Dunnage

[robpage]

We had a load dropped on the deck in East Africa that contain planks that were ebony never made it down the hold chippy had them bundled up and when we paid off in London took them home as part of his baggage

[j.sabourn]

Dunnage for non seafarers served a similar purpose in some cases as spar ceiling and was used as Ivan says to avoid contact between cargo and steel work, laid athwartship in the belief that any water accumulated by sweating would run into. Bilges. JWS.

[Colin Wood]

Not only used for thunderboxes but also **** shutes. For those who don't know, they were shields put over the overboard discharges to prevent excrement landing on the wharf.
In the rice trade, special dunnage in the shape of rectangular tubes for ventilating the cargo. These where usually stored on board as provided by ship not shipper. Amazing how all those cargoes which 'Thomas's Stowage' said had to be especially dunnaged for ventilation are now carried in sealed containers.

[happy daze john in oz]

The closest I can recall to all that was a a swimming pool on the well deck of a UCL.
But on one occasion we loaded tomatoes in Maderia, boxes of them on the forward deck as all the holds were full.
About 200 or so wooden boxes filled with tomatoes for the UK market.
All was well until crossing the bay, we hit the mother of all storms with waves crashing over the fore deck.
Tomato juice was about all that was left when we docked in Southampton.

But on the subject of scuppers.

I notice now on cruise ships that each morning a deck hand goes around the promenade deckwith a vacuum pump of some kind and sucks the water out before mopping it dry.
There now appears to be no drainage holes built into this part of the decking.

[Des Taff Jenkins]

Hi Ted.
A little was also used to put ships in bottles, but only a little.
I remember leaving Swansea one evening on the Trevose and as we passed down the Bristol channel I threw some of the dunnage piled on the deck over the side hoping my father would find it on the beach at Three Cliffs where we used to stay on our holidays, we were always searching for dunnage when we stayed there for the fire.

Cheers Des

[John Arton]

On the forest product ships in C.P., although all holds were fitted with permanent fitted with spar ceilings ( vertically), when carrying director paper or liner board, the holds were sheathed in construction grade plywood. In addition, despite having underdeck tunnels running from the engine Room to the forecastle stores, a timber walk way was constructed over the top of the deck cargo to give us safe access to the forecastle. Our discharge ports were Newport ( deck cargo only) and Tilbury with occasional calls at Rotterdam,
On completion of discharge there was a huge amount of not only dunnage but also wire slings left on the dock ( they later used polypropylene sling's instead of wire, with the slings used for loading the packaged lumber always been having been left in place at the loading ports to speed up discharge). In Tilbury this led to huge amounts of dunnage and slings being dumped on the quay after each call and the foreman stevedore offered to take it off the hands of the quay owners for free. He would then flog the plywood and timber dunnage off to local builders and timber merchants, making at least double his stevedores wages, He would also arrange for a truck to drop off any timber you wanted for your own DIY project's for free. We always had a stack of ply. and timber on board and apart from turning the lounge into an olde world style pub I saw at least two sailing dinghy been made on board along with painting punts and swimming pools.
Rgds
J.A.
p.s. the wire slings in Tilbury he also sold either for further use or scrap.

[Graham Payne]

After discharging oranges on the " Rotherwick & Rochester Castle the dunnage made excellent cricket bats & stumps and using discarded oranges as balls made a welcome diversion for us ( whilst cleaning the hatches ).

[cappy]

##used to make harpoons thinned down the dunnage to a spear size got three six inch nails flattened in the engine room got barbs in the end .....then saw the bosun got an old heaving line untwind it and made it fast to the harpoon ....at anchor got a cargo light over the rsend and bingo fish of every hue and size ..we got so adept we stayed up nearly all night fishing....happy days ...cappy

[Trader]

Here is a photo of the Manchester Progress loading grain at Baltimore around 1956. Notice all the dunnage on the deck. In those days we usually had full general cargoes from Manchester to Canada and the States. It really was General, cases, cartons, bales, drums etc and so needed lots of dunnage to seperate it. (That was in the days when we made things in the UK). Return cargoes were usually bulk cargoes such as grain so all the dunnage had to be brought out of the lower hold. It was sorted and the decent pieces were kept and the rubbish thrown over the wall when we got to sea.

[Captain Kong]

On the URMSTON GRANGE in 1958, anchored off B.A. nice quiet sunny day . Then over the land a mushroom cloud was forming, and it was growing bigger.
It was a smooth white dome and underneath green and purple lights with tails hanging down. it was growing bigger and bigger and then covered the city and then the water was churned up into white foam hurling towards us,
Our deck was covered in dunnage just like the above photo, .
Then it hit us, beam on, the ship heeled over near 45 degrees and the dunnage was swept up into the air and swirling around just like bits of straw. we all had to dive for cover or would have been killed and it all went up into the air and vanished. all gone, no sign of any dunnage.
That was a Pampero, never seen one before or since. an incredible sight and experience..
But it saved us a big job stacking it and lashing it down.