of desertion from a train. Although on reflection it probably wasn’t unique – I sure it happened every time a bunch of British seaman were left unescorted to find their way back to their ship.