Confidential Reports.

[Jim Brady]

Perhaps one of our ex Captains,Chief Engineers or Chief Stewards could answer this question.
In our Dicharge Books we have provision for Ability and Conduct which in most cases was stamped Very Good.So you went through your sea career getting two V.G's every trip.Besides these stamps in your book telling you that you were a good lad did a Confidential Report raised by your Dept;Head get sent to the Company and the Shipping Federation.? The reason I ask this is that I posted yesterday I knew Blue Flu wanted men and when I asked the guy in the pool for a job with them his reply was "They dont want cowboys" so the answer to me was no as I was supposedly a "Cowboy".Did he have a file on me in the pool? Up until that time I might had I had never been taken to task over my work and never been logged and in fact done many trips on the same ship.Another case the 1st Lecky on one ship was a mate of mine so I used to drink with him in his cabin,this used to drive the chief engineer bonkers and there was quite a bit of trouble over it so much so the Lecky was emptied out when we got to Liverpool although he had been in the company for a few years.When he was looking for a job in Liverpool he kept getting KB'd then eventualy one guy in a shipping office said to him the best thing you can do is go out of town Cardiff or anywhere thats the only way you are going to get taken on.Imagine a Chief Steward on a passenger liner doing reports every 17 days on all the catering dept,it could'nt be done but I suppose on a cargo boat couple of month trip it would be easy enough.
Who can answer that one!!!
Regards.
Jim.B.

P.S. I've hung up my guns and stabled my horse quite a few years ago now.

[robpage]

I don't know about thye "Pool" Jim , but company men certainly got an end of voyage report filled in and handed over to the Superintendant , who often would ask you how the trip had been with some deal of insider knowledge . I had a very poor trip with a Chief Engineer who hated English , Loathed Rugby , and actually wrote in to Charlie Banks in B & C London office asking for good Glaswegian Engineers who played football . I know because I discussed my report fron the sad individual with Personnel , and there were questions asked about the voyage . A third Engineer who had a particularly hard time from him got an awful load of it after he attended a Catholic Mass in Durban , I had never seen Racial and religious prejudice so rife . I suppose it would not have been too bad if the man could have gained respect for being a good engineer , but he , alas did not have he saving grace of that skill . So I can only assume that similar reports went in to the Pool to .

[j.sabourn]

Ref. Discharge Book re ability and conduct V.G. G. and D.R. This was up to the Masters perogotive, but believe he had to put in O.L.B. extracts regarding D.R.s This Discharge Book went out in the 70s I believe and the Books now have no reference to such. I do believe that if sufficient bad behaviour or conduct warranted it an official report went into the B.S.F. if thought necessary. This of course applies to British Shipping Federation employees, those applying to private contract personnel each individual shipowner would I suppose have his own system of reporting. I know during the old system when crew were sent from Shipping Federation to ship for employment the Deck Crew came to see me as mate with their Discharge books. I had a tendency to give the job to those with double DRs and others thought I was mad for doing so, this however was using a bit of phsyco. as knew they would be behaving themselves that trip to get a good discharge back in their book, this nearly always worked. You must however know all this if you were at sea during the 50"s and 60"s. I must also say that some of the so called bad lads turned out to be first class seamen. Cheers John Sabourn.

[Ray McCerery]

Only time a report was sent in to either the company or pool was if you had entered it into the log book, and a GV GV was not entered in the SDB at the same time you were supposed to give a copy to the seafarer, in my time anyway.


Ray - Retired Grocer.

[Jim Brady]

John,I know what you mean about taking on guys with DR's.I joined a King boat to clear my book,the Chf Stwd had only sailed with Indian crew with Clan line.At the end of the trip he said he had reservations about sailing with a English crew and when he ended up with scousers he was realy worried, he coild'nt praise us enough for our output (14 Indians would've been doing the work of two of us).The ship had been tramping,shortest trip 13 months so you can imagine the state she was in.We brought her back brand new as though she had just come off the stocks,I was delighted as I was living in a bedsit when I left and I was able to buy a little two up and two down with my overtime.
Regards.
Jim.B.

[David Williams]

I would think that heads of Departments...Deck,Engine
Room,Catering,etc would most probably keep records
of crew who were on Company Contracts.
Dave Williams.

[Des Taff Jenkins]

Hi Jim.
How do you think many would have gone if they had the same discharge papers as on the NZ coast,
There you had [Character for conduct,] [Character for Ability] and {Character for Sobriety} mind you they were paper discharges that could always get lost, but it made it harder to get a job if you didn't present your last discharge paper.
Cheers Des

[happy daze john in oz]

Maybe it was up to the captain of each ship as to what was recorded. I was logged on several occasions but always got the VG in my book. But I know of two engineers who were not allowed back mainly because the senior second did not like them, nothing to do with ability.

[len mazza]

Hi,
On one Shell H boat I got the usual two VG, but a poor company report,that was my one trip in the galley.

Len.

[Ivan Cloherty]

Maybe it was up to the captain of each ship as to what was recorded. I was logged on several occasions but always got the VG in my book. But I know of two engineers who were not allowed back mainly because the senior second did not like them, nothing to do with ability.

Don't know about engineers but as deck officers we always had to get a "Watch Keeping" certificate from the Master at the completion of the voyage, fortunately mine all had positive comments but I've sailed with people who didn't get positive comments, it wasn't what was said, it was what wasn't said on them that made the next Master know what the previous Master thought about their subordinate. In today's world you are only allowed to enter positive comments no matter how crap the individual. Best one I saw was "Works entirely to his own satisfaction" and the recipient thought it was great!