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Thread: How did you start your seagoing career

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    Question How did you start your seagoing career

    Heres an interesting thought, apart from the usual pre-sea training schools, how did you start your seagoing career.
    Mine started in a slightly unusual way.
    Father was Master in Blue Star line until he died when I was 10yrs old. When I was 14 Blue Star invited me to do a coastal trip with them to see if I would like a career at sea. I spent an eventual month sailing on two Blue Star ships going from London to Dunkirk, Hamburg, Avonmouth and Liverpool and aapart from being threatened with a knife by the Chinese bosun on one of the ships and propositioned by the queer Chief Officer on the other, throughly enjoyed the experience.Blue Star did offer me a cadetship but it meant going to Southhamton to attend the school there whilst taking O levels, as it was fee paying in those days and Blue Star were not making any contribution, I turned down their offer. However, as I hardly knew my father what with the long trips they did in those days and as our new next door neighbour, who was a civil engineer, had just returned from living in Rhodesia whilst working on projects out there, that seemed a much better career choice than going to sea, so after gaining my O levels I wrotr off to a number of big civil engineering companies to see if they had any jobs going. At the time we were living in the Lake District and we all had Summer jobs, such as washing up in Hotels, planting trees for the Forestry Commission etc. I had a neat job hiring out rowing boats on Lake Windermere, but that finished at the end of August so by September I had no work, no money and no replies from the Companies I had written to. So one day, unbeknown to anyone, I phoned up the Shipping Federation in Liverpool and asked them if there were any companies hiring deck cadets. They told me to report to them the next Tuesday by which time they would have some interviews lined up.
    So that Tuesday in Sept. I made my way to Liverpool where I had interviews with Bookers, P and O (aptitude test included), Blue Funnel (told if I was given a job with them I should consider myself priviliged as they were the best of the best) and Canadian Pacific. The Canadian Pacific interview consisted of me being stuck in a room and having to remind the guy who was interviewing me (who kept disappearing on other business) who I was and why I was there. Eventually he asked me if I wanted a job at sea, I said yes, he said was I sure, I said yes and he said right, youve got on, go and have a medical with our Company Doctor and if you pass come back and see me and we will arange for you to join your first ship. The medical consisted of me stripping off naked whilst the Doc. took my blood pressure. In the middle of this his secretary came in with papers for him to sign,whilst he was doing this he asked her what she thought of "that one on the couch" (me), she looked me over and said "he is not going to die tomorrow" at which the Doc said, "O.K. son you can get up, you've passed". I eventually managed to track down the personnel guy who had been interviewing me and told him I had passed the medical. His next question was, "When can you sail", to which I replied when did they want me to. He said Thursday that week, so it was off to Greenbergs in a mad panic to get kitted out with about three times as much gear as I would ever need, then back home to the Lakes to tell my mother I was shipping out on Thursday.
    Thursday came, back down to Liverpool, into the Liver Buildings after visiting Dock Street for my discharge book, and when I eventually tracked down the personnel guy he told me to get along to Canada Dock where I was to join the Empress of Canada as 5th Officer. When I told him I did not think I could do that job he got very annoyed saying I had been badgering him for ages to get onto the passenger ships. When I pointed out I had only joined the Company 2 days before he realised that he had taken me for someone else, told me to wait and disappeared. He came back a bit later with a slip of paper and told me I was to join one of the newest ships in the fleet, a tanker. How big I asked, big he said, where, I asked, Tranmere he said.
    So off I went,totally green behind the ears and joined a 66,000 ton crude oil tanker, where I was given a real run around for the next 11 months, doing some of the shittiest jobs going.
    So thats how my seagoing career started, I stayed with the Canadian Pacific for the next 20 odd years, before moving on to another Company after a short spell working ashore,when they made us all redundant. Do I regret it, no, it gave me the best job ever, especially ending up as Master and I saw parts of the world nad had time to explore them like non of my school contempories ever had or will have had, along the way meeting a huge range of really interesting people and sailing with many nationalities that opened my eyes to all sorts of different cultures and views.My only regret being that due to ill health I had to retire early.
    Has anyone else out there started their seagoing career in a stranger way.

    rgds
    Capt. John Arton (ret'd)
    Capt. John Arton(ret'd)

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    being one of four sons it was just natural for me to go to sea me and red lead ted have some good yarns on summer nights in the front garden all my brothers went to sea so you can imagine the banter when we all got together sadly one of us is no longer with us and he did the most sea miles.john

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