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Article: Ten Pound Poms

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    Ten Pound Poms

    76 Comments by Brian Probetts (Site Admin) Published on 21st May 2012 03:01 PM
    Ten Pound Poms

    by Mike Williamson


    On a bitterly cold morning in January of 1955, my family set out on the adventure which was to determine the direction of all our lives for many generations to follow and without doubt was to set the course of my future at sea.

    We were a family of five – my Mum and my Dad, my 13 year old sister, five year old brother and me. We were “ten pound Poms” on our way to Australia on the P&O Liner, “SS Strathaird”. What an adventure for a nine year old boy!
    Having sold the family house in late 1954 we started the year living in rented accommodation in Mapperley in Nottingham before embarking from Tilbury on that day in January.

    The trip took about five weeks. I remember the Suez and the bum boats coming alongside at Port Said, selling all kinds of souvenirs and collectables. My mum bought a couple of wooden plates inlaid with shells. I remember her telling me years later that the first words the local vicar said when he came to introduce himself were what nice collection plates they would make.
    There isn’t a lot that a nine year old can remember of such a trip – but the memories of a long exciting sea voyage must have left an exciting impression, because I’m sure it was why I went to sea as a ship’s engineer a little over ten years later.

    The Strathaird completed her maiden voyage in 1932. With a length of 200 metres and a 24 metre beam, she weighed just over 22,500 tons gross and cruised at 20 knots. She carried a crew of 480 and 1,242 single class passengers. During the Second World War she saw service as a troop ship, after which during her refit, two of her original three funnels were removed. Along with her sister ships, Stratheden, Strathmore and Strathnaver these wonderful ships must have delivered a hundred thousand or more fresh faced new immigrants to Australia during the fifties and the early 60s. She was eventually retired from service in 1961 and sold to a Hong Kong breakers yard shortly after.

    The first place we stepped ashore on foreign soil was the port of Aden, now part of Yemen, but at that time a colony of the British Empire at the eastern approaches to the Red Sea. After that it was on to Colombo in Sri Lanka. Of course it was called Ceylon then. It was amazing. There were beggars on every street, in every doorway, and by every road. Vendors thrusting their wares in our faces and following us as we were hustled along the busy thoroughfares. The throng of humanity after the relative calm of shipboard life was overwhelming. Yet the most exciting thing which I remember to this day was the thrill of being in Aden and Ceylon and being able to buy postage stamps from those countries to add to my schoolboy collection. Vendors were everywhere and I’m sure I would have pestered the daylights out of my parents to let me spend some money.

    After Ceylon the ship made the long trip across the Indian Ocean to Fremantle. We had some terrible monsoon weather and one night a passenger fell overboard after too much partying. Although the ship turned several circles he was never found. What a terrible way to go.

    Shipboard life for the kids was wonderful. I’m sure it was for the adults as well, but I particularly recall sharing a dining table with several other migrant kids and our steward, a Londoner who told us to call him Seb who used to say to us, “what you don’t want, don’t eat.” This was heaven – no one telling us to eat our vegetables. We were even brought tea in bed at breakfast time. We did have to attend school lessons of a sort, but it wasn’t difficult or like real school. We were taught songs about kookaburras in gum trees, and were shown pictures of kangaroos and told something about the history of this great country we were about to call our new home.

    We disembarked in Sydney in February 1955 and shortly after were on a long train journey to Brisbane. Along with all the other Queensland bound settlers, we were first accommodated at the Yungaba Immigration Centre where we stayed for several weeks. Yungaba was the first port of call for many thousands of the migrants who came to Queensland. Built in 1887 by the Queensland Government expressly for that purpose, it is situated right on the tip of the Kangaroo Point peninsula and with three-sided river views, it was a marvellous location for such an establishment.
    Although Yungaba was a government-run institution, there was always an obvious concern for the comfort and welfare of its residents; not just for compassionate reasons, but also because of the competition that existed between the states as they each attempted to attract migrants who could boost their labour force. Extensions and improvements to the centre were added to present a favourable atmosphere to incoming migrants. This included playground equipment for the kids and a supply of multi-colour check blankets instead of the usual institutional grey. I think my parents were quite happy to be placed there even after the relative luxury of shipboard life.

    My father had already organised his place of employment before we left Britain, and shortly after we arrived in Brisbane, Dad flew up North Queensland where he was due to start work as a motor mechanic at a small garage in the town of Mossman. We had no idea where that was but we were soon to find out! Dad’s job was to prepare the ground for us. To make sure we had a decent home to live in and to get settled into his new job. Mum was to follow on by train with the rest of us a week or two later.

    What a trip that was. I have often thought about what a harrowing experience it was for my 38 year old mother, literally fresh off the boat, having left a fairly comfortable (if cold) life in England boarding a train with three children to travel 1000 miles north to “God knows where”.
    Air-conditioned Sunlander trains were still a few years in the future, as we headed north on a rattling old train straight into the North Queensland wet season. Even today, conventional rail travel in Queensland can be a slow experience with a lot of stops and starts as bogeys rattle along in narrow gauge 3 feet 6 inch tracks, although Queensland’s new Tilt Train is now the fastest train in the world using a narrow gauge track. However, nothing was further away than the old rattler which took us about a week to get us to Cairns. Stopping at sidings and stations for long hours, it was a slow, uncomfortable trip with Mum doing her best to look after and feed three kids. And there were no sleeper cars; this was a journey where we were sitting up all the way. Every time the train stopped at a station, passengers and locals would make their way to the railway bar, or if there was no bar on the platform, to the local pub where they would buy and consume more and more booze for the long trip. What an ordeal it must have been.

    When we came to the Burdekin River which separated the towns of Home Hill on the south and Ayr on the north, the train was unable to cross the bridge which was several feet under water. We were forced to leave the train and were ferried across the mile wide river in little flat-bottom boats, with water almost lapping the gunwales as we made our way to the other shore. There we were crammed into another even older train for the remaining 300 miles or so of the journey north.
    When we eventually arrived in Cairns, Dad was waiting for us and we still had another 50 miles to travel, north along the Cook Highway to our new home. We were piled into an old International truck stopping every few miles along the way to ford another flooded creek or causeway. We eventually made it Mossman and our new home.

    Mossman was a cane town – it still is. Its sugar mill was not far from the middle of town and the little cane trains with their cargo of freshly cut cane would travel down the centre of Mill Street through the town several times a day, holding up what little traffic there was. The town had five pubs and a little picture theatre in a corrugated iron building with deck chairs for seating where we saw such wonderful films as Magnificent Obsession and Dial M for Murder.

    Our home was a little one storey fibro dwelling a long way from the home in Beeston, Notts. I remember one day doing hand stands in the hallway and putting my backside through a fibro wall – not something which went down too well with my Dad.

    We didn’t have a car, which is something which would have disappointed my father who was always an enthusiastic motorist. We did have use of an old International flatbed truck with a foot starter button on the floor and a split windscreen which you could wind open on hot days (ie every day). My Dad painted it red.

    We didn’t stay there long – about a year maybe before moving back down the Cook Highway to the big smoke – Cairns, where Dad got a job as workshop foreman at the local council. It wasn’t the big tourist town that it is now – just a few streets, a muddy esplanade, no traffic lights, no parking meters and lots of places for youngsters to go swimming.

    I have great memories of those times.




    This article was originally published in blog: Ten Pound Poms started by Mike Williamson
    Last edited by Brian Probetts (Site Admin); 1st November 2021 at 11:49 PM.

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  3. #11
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    Default Devis 1966

    After paying off my first ship (The Baron Jedburgh) I stayed in England with friends and relatives for about a month, before heading up to Liverpool looking for my next job. Previously shipmates had regaled me with stories of the Amazon River which appealed to me greatly, so I presented myself to Booth Steamship Company in the Royal Liver Building asking for work. Booth was a sister company to Lamport and Holt Line and both these companies had ships that sailed from the UK to and from South America as well as charters which sailed from the US to ports along the Amazon River.

    The Marine Superintendent was Mr Thomas Clatworthy, and it was to Mr Clatworthy that I presented myself looking for a job on an Amazon bound ship. Unfortunately, they didn’t have any vacancies on the Amazon trade at that time, but he was pleased to have me join the company and I was sent to the Lamport & Holt ship, MV Ronsard which was presently standing by in Liverpool. It was during the British Seaman’s strike, so no ships were leaving port and those that arrived tied up alongside and became idle as their crew walked off. The Ronsard was one of the ships affected. She had been tied up in Bootle docks for a few weeks when I joined a skeleton crew of engineers and deck officers with the simple job of keeping the generators running and the lights on.
    So here I was in Liverpool in 1966. What better place on Earth could there possibly be for a young 20 year old than the home of the Beatles and the Mersey sound. Every night we would take ourselves off to the many bars, clubs and pubs that were around the area. The Bootle Arms was the favourite (naturally, since it was only about 100 yards from the dock gate), but we also visited dozens of other pubs in the area where I drank warm beer and cold lagers and sang along with the Four Tops to Reach Out I’ll Be There and the Kinks to Sunny Afternoon. One night we went to the Cavern, but it was absolutely packed and I have no idea who was performing (it wasn’t the Beatles of course).
    Because the ship wasn’t going anywhere in a hurry, we had lots of parties on board (although we weren’t supposed to) and I can remember several times, struggling back on board with a carton on beer on my shoulder, making my way up the very steep gangway and raiding the galley for toasted sandwiches or whatever else was going.
    All good things come to an end, and eventually the strike was over and the seaman went back to work [1]. Of course I know that it was a good thing that the strike was over, but at the time I was enjoying life and getting paid for doing very little.
    I was sent to the MV Devis, an old ship, built in 1938 that had seen out the war as the Empire Haig. She was bound for Buenos Aires and ports along the Brazilian coast via Las Palmas. I joined her as junior engineer.
    She was an old and ugly ship and her main engine was one of the most cantankerous awful things I’d ever worked on, but she was also one of the happiest ships I ever sailed on, and after the Baron Jedburgh and several weeks of alcohol poisoning standing by Ronsard, it was great to actually have a deck moving underneath my feet again – even if the best we could ever do was about 10 knots. We did a little coast trip first from Liverpool up to Glasgow and back and it was during this time I had the pleasure of either watching or listening to England win the Soccer World Cup by beating Germany 4-2 in extra time. Shortly after this Devis sailed from Liverpool for South America and I was back on the 12 to 4 watch with another Scottish third engineer, a taciturn Edinburghian called Ted Kinnaird. The first port was Las Palmas in the Canary Islands where we made a brief stop for bunker fuel.
    As I mentioned previously, the engine was a bad-tempered old beast – a ten cylinder Burmeister & Wain heavy fuel burner which had three pistons in each cylinder and eighty fuel valves. These fuel valves were large dirty things that would frequently foul and always required replacing. The fuel oil would harden into a bituminous black cake and it was my job to keep a healthy supply of spare fuel valves on hand, so I spent many hours while on watch cleaning and maintaining these frigging things, and believe me it was a bastard of a job!
    We had regular scavenger fires where the exhaust gases would overheat to such an extent that the caked particles on the exhaust stack and the scavengers would catch fire and there was nothing else to do, other than to slow the engine right down, reduce the fuel to the offending cylinder and lumber along at a much reduced speed until the fire extinguished itself.
    One thing I was to learn over the years I was at sea was the need to find one’s way around in an engine room. Underneath the foot plates are hundreds of pipes carrying diesel oil, heavy fuel oil, lubricating oil, bilge water, ballast water, drinking water, steam, compressed air and a few more that I can’t remember and it was almost always the case that there were never any drawings on board providing information about which pipe or valve is which. So the only thing to do when joining a ship for the first time is to take up the floor plates, get down into the bilges with a flash light and follow the pipes until you know where they all go and what they all do. Not the most pleasant way to spend a Sunday afternoon, but if you don’t do it, you will have a situation arise one day when a pipe bursts and you have no idea where to turn the supply off, and what happens when you do.
    We were probably about a week out of Buenos Aires when the old monster of an engine eventually gave up the ghost and reached a stage where running repairs were no longer going to solve the problem. We had to decommission several of the engine cylinders, remove all the fuel valves to reduce the compression and slowly make our way to the nearest port at a speed of about four knots to get some serious shore based repairs carried out. There is always a silver lining they say – as it happened our nearest port was Rio de Janeiro – and so it was that we limped our way into Rio which provided the one (and only) opportunity I ever had to visit this glorious city. Not that I can remember too much about it. As engineers we had some serious repair work to do once we finally were safely tied up alongside in Rio. I remember that we did get ashore for a couple of quick runs, and I do remember making it to the beach – but it couldn’t have been for very long, otherwise I’m sure I would have remembered more.
    Repairs done, our next port of call was Buenos Aires, and I do remember BA very well. Another exciting city whose avenues and streets are so wide that it takes forever to cross the road. One of the main thoroughfares is Calle 25 de mayo and not far away is the massive Avenida 9 de Julio which honours Argentina’s Independence Day, 9 July 1816. I loved BA. Many of the cafés and bars were open air and it here that I was able to sample for the first time the taste of Latin American culture. Until that time I had never understood, and barely heard a word of Spanish, but it was a language I loved to hear and I was determined to learn it.
    We spent a couple of weeks in BA and then sailed across the other side of Rio de la Plata to Montevideo in Uruguay – another exciting place with lots of open space and public areas.
    After Montevideo, we sailed north along the Brazilian coast to Rio Grande (a rich city and the second busiest port in Brazil); Santos the main port for São Paulo; Recife and finally Fortaleza. It was in Santos that I had for the first time, the opportunity to see some of the real squalor that was behind much of the façade of Brazil’s society. People in Santos were living in some of the most appalling conditions I had ever seen, and it made me remember, not for the first time, how lucky I was to have been born into a privileged position of always having a roof over my head, and a meal on the table.
    My trip on the Devis lasted about three months, and was, without doubt one of the happiest ships I have sailed on. In the engine room the working conditions were awful, but the companionship, the food, the general good nature of almost all of the crew, was such a far cry from the Baron Jedburgh that I was glad I had made the decision to go to sea – and I can tell you there were many times on board the Baron boat when I thought just the opposite.
    I returned to the UK just in time for my 21st birthday. I received news on arrival in Liverpool that there was a spot for me on a Booth Line ship on the Amazon run and I would sign a 12 month contract to join the MV Viajero in New York in November.


    [1] The British Seamen’s strike began on 16 May 1966. It was the first national strike by seamen since 1911. The strike aimed to secure higher wages and to reduce the working week from 56 to 40 hours. It caused disruption to shipping all over Britain. The political importance of the strike was enormous: the disruption of trade had an adverse effect on the United Kingdom's balance of payments, provoked a run on the pound and threatened to undermine the Government's attempts to keep wage increases below 3.5%. The Prime Minister, Harold Wilson, was strongly critical of the strike, alleging that it had been taken over by Communists whose aim was to bring down his administration. On 23 May, a week after the outbreak of the strike, the Government declared a state of emergency, although emergency powers were not used. The strike finally came to an end on 1 July.

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    Default The end of the first trip - Baron Jedburgh 1966

    Seamen always get excited when the ship is on its way home. We all remember that condition experienced when thoughts of home are constantly on one’s mind. It’s called “the Channels”. Originally meant to refer to how a sailor feels as his ship approaches and sails into the English Channel, it’s more likely to start when the ship is much further from home than the Channel. In our case I think the ship had entered the Red Sea, when talk of “the Channels” became common place.
    It didn’t help that it was such an awful ship to begin with. There were few “Company” men on board apart from the skipper and one or two of the senior officers. Most of the rest of the crew joined the ship through the “Pool”. Their leave having run out from their previous engagement, they simply turned up at the Pool and were allocated their next ship. At the time, there was wide employment and many sailors, knowing the reputation of Baron boats would turn down the job, opting for something better. This meant that many of the crew we had on board were people who had previous poor discharge reports, and poor performance records, and it was they who were left when everyone else had taken a better job. Obviously this wasn’t the case with everyone on board, and to this day, I still regard Dave Davies as someone who epitomised the good humoured, long-suffering British Seaman whose company I enjoyed so much during my years at sea.
    The food on the ship was awful. Described by many as strict “BOT” which meant no frills and not a penny spent over that needed to meet the regulations. This meant that something as simple as eggs for breakfast were considered a luxury and most definitely not provided as an everyday item on the menu. Dinner was often nothing more than ham and chips and if we had beef stew on Monday, you could be sure we’d have beef soup on Tuesday and beef consommé on Wednesday.
    As we sailed into the Red Sea, word got around that this may be the last trip for the Baron Jedburgh and that after this trip she was likely to be sold either for scrap or to one of the many Greek and Cypriot shipping companies that bought second hand, down at heel old cargo tramps. As it happens the rumours were untrue and it was to be another ten years before the ship changed hands, but this didn’t stop some of the crew deciding that they would start selling to the locals anything that wasn’t tied or bolted down as soon as we got into the Suez. So spare valves, scrap metal, pump parts (everything that wasn’t bolted down, and a lot that was) were removed from the store and exchanged for Egyptian beer which appeared by the case-load. I don’t know what Egyptian beer is like today – I’m sure it’s a fine brew – but the stuff that we were drinking out of those little green bottles in 1966 was vile.
    As we got closer to Greenock, our final destination at the mouth of the Clyde, the Chief Engineer called me into his cabin for one of the few exchanges of words that took place between us in the six months that I had been on the ship. He told me that he was happy with my performance and asked me if I would like to take some leave in the UK and then return to the ship as a junior watch keeping engineer. I didn’t think about the job offer for long (about a micro-second). I told him that I planned to take some leave and then explore other opportunities with some of the other shipping lines. What I really meant was that wild horses would not have got me back on another Hungry Hogarth ship.

    And so it was that sometime in June of 1966, while the Rolling Stones were belting out Paint it Black and Lennon and McCartney were singing about paperback writing, I paid off the Baron Jedburgh in Greenock and walked down the gangway on a misty Scottish morning. The British shipping industry was in the throes of an industrial dispute, the result of which was a major seaman’s strike which was to affect the whole industry and last many weeks.

    I had decided the first place I wanted to visit was London, and caught the overnight train from Glasgow to London Euston. I travelled with big Dave and Paddy, both of whom were also headed that way and we all had sleeper accommodation. There was something very special about being able to sit in the bar of the Dining Car, drink as many cans as I wanted of Watney’s Red Barrel or Double Diamond and roll back to my bunk in the Sleeping Car without anyone shaking my arm in the middle of the night and talking about my Daddy’s yacht (which by the way, was a 10 foot clinker-built rowing boat, which I went out in once with my Dad in Smith’s Creek and spent the day getting badly sunburnt and catching sweet Fanny Adams).

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    Default Baron Jedburgh 1965

    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.

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    Default First Days at Sea December 1965

    After five years, as an apprentice at the local brewery I completed my “time served” on 3rd December 1965 and emerged a fully qualified fitter and turner. I wasn’t always the favourite apprentice during that final year. I was involved in a couple of union disputes and generally was regarded as a bit of a “pinko” who spent too much time with the proletariat for my own good. The brewery's chief engineer, a red-faced Irish Australian had never been my greatest admirer, and he made it clear that once my indenture was complete it would be to our mutual benefit if I started looking elsewhere for employment. In those days, there was always work for a qualified fitter, so I don’t remember being unduly concerned that I might soon be out of work - but then I was 20 years old and immortal.

    As it transpired, there was no need to fire me, because a few days earlier a family friend, a manager at the local harbour board, asked my dad if young Michael was interested in a career in the Merchant Navy. There was a British ship in port which was short of a couple of hands. if I was interested there was a job for me as an engineer’s assistant, with an option of promotion to junior engineer as soon as a position became available. This sounded like what I had been looking for, so having finished my apprenticeship in that first week in December, I signed on a couple of weeks later as a crew member on the MV Baron Jedburgh as its most junior of junior assistants – my official position – “donkey-greaser".

    The ship was registered in Scotland in the west coast port of Ardrossan in Ayrshire. She was 8,337 tons (11,675 tons deadweight), built in South Shields in 1958 and was one of a fleet of cargo tramp ships owned and operated by H. Hogarth and Sons of Glasgow. It was only later I found out that the company was known throughout the merchant service as “Hungry” Hogarth.

    The ship’s captain was Archibald McKinley, a large forceful man, who smoked oval Passing Clouds cigarettes that looked like they had been sat on.

    I had a tiny cabin in the fo’c’sle of the ship (where crew were separated from officers) and I was taken under the wing of big Dave Davies, who may have had Welsh ancestry but was a Londoner through and through. He was a generous, down to earth fellow, who used to wake me every morning with “Come on then, rise and shine, you’re not on your Daddy’s yacht now, y’know!”

    There were three donkey-greasers including Dave, all of whom were watch-keepers. Dave, Yorky (who as you might guess was from the north of England) and Paddy (yes, he was an Irishman). I was a day worker – 7.30 to 5 o’clock with a half hour for lunch.

    We all shared the Greasers’ Mess, a little room just across from the galley where we would eat our meals and meet for smoko during the day. It was here that I learned to put condensed milk in my tea, because it wasn’t easy to find fresh milk at sea and of course, this was before Long-Life Milk appeared on the scene. The additional advantage of condensed milk of course was that it also obviated the need for putting sugar in your tea!

    There were seven engineers on board – all of them Scots, mostly Glaswegian. In charge was the Chief Engineer who seemed to spend most of his time in his cabin. I don’t think we exchanged more than two words the whole time I was on the ship.

    The second engineer was a genial portly middle-aged fellow, who had been in the merchant service since the war. Always shirtless when he was working, he seemed to know everything that anyone was ever going to need to know about marine engineering. The third engineer was a sharp tongued, sandy-headed Glaswegian whose frequent expression was “och awa’ an’ keek” (which I translated as meaning you are full of ****, go away). Once I became an engineer myself later in the voyage, I spent all my watch-keeping with Gordon on the 12 to 4 watch. The fourth engineer was another tough talking little Glaswegian. He was always the first to lead the singing after a few “bevies”. His favourite song was “I’m no awa’ tae bide awa’” but there were a host of others most of which I found incomprehensible, but oddly enjoyable.

    I sailed on the Jedburgh for about six months with sugar from Queensland to Japan; light ship to Canada, then timber from Canada back to OZ before taking another load of sugar back to Greenock. What an experience - what an eye opener.

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    Default More

    The perfect Cubre Libre
    On that first trip through the Caribbean, I remember that in addition to St Kitts, we called at St Lucia, St Vincent, Dominica and Grenada. Sometimes we stopped for no more than two or three hours, other times it was a couple of days. The most memorable stopover by far was Bridgetown, Barbados. I remember my first time here very well because it was November 30th 1966 – the day Barbados ceased being a British colony and became a self-governing state. It is now the date which is celebrated in Barbados as Independence Day of course. The country had a new flag, a new Prime Minister and something to sing and dance about and I’m sure we spent the best part of a week joining in with them.
    Pretty soon we were all singing God Bless Bim and wearing shirts in the colours of the flag. The Saint was in his element – and it was here that I was to see him at his best when it came to creating the perfect Cuba Libre.
    After a day down below, working on whatever task needed doing while we were in port, Geoff and I would meet in the Saint’s cabin at about 4 PM. “Come in, m’dears,” he would say in his rich west country accent. “Time for a drink.”
    He would be sitting shirtless at his office desk in the Second Engineer’s cabin in his short slightly grubby khaki shorts, wearing a train driver’s style peaked cap and peering through his National Health spectacles. Geoff would be in an equally grubby white t-shirt and shorts, with me a shorter and smaller version of the same. Having left our engine room shoes at the top of the hatchway, we would enter in our socks and sit on his day-bed sofa being careful not to make too much mess as we did so.
    He had a fine silver ice bucket on his desk from which he would delicately select one of two cubes of ice using the finest tongs and which he would carefully let drop into crystal “Old Fashioned” glasses, kept for the occasion. Next he would open his desk drawer and out would come the very finest Mt Gay Eclipse Rum which would be opened and generously splashed over the ice. He followed this by taking a lime from a fruit bowl on his desk and using a sharp paring knife would cut it into three segments which would be dropped into each glass. This was followed by a liberal measure of Coca Cola poured from a freshly opened can.
    Finally with a flourish he would pull a ten inch screwdriver from his pocket, wipe it down with a piece of grubby cotton waste which had been sticking out of his back pocket and gently stir the contents of each glass as though he were at the Rivoli Bar in the Ritz.
    Nothing before, or since, has ever tasted so good. Cheers to you Frank!

    First Stop St Kitts

    Booth Line (and the sister company Lamport and Holt) had half a dozen or so ships running up the Amazon from New York. All the Booth ships had Spanish names beginning with “V” (Viajero, Venimos, Veloz, Vamos) The three month run was down through the Caribbean on to Belém at the river's mouth and 3,000 miles up river to Iquitos in Peru. We were going to be spending six weeks on the river each trip – what a prospect!
    First we were off to the Caribbean and our first port was St Kitts. I was quite excited about these island nations we were about to visit. As a stamp collector in my youth these romantic names like Barbados, St Vincent, Dominica and Grenada filled me with visions of pirate ships, plantation owners, sun, palm trees and of course, cricket.
    It was only a few years earler in 1961 since the tied cricket test in Brisbane between Australia and the West Indies and the images of that smiling black giant, Wesley Hall with his crucifix swinging from side to side thundering in to bowl is one that all cricket lovers remember. Hall played Sheffield Shield in Queensland and was much loved by all.
    And now I was going to the West Indies and the home of cricket, rum, and calypso.
    Viajero had a Barbadian crew who were exactly the type of people I had expected. The ship had its own steel band and once the weather warmed up, they were to be found practicing on the poop deck every afternoon playing songs like Peanuts and Latin Sun - songs that made you want to dance and clap your hands. The third engineer, big Geoff did – he was always there, leaning against the capstan banging a couple of claves together in time to the music and generally making sure he was part of the fun.

    Brooklyn 1966


    I have always said that Devis was the happiest ship I ever sailed on, and it’s probably true; but the MV Viajero was not far behind. Certainly of all the places I have been on earth, the Amazon experience is right up there with the best of them. Viajero was built in Hamburg in 1957. She was powered by an eight cylinder four stroke 1500 horse power MAN diesel engine which after the brutish B&W engine on Devis was an absolute pleasure to behold.
    I arrived in at Pier One in Brooklyn on a cold day in November 1966 as the most junior of the four engineers on board. Geoff Laws, the new third engineer from Keighley in Yorkshire had arrived a day or two earlier on the Queen Mary and it wasn’t long before I joined Geoff and the second engineer, Frank Stinchcombe from Bristol in the regular haunt for Viajero engineers when in Brooklyn, a local bar and grill about 50 yards from the dock gates. Frank was one of the most remarkable, of the many remarkable characters I was at sea with. Known to all as The Saint, he was about 45 years old, as skinny as a rake with a face only a mother would love and could mix a Cuba Libre like no one I have met before or since.
    All deck and engine room officers that joined Booth Line for the Amazon service were required to sign on for a period of 12 months (or four round trips from New to Iquitos) and Frank had already done two trips and had been on board for six months. It was always in New York that most of the major repairs and maintenance work was carried out since it usual took one to two weeks to provision and load the vessel prior to the journey south.
    The engineers had a good working relationship with the Brooklyn dockside maintenance crew. I can’t remember the names of the local guys, but it was my first time in the US and where better to begin an education in US culture than Brooklyn, New York. I also can’t remember the name of the bar, it was probably just called Charlie’s or something. It was here that I became familiar with such epicurean delights as the ale and chicken dinner (a pot of Schlitz beer with a pickled egg chaser).

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    Default Interesting reading

    The literature by Mike Williamson is interesting. However is a near enough replica of what a lot of people on this site went through at various times, and to some would be like reading their own biography. The views on seamen missing vessel etc. in Australia and Japan was a common occurence on tramp ships like the Baron Boats and other tramp companys and was solved in various ways. I must point out to anyone reading this narrative that this was not only British seamen who had a tendency to miss the ship, but other nationalitys also and other flags. In 1966 conditions on ships were somewhat better than what they had been previously to shortly after the war, and if remember correctly drink was allowed on ships, in fact some had bars, how they were run however was usually at the Masters whim. The strike he refers to most of us remember and have different ideas of why it happened, what political advantages were presumably made, and the resulting conditions which were supposedly achieved. All water under the bridge now. As there are very few such ships left and those that are totally different conditions apply. The author of the posts published is to be congratulated on his vivid memories of his time at sea, most of us as stated have similar ones to his own. Best Regards John Sabourn

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    The writing is good, as John tells it so many of us experieneced similar situations. There is no mention of many of the shore exploits we all went through. But as a biography it is excellent, just not enough 'exiting' details for me. Think we have been spoiled by Captain Kong.
    Happy daze John in Oz.

    Life is too short to blend in.

    John Strange R737787
    World Traveller

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    Default Happy Daze John

    I can certainly equate more to Brians revealations as he doesnt try to make any excuses and just says it as it was. I believe Brian also spent a full working life at sea and saw the rise and fall, not of the Roman Empire, but of the British Merchant Navy. When future generations ask why it disappeared, my answer would not be the acrimony of unions, but of the ship owners and the British Government. Who were the only winners out of the loss of such. It will of course be written in our history otherwise. I was witness as suppose others were and have previously stated that during the Falklands war, it was a disgrace the number of foreign flag vessels that had to be used at God knows what costs to fill the blank spaces. Any future act whould be dependant on other ships rather than British ships so depending on other countrys whims would be decided the fate of the so called Maldives or as we know the Falklands. Our esteemed P.M. would be totally dependant on others. As regards his savings on police and Defence Forces, he is sticking his head in the sand as a lot of politicians do, however that is another mistake and another subject. The author of the book however has written something that may be enjoyed more so by shore persons, and those having little knowledge of the sea. The best of Luck to him, no doubt he enjoyed writing it as many will do reading. Best Regards John Sabourn

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    AS to the demise of the MN. Looking at many of the ships photos on site one thing never fails to amaze me, their size. By the standards of today some are indeed tiny. How did a cargo ship of 10,000 tons with a crew of 52 ever make money? When you consider now we can see ships of 200,000 tons with as little as 10 crew aboard! But I think we had a better time of it than those of today.
    Happy daze John in Oz.

    Life is too short to blend in.

    John Strange R737787
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    Default Ten Pound Poms

    A quick thanks to everyone who has commented about my recollections, both here and on a couple of other sites. I enjoy re-visiting these images in my mind - and there is no doubt at all that the more I write, the more I remember (I hope it stays that way!).
    As to the comment made by someone about no mention of the runs ashore - well, I thought about it, and then realised that everyone who was at sea, and who has contributed to or read anything on this forum, knows that we all have a few vivid memories of those days and the old adage of what goes on at sea, stays at sea (or in this case "ashore") is often better left unsaid. Besides I don't want Brian or Tony going through my prose with a black pen!
    So to all you old Blue Starrers, Cunarders, ragged **** Baron Boaters, geordies, taffs and chookters - I dips my lid and say, thanks for all those memories and keep reading my Ten Pound Poms blog (Ten Pound Poms) 'cos I ain't done yet!
    cheers Mike

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