The Pool

[Roger Dyer]

Hi Cappy.....Your #48 refers


Cappy, your faith in the authority of author, Gordon Mumford, is understandable. As you will know, Mumford, was a young Radio Officer serving in the M.N. during the war and would be expected to have considerable knowledge of his subject. However, if we accept Mumford as the definitive authority, it follows that we must dismiss the personal experience and word of Ivan's father and our own, Lou Barron, which, in the absence of overwhelming evidence, I'm certainly not prepared to do.

.......Roger

[cappy]

roger i think that none of thepast comments on the ref to 3 ships appears to be proven either way......hughs reasoning seems ok to me ......lou ses he wasnt sure .....ivan ses his fathers case it was one ship only but others may have had a choice.......far from doubting lou or ivan or hugh or you i think we must make our own choice ..mine is cast in favour of three ships.....otherwise when did the three order as such come in.....and as there were not enough seamen in general to man the ships......a choice would possibly be a good thing to get guys to go back ......no wish to argue with you after our last disagreement ......just to each his own.....regards cappy

[Captain Kong]

If I can remember rightly, in Liverpool there were always plenty of ships on the book in the 50s, and we just went down the list and then chose one, If I didn't like the ones I could see I always asked Mr Repp, to take his hand off the bottom of the Page as he always had a good job for his mates.
So I never experienced, 3 ships or your out.
The only time Mr Repp gave me ship with No choice was when I had a Committee after missing a skin boat in Jamaica, He gave me , no choice, a Shell tanker,` Norrisia`, and laughing, "With a bit of luck you will be home for Christmas,.......1956. ha. ha,."
this was November 1954.
I was lucky, just went to Curacao, Maracaibo Lake and back six weeks and home the week before Christmas 1954.
Cheers
Brian.

[Jim Brady]

I must admit I don't have any memory of being offered 3 ships I just remember going into the pool and being offered a ship or two without any stringent rules.I always thought that not to be Established was a no brainer for many reasons.If you were Established and in receipt of money from the pool it was obvious that they would want to get you a ship and get you off the books before an un-established man.Also your dole was in the pool you signed on there and didn't have to go to the shoreside dole where you had to sign on twice a week and pick up your dole money from there,being Established it was a one stop shop pick up your dole and pool money at the pool.I went through a couple of periods where shipping was a bit slack,us established men were sent on fire fighting courses to Liverpool Fire Brigade for a week and another time on a refresher course for a week to a classroom that was above the pool,pick up your dole and pool money on Friday ,happy days.The only time that I was offered one ship was after having a DR and I was offered a King boat take it or leave it and I was glad of it.
Regards.
jim.B.

[Roger Dyer]

Cappy, I confess I find the information to hand somewhat confusing. As for 'freedom of choice', I don't imagine too many seamen chose to go on the Arctic convoys, do you ? Reference Hugh's earlier post #39 where he too suggests there may have been a lack of consistent procedure as far as the manning of ships was concerned. If true, it seems a helluva way to run a merchant fleet in wartime, doesn't it ? but no matter it all came out right in the end ...thank goodness. Ideally, as far as the placement of M.N. crews during WWII is concerned, I would much prefer to see documentary evidence of the official Government guidelines at the time..... until that happens then I'm afraid 'the jury is still out' for me.


.................Roger

[j.sabourn]

Jim ref. your #54 I can remember distinctly in 1963 on the ore carriers which were on running agreement, and where 2 or 3 deck crew replacements were needed nearly every trip, a number of seamen their federation papers to sign were sent to the ship and came to the mate with their Discharge Books to see the mate for acceptance or not. This was if I remember mostly on the Middlesborough pool. Every pool office may have had their quirks and ideas, their job was to supply seamen, the ship also had a choice of who they accepted to a certain extent. As said in a past post I used to accept a person with a double DR as preference as knew he would want a clean discharge and would act accordingly. Years before this as 2nd. Mate one particular master used to leave me in the shipping office when opening the old art. and tell me what he wanted , so many ABs so many Ordinary seamen and so many Deck boys, the ship again made this choice. Some of these pool officers were little hitlers and thought they had undisputed powers, they didn't, they only thought they had. Sandy at the Newcastle Federation, like Roger I used to apply directly to a shipowner for a job but when accepted had to go to the pool to get clearance, Sandy at the pool at the time used to try and enforce his hitleranean attitude to all those who had been on foreign ships and used to question people where they had been. When I came face with him I jumped in straight away and said before you start its none of your business sign the paper or don't its immaterial to me, he never uttered a word, this was after watching the hell he gave to an engineer ahead of me in the queue. Like the dole offices which believe it or not the manager had certain powers of discretion, the same as the pool officers, however they were not a law unto themselves which many thought they were. JS

[Hugh]

Hello Roger - your #42 refers.
I didn't mean my comments to be taken as a rebuttal, merely another opinion to be debated on the site.

I think it a tad misleading to suggest some WWII seamen were often given latitude to sail in the ship of their choosing

I don't think it misleading at all simply because research was done from primary records including interviews with merchant seamen who sailed during the war years. Professor Tony Lane, author of "The Merchant Seaman's War", and himself an ex merchant seaman wrote that excellent and well researched book which included interviews with many merchant seaman of the time. "Merchant Shipping and The Demands of War" by CBA Behrens is another history of the Merchant Navy written in 1955, 10 years after the end of the war, and one that other well respected authors of Merchant Navy history also use as a primary reference.

While I concede that not all experiences were the same and some of those veterans that I spoke to also had different recollections of how the system worked, some couldn't remember, others took your view, some took my view but as I was not around I can only point you to what has been written and said about the events of that time. I would certainly not disagree with you or what Ivan has said, not in the slightest, as I respect his opinion as I do yours.

Thank you Roger for your kind comments, I have always appreciated your articulated opinion and comment along with many others on the site.
Hugh

[Charlie Hannah]

John i payed off after an accident tying up,febuary1990 had the back operated December 90 on,finished up like a Kiwi car all screws and bailing wire. on pay till mid 93Then declared unfit for further duties,put on scrap heap.
The times stayed in hotels mostly happened when i payed off away from home port like overseas or in the west,and also the time i payed off injured.I did get to spend heaps of time in hotels though like when we dry docked it was always overseas we lived ashore.I did a lot of flying when i was on the rigs and tenders though i was on the Australian exporter for three years three on three off 12 hour shifts caught the flight from Kempsey to Sydney then Sydney to Perth then Perth to Barrow Island from there a chopper mostly about five hour flight to rig Turn to as soon as you got into work gear you relieved on the job.That first twelve hour shift was like a month.Also the only time i ever saw an ab cook was on the tenders never ever saw it happen on the coast you couldn't sail with out the chief cook,sailed with some of the best cooks and some who were not worthy of the name cook.The S.U.A was one of the strongest unions out here then and as Des said in his post you could always depend on backing from the S.U.A. no matter what nationality you were, they were always very staunch unionist,and good leadership. Hence the good conditions we had on the coast,Until the decline started to set in.Not many left now i am afraid the good days are well and truly gone!The only time i ever saw any other nationality was as you say the Yank on the rigs.On the coast you had to be registered Seaman in Australia.

[j.sabourn]

An aside to this, when I was 20 and was up for 2nd. mate. I was going out with a girl from the shipping office , as she may still be alive will not go into any detail. However the Newcastle and the Sunderland office were having I think a Christmas party or a party of some description or other, and she invited me. The staffs of both offices were making merry and were boasting about the mate on such ship and the master on another ship and how they had dealt with them, pure rubbish and boasting for I assume the females in the company. The girl I was with realizing that these #ankers didn't realize I went to sea had to slip it into the conversation. There was a complete silence and the talk after that was very guarded. Talk about feeling an outsider I was pleased to get out of that atmosphere, which is one reason I have asked if anyone knows what these people got in redundancy payments as in comparison to seafarers, which was paltry. JS

[Charlie Hannah]

Hi Charlie.
I knew many of the delegates in the Aus seaman's union as a delegate on the Union Companies NZ ships and back in the 50s 60s they were the best, they would always back seamen never mind from which country they're ships came from.
As for the tanker now held up in Melbourne, the Company that has bought out the Shell Company business in Aus says it no longer needs the ship to take oil from Melbourne to Adelaide, the reason, it has to go to Singapore as they have a Vietnamese crewed tanker waiting to take over the run, that's more Aussie jobs gone to overseas cheap labour. Vale Australian jobs.
Cheers Des

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Hi Louis.
His name was Inky, I signed on my first ship the Trevose one of Hain's in Cardiff straight out of the Vindi, and he was the one who was in the pool, I believe he was well liked in Cardiff and had an amazing memory for seamens names and faces.
Cheers Des

You are so right Des 50s & 60s were good times i was on the home boats then sailed to both Aus And kiwi quite a bit loved the run i had a few good mates on both the kiwi And aus coast through them times some of the best times ever.