My First Voyage
by Published on 15th September 2024 08:38 AM
My First Voyage.
I remember leaving the Red Ensign Club, a seamen’s hostel, in Leman Street, London, in autumn 1968. After an early cooked breakfast on a dark, chilly morning, I embarked on a coach full of unfamiliar, hungover men — my future crewmates of sailors, greasers, cooks and stewards — all destined for Gatwick Airport to board a chartered flight to Denmark.
Not having flown before, and my sole experience of going to sea having been an occasional summer jaunt from Swansea to Ilfracombe on the Bristol or Cardiff Queen — both venerable paddle steamers of the White Funnnel Line — the experience would be completely new to me.
We boarded the aeroplane and proceeded to taxi out. I felt a sense of nervous anticipation as I watched the propellers whirring round faster and faster as we gathered speed and proceeded to accelerate down the runway. Then I felt terrified — the port wing was flexing up and down, and I thought it was going to break off at any moment. I wanted to call for the flight attendant, but I could see that no one else had turned a hair, so I bit my tongue and held my breath as, at breakneck speed, we took off at last with the wing still thankfully hanging on.
What I hadn’t known was that my fellow passengers were seasoned travellers. The pool where each of us had got a berth was on Prescot Street, a brisk walk from Aldgate East tube station, fairly near Dock Street, and almost next door to a pub called the Princess of Prussia (where I heard the landlord would take “advance notes” off hard-up seafarers, and charge a healthy commission for his philanthropy). I was to learn also that ratings registered at this pool felt a certain kudos in having the humorous nickname of “Dock Street Commandos”, as they usually had to fly abroad to join a ship.
After landing and disembarking, we were taken by coach to a seamen’s mission where we had a warm drink and a simple but filling hot dinner of meat stew and potatoes. We arrived at the port of Fredericia in late afternoon, and there she was, my first ship, tied up alongside gantries on an oil-stained, smelly quayside — a tanker called the ST William Wheelwright. She had a yellow funnel, and an AB told me that she was a Royal Mail Lines vessel on charter to Shell.
As we awaited permission to board, I could see some of our stores on deck waiting to be stowed — cardboard boxes full of tinned food, sacks of cabbages, potatoes, carrots, and carcases of pigs and lambs bound in gauze. Eventually allowed up the gangway, but unsure of where to go, I followed the deck ratings through a steel door into the aft accommodation. I felt a bit anxious as I walked down the sailors’ alleyway and picked my first ever cabin. Above its door were four words engraved in steel — Certified For One Seaman. I felt that I was now part of a real ship’s crew. This was my berth, and I had it all to myself!
Some time later, we were summoned to sign on. We queued in the alleyway outside the captain — or master’s — quarters and waited to be called in. The ship’s master was accompanied by the British consul. I handed over my brand-new blue discharge book and was asked my name and my rating. The “Old Man” raised his eyebrows when he found out that I was a first tripper, a DHU, and not even ex-Royal Navy. I was embarrassed and felt that everyone was looking at me. When I signed on and was hence under “ship’s articles”, I was asked if I wanted to set up an “allotment” (something new to me which involved sending money home on perhaps a weekly ot a monthly basis ).
I soon got to know a bit more about the vessel and the crew — officially classified as “officers and men”. She had just discharged a cargo of crude oil at the refinery and had been out for some six months, which helped to explain why she was taking on a new crowd.
I strolled round the forecastle, being impressed by the massive spare bower anchor, the huge, studded links of the anchor chain (or “cable”) and the thick mooring hawsers wound round the bitts. Standing proud of the main deck were turret-like structures called “tank tops” and a profusion of pipes and valve wheels painted in bright colours.
When I got back, I was told to report to the second steward who was giving out the linen ration. If memory serves me right, he handed me a counterpane, two blankets, two white bunksheets, two white pillowcases with one large and one small towel, some white soap and a bar of red Lifebuoy soap.
That evening, I went ashore with the OS. Unlike home on a Saturday night, Fredericia seemed lifeless, with clean streets, few pedestrians and no “pubs” as such. After buying a few bevvies in a bar and trying to get used to the strange new currency called kroner, we decided to go to a discotheque, but the doorman turned us away as my mate was wearing jeans, so we ended up in the flix. There I was shocked upon seeing my first “blue movie”. What amazed me also was that the local Danes were watching it without batting an eyelid or showing any sense of embarrassment at all. I felt that I had lived a sheltered life up until that night.
Unfortunately, we’d been accidentally overmanned by the British Shipping Federation office (or “pool”), in Prescot Street, and this resulted in the most junior rating, the OS, having to go back home by ferry. This led to a bit of sourness, as some of the ABs felt that I should have been the one to get the chop, not him. And if that had been the case, I would have considered it fair enough, but it was all above my head and I could do nothing about it. (Perhaps another gripe would have been the fact that a DHU, although less well paid than an AB, would get the same rate for overtime, though that would prove to be like hen’s teeth on that trip.)
There was a black cat on board, and I think the sailors assumed that it was the ship’s cat, but it had disappeared by the time we sailed. Presumably, it was a stray that had just slipped away to await the next ship and in the meantime would get daily titbits from the shore workers. But it gave rise to a few amusing tales. I heard one “Brummie” regaling some fellow ABs — “Cockneys”, “Scousers”, and one shy “Jock” who kept smiling gently — with a story about a ship’s cat he remembered that would go ashore at every opportunity. “Anyroad,” he explained, “he’d come back black as pitch, filthy dirty, fur all over the place and a look of satisfaction on his face.” — an anecdote accompanied by hearty chuckles.
The following afternoon, we singled up and cast off. I’d been sent aft on “stations” under the command of the second mate. After letting go the tug, we stowed the mooring lines below deck in a large locker that the sailors called a “lazareet”, and soon after I felt the ship begin to move beneath my feet as we reached open water. We were to sail, assisted by a pilot, through the Kattegat and the strait of Skagerrak, maritime areas which to me until then had just been names on a geography atlas.
I was put on the “shake” at the unearthly hour of half past eleven to be ready to
do my first lookout. For my sins, I was a smoker in those days and, on that night, dangerously absent-minded. As I rounded the aft accommodation and headed midships, I startled into flight what I thought were some migrating chaffinches which were resting on the rail, then suddenly I realised that I had a cigarette in my hand. Like an idiot, I panicked, threw it down and stubbed it out with my shoe. The butt fell between the wooden slats of the catwalk to hit the steel deck below, scattering sparks everywhere! The ship, in ballast, was gas freeing, and all the tank tops were open! God, I thought, my first trip to sea and I’ve nearly caused an explosion! The tanker going down in flames, my shipmates running around screaming, on fire and desperate to escape! But thankfully nothing catastrophic happened. Most of the crew were sleeping safely in their bunks and the ship was still afloat. And I resolved never ever to go forrard again while smoking a rollup or a duty-free fag.
On reaching the bridge, I relieved the lookout on the leeside wing and was told to report to the second mate (the officer of the watch), if I saw the lights of another ship or perhaps a lighthouse. Unlike the blaze of decklights the night before, the ship was in utter darkness, save for its running lights. Beneath the stars, there was no sign of life save for the glow of the compass binnacle and the ghostly face of the helmsman on the wheel. And sometimes I would glimpse the lone figure of the second officer under a desk lamp checking our course in the chart room.
I could see the white foam of the bow wave spreading out to each side as we slipped smoothly on but I couldn’t make out another ship at all except for a few faint pinpoints of light signifying their presence. Luckily, I had spent two weeks in the training school — a few humble wooden sheds — in Saint Katharine Dock by Tower Bridge in mid August. (The huge, multi-storey tea and wine warehouses had shut the same year.) There I learnt some basic sailorising skills, so I felt that I knew enough to say with confidence if a vessel was, for instance, two points off the port bow or dead ahead. (Incidentally, I was just one of two DHUs on the course, the other being a New Zealander called Wolfe. The rest of the group were experienced young sailors hoping to get their boat ticket which, with a fire ticket, would qualify them for the rating of AB — and therefore extra pay.) That middle, or “graveyard”, watch was a long one, and I was glad to put my relief on the shake for the four-to-eight before getting my head down. What a memorable night that had been!
Unlike the nocturnal dockside sounds of pumps and generators working, it seemed quiet as I got into my bunk at the end of my first day sea. I lay listening to the dull, vibrating throb of the engines, the splatter of water from some engine room discharge pipe and the soft hiss of the sea outside my porthole, knowing that with every turn of the propeller I was getting further and further away from home.
While proceeding south through the Bay of Biscay, we spent most of our time tank cleaning. I became familiar with the only buccaneer I would ever meet. He went by the handle of Victor Pyrate. This was the name of the manufacturer of the hosing equipment used to clean the tanks. We had to remove a circular steel plate bolted to the deck and lower through the hole a long, thick rubber hose. This was then lashed securely to stop it bucking about. The head of the hose, made of bronze (presumably to prevent sparks), had twin nozzles. As they spun round, high pressure jets of seawater blasted residual oil off the insides of the tanks. (This would then be pumped by the donkeyman — or pumpman — to a sludge tank in the stern.) As cleaning progressed, the hose would be switched off, lowered ten feet or so, then re-lashed and switched on again.
By this time, I’d become used to a few things that I hadn’t expected, such as being called “Taff” for the first time in my life, that I shouldn’t lock my cabin door at sea, and that I couldn’t have fresh milk every day. Instead, not long after leaving the English Channel in our wake, we had to have milk made from powder on our cornflakes for breakfast, and condensed milk (called “connie-onnie”), in our mugs of tea in the mess. (Another eye-opener would be having to clean up and smarten my cabin for Sunday-morning inspections by the master, the first mate, the chief engineer and the chief steward — an assemblage of the great and the good, or what the men referred to sardonically as “the march of the unemployed”.)
On rounding the coast of Spain, we headed east into the Mediterranean. This was my first sight of another famous geographical feature, the Rock of Gibraltar. I began to feel like a real sailor now. Wait till I tell the folks back home of my travels! In addition, the first officer had agreed to supervise me in my first attempts at steering the ship. Knocking off the auto-pilot, or “Iron Mike”, the mate had allowed me to take the helm for an hour a day spread over a fortnight or so which I finished while cruising through a peaceful Mediterranean. Although unaware of the saying, “A smooth sea never made a good sailor.”, I was deemed worthy enough to be issued with my treasured steering ticket. (Regrettably, this had to be surrendered a few years later when I took my EDH exam in the Board of Trade office in Swansea — nowadays converted into part of the up-market Morgans Hotel.)
Another rite of passage was “dhobying” (“doh-bee-ing”), my casual clothes or working gear in a washing machine. I would soon learn also another word of Hindi origin, “soogieing” (“soo-jee-ing”), which usually meant washing paintwork with a cloth and a bucket of fresh, soapy water.
Speaking of getting rid of dirt or of something unpleasant, one day I was to witness an activity most “hush-hush”. The ship’s carpenter had been ordered to make a simple frame out of two pieces of two by two inch timber, one providing the top stretcher, and the other the bottom, to which a sheet of canvas roughly six feet by eight was nailed. A section of the leeside rail was then removed and the sheet hung over the side after being hitched to adjoining rails. A huge, forty-five imperial gallon barrel almost full of waste oil — I wasn’t sure if if it was crude or from the engine room — was jettisoned. The canvas frame was meant to keep the ship’s side free of oil stains, in case any port authorities would spot them.
I couldn’t help but wonder whether any marine life like birds might die as a result of this illegal act. And, talking about dumping, we sailors wouldn’t worry any more about ditching a bit of paraffin-soaked cotton waste, a paint tin, a plastic shampoo bottle or an empty beer can over the wall than the messman would worry about slinging a pail of gash over the leeside rail after every mealtime in the mess. Objects that were out of sight were also out of mind. And the sea was where things usually sank conveniently never to be seen again. In those days, we weren’t aware of the problems caused by pollution as much as we are today.
Understandably, there wasn’t much social life to speak of, except for the men associating at work or at meal times, or perhaps when viewing a 16mm film on a screen in the mess on occasional Sunday nights. There was a recreation room with darts and table tennis and a modest library provided by the College of the Sea. With no bar as such, most sailors enjoyed a couple of cans of lager, a rollup with a game of cards or dominoes in their cabins or the mess or perhaps listened in their leisure time to news from home by tuning in to the stirring signature tune of Lilllibulero on the BBC World Service on someone’s shortwave Eddystone radio.
But I must mention the welcome change in my eating habits. Unlike the hurried mug of tea and a snack that I’d been used to in my previous job, every morning at sea I had fruit juice, cereal or porridge accompanied by a Full English with tea and toast. This would be followed by a four-course lunch at midday (what I’d always known as dinner), and at the end of daywork at five pm, a four-course tea (what I’d always known as supper). And sometimes I’d have a “seven-bell dinner”, or an early lunch, about ten to fifteen minutes before midday if I was on the afternoon watch.
A typical lunch or tea might comprise Brown Windsor Soup followed by Chicken Madras and Boiled Rice, then a main course of Roast Pork with Stuffing, Veg and Gravy, finished off with a dessert of Plum Duff and Custard. And if we were in the chief cook’s good books, we’d find some tasty “tabnabs” (small cakes or pastries), in the mess when we had a spell off work each morning and afternoon called a “smoko”. Not only that but, every evening, the fridge was replenished with fruit juice, cold meat and cheese. The fact is, I’d never dined so well in my life except for the traditional Sunday Roast or Christmas Dinner at home.
I learnt that tankers had a reputation in sailors’ eyes as “good feeders”, unlike some “tuppenny-ha’penny outfits” I was to sail with later on in my career that had a deserved reputation as “bad feeders”. But this didn’t stop some of the men from having a moan now and again about the “scran”. Blimey, I thought, those guys must dine at the Ritz when they’re on leave! By the way, one posh word on the menu, and utterly new to me, was the French word, “entrée” — a meal between the starter and the main course. But what I hadn’t really been aware of at the time was that the cost of all these seemingly free victuals would have made a very tiny dent indeed in the budget of a lavishly wealthy oil company like Shell.
Something I could never have done if enduring the autumnal weather back in London, I was stripped to the waist one morning getting a nice suntan, or “bronzing”. I was painting a winch on the fo’c’sle head (remembering to “cut in” first with my brush), while being pleasantly distracted by the distant sight of dolphins leaping up out of the water and diving back in. Also, at irregular intervals, I saw objects which resembled black tins floating on the surface of the sea. When I queried this, I was told that they weren’t tins at all, but the fins of basking sharks — creatures that to me had existed only in the pages of nature books.
On reaching our destination off the coast of North Africa near the port of Tripoli, a launch was waiting to moor us to a large buoy to pick up an offshore pipeline for a full cargo of crude. One day, while sitting on some mooring bitts and chatting outside the mess on the poop deck, I was thrilled to be given a fresh Libyan orange. It still had green leaves on it — something else that I hadn’t seen before. And another thrill was seeing a turtle (probably a loggerhead), not far from where we were moored. It was swimming about with its head above the water, quietly observing us.
Regardless of watchkeeping, we usually had plenty of time to finish our jobs, mostly simple maintenance such as chipping, scraping and wirebrushing rust off the ship’s rails before repainting them in red lead, white undercoat and white gloss. And there was little chance of extra paid work, so that none of us could book overtime, or what I heard the seasoned hands lovingly refer to as “ovies”. Unluckily also, we never made landfall that trip, so we couldn’t have a run ashore.
In a few days, however, our tanks were full, and an Arab launch came out to detach the huge, black rubber oil pipe. After we’d slipped our moorings, the telegraph was rung down to Slow Astern to clear the buoy, and then to Slow Ahead as we got under way on a new, westerly course. Later that day, we heard on the grapevine that we were destined to return to the UK, much to the relief of most of the ratings because they feared being away from home for six long months — just like the previous crew. But after only a month and a half at sea, having sailed past the now not-so-exciting Rock of Gibraltar and steaming north up through the Bay of Biscay, and carefully navigating the Channel with a man on the wheel, we were to pay off in a damp, dark, rainblown Middlesbrough.
As I was crossing the deck and about to walk down the gangway in my navy blue donkey jacket for the last time, I was good-naturedly ribbed by the bosun for carrying my working gear in a secondhand white canvas kitbag slung over my shoulder while most of the ABs seemed to be attired in Savile Row suits and carrying the latest Louis Vuitton hand luggage! With a chuckle, he said that he hadn’t seen a bag like mine for years, and that the mere sight of it had reminded him of Popeye, but I think nevertheless that he was rather wistful on seeing me go.
I’d like to say that this bosun was one of the few for whom I felt a certain liking and respect in my time at sea. He was a cheerful, ruddy-faced “Geordie” who had a habit of sucking his teeth. Having noticed my ex-RN kitbag that morning, he’d spun me a bit of a salty yarn. He showed me how to tie a “thief knot” to secure the lace that was threaded through the brass eyelets of the bag. He said that you could tell if any light-fingered shipmate had been into your stuff because they would retie the neck of the bag with a reef knot. (Perhaps it was rather remiss of him, but he didn’t go on to tell me how I could track down and nab this nautical tealeaf!)
Nevertheless, the subject would arouse some lively interest in many a ship’s bar later in my career when, if the tying of knots was the subject, I’d ask my fellow deck ratings to tell me the name of the knot I had just tied — but only after turning my back to secretly prepare it! Invariably, they’d all swear blind that it was a reef knot, for what else could it be? And then, of course, I had to tell them the whole story.
After a last, quick cleanup of our cabins and clearance by Her Majesty’s Customs and Excise (each of us being allowed a duty-free “docking bottle” of spirits and a carton of two hundred cigarettes), we left the ship in groups by taxi. On reaching the dock gates, our vehicle was stopped. Oh, I thought, the friendly bobby on duty might want to check our baggage. To my surprise, the driver asked us for a whip-round. Someone, with no change, gave him a ten-shilling note. This handful of graft was then handed to the policeman who promptly pocketed it and waved us through. Well, blow me! I thought, that’s rich! — I haven’t been able to go ashore all voyage and now, before I can, I’ve got to pay a bent copper!
The second was a much greater surprise. I had almost forgotten that, during the voyage, despite the consolation of a few voluptuous pinups stuck to a bulkhead in my cabin by its previous occupant, I hadn’t seen a real, live woman for well over a month. Then, through the window, I saw one walking into a shop. I thought for a moment that she was the only female on Earth, alluringly and unbelievably gorgeous — unlike the last six weeks or so where I’d known no other company than that of a shipful of love-starved males surrounded by water.
But now I felt liberated and eager to be dropped off at the town railway station. With a shedful of cash in my pocket — which didn’t last long — and a free rail pass, I was looking forward to a week’s leave before I’d feel the need to go back once more to the East End of London to seek a new berth and perhaps to take wing again as a fledgeling “Dock Street Commando”.
Brief Nautical Glossary:
AB Able-bodied Seaman
ST Steam Turbine
DHU Deck Hand Uncertificated
OS Ordinary Seaman
EDH Efficient Deck Hand
ex-RN Ex-Royal Navy
Last edited by Doc Vernon; 15th September 2024 at 09:00 PM.
Reason: Deleted the Double up Entry
