Just Being Inquisitive.

[robpage]

I did approximately 1 year on a mail ship and found there was a class of engineers across all the ranks that were there solely to add to the ships entertainment and charity team they were a minority but if you got two of them together it meant that were all working at little bit harder most of the engineers , electricians and freezers were pretty good guys but some of them were there solely for the posing

[Fouro]

Re # 8.
Hi JWS, Apart from the chief engineer who didn't do watchkeeping, we had six watchkeeping engineers.
One senior, one junior and one fireman for each watch. The third engineer was responsible for all electrics on the ship.
Speaking about that clever cook come second engineer, I wonder what was going through this poor chap's mind.

LiveLeak.com -

FOURO.

[Fouro]

Re # 12
Lets try again
LiveLeak.com - Divers on Body Retrieval Mission Find a LIVE Nigerian cook who survived 3 Days Under Sea in Shipwreck Air Bubble

FOURO.

[John Arton]

I sailed with a number of engineers who served their time in the likes of the mines, sewing machine factories etc.
Nearly all of them could turn out anything on the engine room lathe, only limited by the capacity of the lathe.
One 2nd Engineer used to make miniature working steam engines from scratch. He would be down the engine room every night until well after midnight turning out all the parts using the scrap bin for his materials.
Modern seagoing engineers have to as part of their training, do some workshop time but I doubt that they will ever achieve the level of skill of those time served ashore in industry engineers had.
rgds
JA

[robpage]

Just to disagree slightly John the cadetship scheme which ran from I think the late 1950s to probably the mid 80's produced very good all round engineers there was an awful lot of time spent in the workshop in the first second and particularly in the third year at college it gave you a experienced base of a wide range of machines ranging from huge lathes , milling machines and grinding machines I have come across in my time many ex ashore based apprentices who actually spent very little time machining and some of them spent the whole of what in those days was a five year apprenticeship on basically the hand tools of hammer chisel file and spanner . Some of the more modern engineers and I have met seems to think that the heaviest all they need to carry is a 12 inch ruler and a pencil

[Des Taff Jenkins]

Hi Fouro.
I met an old Scot's engineer here in Cooma; he's around 98 he said that during the war he was doing his apprenticeship in Leith when he found out that a ship wanted a junior engineer so he went down and signed on, his boss came storming on board and dragged him off saying, "you are in a reserved occupation," I asked him where the ship was going he said on an Arctic convoy, he couldn't remember the name of the ship so I couldn't look it up to see if it survived the trip.
Cheers Des

[happy daze john in oz]

I did approximately 1 year on a mail ship and found there was a class of engineers across all the ranks that were there solely to add to the ships entertainment and charity team they were a minority but if you got two of them together it meant that were all working at little bit harder most of the engineers , electricians and freezers were pretty good guys but some of them were there solely for the posing

Rob know exactly what you mean. There was one from Rhodesia as it was then. All he was interested in was the female bloods. He kept in a tin used condoms, he was very odd indeed, but was caught out one night by the master at arm who reported him for having a female in his cabin. Sacked at the end of the voyage, his crime, 'Interfering with ships cargo'.

[Fouro]

Re # 16.
Hello Des, How fortunate for you to meet and speak to such an old gent from that era.
Unbeknown to him at the time, there is every possibility that the action taken by his boss enabled him to enjoy such a long life span. Examples of reserved occupations during WW2 included, coalmining, shipbuilding and many other engineering related trades. I got my pre sea grading certificate at Leith.

FOURO.