Cant remember this being done!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Red Lead Ted]

O.K. Lads we can all own up it was all yesteryear, What strokes did we pull to avoid the rummagers, They new all the moves lines hanging over the side with a bottle on the end, Tins of bacci wedged in your sea boots, Seen them climb the top mast with a torch, Seen them rummage accommodation areas that we wouldn't enter, Checking nuts and bolts on Engine room plates, Mirrors on a lump of dunnage underneath the hatch coamings, False bottom in your suit case, They new all the tricks but how did you beat them ? And of course the last place you wanted to pay off was Avonmouth where they had there training school. The one time I did pay off there skipper wouldn't pay anyone off after a customs officer came up from the Engine room like father xmas with a bloody big plastic bag of whacky backy hidden behind a freshly painted steel bulkhead. Everyone had to be fingure printed and interviewed in the skippers cabin with him present. 4th Engineer got some serious jail time I was later informed. Terry

[Ron B Manderson]

One of the customs crew told me thus.
As it is a DC ship you could have put a carton of cigs on top of a motor and painted it.
They say they would never touch if the motor was running.
Never thought of that.
Ron the batcave

[Ivan Cloherty]

Make false stanchions from deck to deckhead with capstan tins, cover them with chartpaper and paint them silver and hope the rummagers didn't lean on them

[Chris Allman]

Cellotaped a couple of LPs to a towel rail once and hung a towel over them. Snap Ivan, the best I ever saw was a hollow pipe in the corner of the crew mess room on the Raphael. It was made of coffee tins stuck together then painted the same color as the mess room. Just looked like a pipe coming up from below and going up through the deck head. The worst that was ever smuggled in those days was ciggys and booze, none of these awful drugs of today.

[john sutton]

On the Accra some AB,s used to get boxes from the Las Palmas dolls and put them on top of the heating trunking with a note saying"ha,ha,got you that time.
I heard that customs pulled a large amount of cigs from behind the shell on a shell tanker

[John Adamson]

Make false stanchions from deck to deckhead with capstan tins, cover them with chartpaper and paint them silver and hope the rummagers didn't lean on them

When I was working on the Queen Mary in Long Beach, we were doing a major refurbishment of the orignal 1st Class cabins, when the workers found six tins of Capstan Cigs stuffed in a ventilation trunk. I dont think that would have been a passenger, but more likely a Cabin Steward who never got back to them. They must have been at least 40 years old, or even older. Anyway we put them in the archives, where I presume they are still there.

John

[Colin Wood]

In the early 50's we used to put nylon stockings in a condom and hang in soda acid fire extinguisher. Nailed scots cake tobacco under duck boards on monkey island. The old foam fire extinguisher had enough space between the tube and bottom for 50 cigs.

[Peter F Chard]

The most novel way I found was not when I was at sea but after coming ashore and was a Surveyor. A large heavy fuel daily service tank was due for survey. This tank was duly pumped out, cleaned and gas freed ready for my inspection. When I got inside I noticed the far corner of this tank had been partitioned to form a smaller tank but nothing on the ship tank drawings gave any clue as to what it was. Eventually a manhole lid was found in the refrigerated cargo hatch forward of the engine room bulkhead, there was a removable piece of insulation with a painted sign which said ' Danger - do not remove -- fuel oil tank behind " This was the access to the smugglers tank via a standard manhole lid. This must have been built when the ship was builders yard. There was nothing inside by the way !! Regards Peter in NZ.

[John Callon]

When I was Purser/Catering Officer with Townsend Thoreson one of the Customs Officers was in my office completing some paperwork which required my signature. I started looking around for a pen and he gave me the pen he was using. After I had signed the papers I said don't forget your pen to which he replied "It is not my pen my friend, it belongs to the Her Majestys Government" I said to him Christ what a sad life you lead which did not please him too much.
Regards
John

[j.sabourn]

The cook on paying off in Hamburg and flying into Newcastle in the old Dakota days. Airport was only a couple of sheds, used to take a ladies cocktail watch home every trip. Used to fit in the Windsor knot on his tie. Also used to painstakingly dismantle the 200 woodbine carton slit the cellophane on the 50 packet, remove some of the cigs. and replace with again ladies cocktail watches. Put the whole lot together again and was unnoticeable. As far as I know he was never caught. Another one was in the port boxes in cabins where the usually silver cup for catching any leakages or sweating from the port glass was caught, you could unscrew this if they were screwed in position and was space between the steel and the wooden or plastic bulkhead. Think all the obvious ones though the searchers had a good idea where to look. When someone else hid their contraband in your locker though was the worse as they never believed it wasn't yours. JS