Dredging

[Louis the fly]

I had a carefree life at sea from age 16 then in my twenties hit some bad luck. I don't know how or where I caught it but ended up in hospital with T.B. A tube was inserted through by back into the lung to drain off the fluid , this had to repeated several times , also large injections of antibiotics into my thighs. I couldn't leave hospital until tests showed I was no longer infectious.
Then followed a long battle with the Pool to get back to sea. While I was waiting I found a job with a small dredging company named Coopers. We were dredging for building sand for another company named Ready Mixed Concrete. This was a suction dredger , a pipe ran almost the length of the ship , when we reached the dredging grounds we dropped anchor , the pipe was lowered into a face plate on the ship , the other end lowered to the sea bed then heaved on the anchor to bury the pipe into the sand. Water and sand was pumped up to metal grills above the hatch to catch any debris , pumps in the hatch took away the sea water. The Queen owns the rights to the sea bed around the coast , for every ton of sand one penny went to the Crown. After loading we went up the M.S.C. to Warrington and the sand was discharged into hoppers to dry out.
I got on with the skipper very well , he was ex R.N. and we would swap tales although I think most of his stories came from books he had read but he was funny and enjoyed a laugh and joke.
In the early hours one morning we had left Liverpool just before high water , the skipper decided to steal the beach at New Brighton to get a quick load and a few hours sleep in Warrington. Everything went well until we came to get the pipe on board , it was stuck fast the hydraulics were screaming but could not free it. We had to get off the beach before going aground , leaving the pipe behind.
A couple of days later a picture of the pipe was on the front page of the Liverpool Echo , someone had painted a smiley face on it. I felt very sorry for the skipper , he was sacked and I left at the same time , my battle with the Pool was over and I could go back to sea.

[Captain Kong]

After leaving ESSO I was ashore for a few months, and then the Bowbelle/Marchionesse Disaster happened.
I thought , They will need a Master for that,
So I phoned the Office, that was a RMC company, and got the job on the Bowbelle after a few trips to learn Dredging.
Very similar practice to what you did.
There are designated dredging patches out at sea which are monitored by the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries.
They send camera drones down to film the patch to see if you have gone past the limits or there would be heavy Fines.
Occasionally we would dredge up Lobster pots but kept those if they had Lobsters in.
Our Patches were off the Isle of Wight, the Hastings Bank and off the coast of Norfolk and off the Humber. The bigger ones I went on later we dredged in the Baltic and took the sand and gravel into East Germany and Poland. and to Hamburg.
we also delivered to Amsterdam and Dunkirk, In Dunkirk we back loaded at the Steel works a cargo of Slag, iron clinker, used for road building, and take it into Canary wharf on the Thames, We delivered the sand and Gravel to Southampton, and several berths up the Thames as far as Nine Elms , which is under the Bridges to Battersea by the old Power Station.
That is when the Bow belle hit the Marchioness outward bound by the Bridge.
So when I joined we had to do several runs up and down the Thames with Lawyers and MAIB on board with film cameras and stop watches to monitor what happened on that night. an interesting exercise.
She was sold after I complained to the Office that she would break in half. She went to Madiera and then while working out there, Broke in half and sank taking some crew with her.
It was a different aspect of Seafaring but an interesting one.
Cheers
Brian

[Graham Payne]

Hi Louis
I was on a couple of Sand & Gravel suckers running out of the Isle of Dogs, the "Needwood" & "Hovering V1", took the later brand new out of Appledore ship builders yard. Ok in the summer but winter back deepsea for the sunshine.

[Louis the fly]

While working for the dredging company many interesting and comical things occurred. The other two lads on deck had no ship or sea experience so I became Mate. The skipper would take the ship out of the locks to the dredging grounds then go below while I loaded. When the hatch was full he would take her to the M.S.C. bouncing off the buoys while fiddling with his pipe trying to get it lit. I joined him at the canal when he showed me where two ships could pass , where to hang back when ships were manoeuvring and the names of the places we were passing. After a while he left me to it , this is were I first learned of water displacement. When meeting a large ship coming the opposite way you had to put the wheel hard over towards the ship , if you did not do this the wash would drive you up the bank. One day I was following a Manchester Liner keeping a safe distance astern , at a bend I lost sight of her and thinking she was way ahead of me went full ahead , I came around the bend and nearly finished up on her rudder. I hadn't been concentrating on radio traffic information , she had stopped for an oncoming ship. Going full astern swung the bow to port bringing me broadside on to the canal , I had to from full ahead to full astern to regain control. A lesson learned.

There was a crazy little engineer on board named Cyril who had found God. He dumped all the tools from his garage that he had stolen over the years then dumped his wife's clothes but kept his own. His wife had a male friend who was going to be released from prison if he could prove he had an address to go to. She persuaded Cyril to take him in as a lodger , the prisoner arrived at his house and threw Cyril out , he was sleeping on the ship while his wife and her friend were doing the hokey kokey.
Cyril kept his car on the quay , covered in sand , someone wrote on the top of the car in the dust CYRIL GIVES GOBBLES. When he was driving through town bus passenger were shouting and waving to him out the windows , Cyril was smiling and waving back to them.

[cappy]

While working for the dredging company many interesting and comical things occurred. The other two lads on deck had no ship or sea experience so I became Mate. The skipper would take the ship out of the locks to the dredging grounds then go below while I loaded. When the hatch was full he would take her to the M.S.C. bouncing off the buoys while fiddling with his pipe trying to get it lit. I joined him at the canal when he showed me where two ships could pass , where to hang back when ships were manoeuvring and the names of the places we were passing. After a while he left me to it , this is were I first learned of water displacement. When meeting a large ship coming the opposite way you had to put the wheel hard over towards the ship , if you did not do this the wash would drive you up the bank. One day I was following a Manchester Liner keeping a safe distance astern , at a bend I lost sight of her and thinking she was way ahead of me went full ahead , I came around the bend and nearly finished up on her rudder. I hadn't been concentrating on radio traffic information , she had stopped for an oncoming ship. Going full astern swung the bow to port bringing me broadside on to the canal , I had to from full ahead to full astern to regain control. A lesson learned.

There was a crazy little engineer on board named Cyril who had found God. He dumped all the tools from his garage that he had stolen over the years then dumped his wife's clothes but kept his own. His wife had a male friend who was going to be released from prison if he could prove he had an address to go to. She persuaded Cyril to take him in as a lodger , the prisoner arrived at his house and threw Cyril out , he was sleeping on the ship while his wife and her friend were doing the hokey kokey.
Cyril kept his car on the quay , covered in sand , someone wrote on the top of the car in the dust CYRIL GIVES GOBBLES. When he was driving through town bus passenger were shouting and waving to him out the windows , Cyril was smiling and waving back to them.

now i do like that louis .....cyril smiling back .......cappy

[cappy]

regarding cyril smiling back ...the old adage ignorance is bliss springs to mind.......cappy

[kurutai]

Brian do you know what year she went to Madeira regards Dave .

[Captain Kong]

Hi Dave, we laid her up in January 1991 in Southampton, and put into the hands of an Irish Company based in Cork to be sold.
A company in Madeira then bought her and took it there, she was dredging off the coast of Madeira and had a full cargo and in heavy weather she broke in half and sank on 25 March 1996.
I had previously reported to the Company that she would break in half,.
The steel; was like a lace curtain in parts, many cracks below, we hammered wedges covered in cloth into the cracks on the ships side., the double bottom in the void space had fountains of water sprouting up and I had two bilge pumps working 24/7.
Another one of their ships had broken in half in the Channel.
It is a very long story of the happenings that night.
Cheers
Brian

[kurutai]

I was in Madeira in 1997 on a cruise there was one of the Bow boats there then , it was laying alongside I went aboard with my ten year old daughter I was on the Bowpride around about 1968 I was waiting to fly out to Aussie all a lifetime ago best regards Dave

[Captain Kong]

Most of the Bow Dredgers ended up in Madeira, I have seen them every time I have been in there,
They were Banned from the Thames,
Cheers
Brian