" Amateur " smugglers

[Peter F Chard]

Has anyone had a similar experience to this ?? About my second trip or third as a junior engineer on a P&O dry cargo ship on the Far East Service we had just left our final loading port in Japan and were heading to HongKong then Singapore to finish loading. After that it was Suez and home to KGV dock. We had only been underway for a couple of hours when it was announced that we would not be going to HongKong but direct to Singapore. That morning the fourth mate came to my cabin, he was in a highly agitated state and said that the ship had to call at Hong Kong and could I tell the chief engineer that there was something so seriously wrong with the main engine that we needed to go to HK for urgent repairs. I could not believe that this guy was serious and finally got it out of him that he had about five large wooden crates of '' private '' cargo in number 5 hatch for HK. So I suggested to him that because one of his duties was to make sure the ship had sufficient fresh water on board ( no de-salination plant in those days ) he should convince the Mate that we needed water and the upshot was that we did divert to HK for water arriving about 0100 hours and anchoring in the roads. The water barge came alongside forward and another barge and tug crept alongside aft and handy for the number 5 hatch -- I had an extra generator running so there was plenty of power to rig derricks and unload this illicit cargo -- the whole operation took less than 40 minutes but taking on the water took two hours and no one was any the wiser. We sailed about 0330 hours for Singapore, my watch finished at 0400 hours and when I went up to my cabin I found a whole case of Camus 35 year old Brandy on my bunk -- quite a surprise !! Regards Peter in NZ.

[Lou Barron]

That was a very nice surprise Peter did you get it home or was it drunk before that ???

[Peter F Chard]

We had five or six nights in Singapore and had parties most nights with the British army hospital nurses -- the brandy lasted no time at all !!! Regards Peter in NZ