john liddell maltman

[Guy Pearse]

Hello Harry,

By chance I was one of the deck cadets who fed and 'mucked out' the horses for the six weeks or so! I still have 'black and white' box camera photos of the beauties and can remember at least two of their names.
One was named ' Celestial slipper' whilst another I think was named 'Brigatine'.
Of course I remember the cargo of condoms which were blown up like balloons by the Bombay stevedores.
One of the Engineering Apprentices 'jumped ship' in Bombay - homesick for Liverpool he said.
Your experience of this voyage caught my eye on this forum page - and I still possess a complete timetable of ports and dates etc. since my overtime papers survived through all this time.
For deck apprentices we earned 2shillings and twopence an hour for overtime!
Keep in touch,
'Cadet' Guy.

[Ronnie Maben]

I sailed on the Trewidden 21.11.69 joined in Antwerp it was the trip we went to Tahiti.New caledonia ,Vanuatu. and Australia.and we had the murder on board when a Somalia deck hand murder a scouse fireman with a knife we had to go to Marquesas ils where they took the somalia off the boat and we went on to Tahiti .

Hi John the ship I was on Mv Trebartha we had a murder on my first trip 29.7.69. up the Gulf he was Italian called peter he was a AB his cabin was next to me there was a lot of noise then quiet then a splash the murderer got out of the porthole we called him ringbolt because he wore a ring in his ear he was caught we went to see in jail it was stinking he would not say why apart from that had a great trip. Ronnie Maben was D/Boy R 874850

[Lawson Connell]

Hi my name is Lawson Connell and I too was on board when Eddie was murdered, I was an uncertified junior engineer (first trip) and jumped ship in Sydney! I returned to UK a year later and joined Cunard QE2 in August 1974 as a DJ and stayed with Cunard for 22 years, ending my career as Cruise Director of QE2. Trewidden was a frightening time for a 21 year old's first trip, do you remember any of the engineers on board?

[Dave Kirkham]

Hi guys,
I too was a deck cadet on Trewidden in 1972, UK to New Zealand and back. We had 6 cats as deck cargo in hutches on the boat deck, they we all pedigree's but one or two may have lost their cherry when we stuck them all in the pilot's cabin, while cleaning out the hutches. I never knew if there were any kittens?

Dave