On the coast

[John Arton]

Found this fantastic video about coastal shipping on UTube, enjoy.
Rgds
J.A.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?fbclid=I...&v=ZW0SxfRShI8

[Ivan Cloherty]

Have seen that old girl a few times, not sure I'd want to do the North Sea on her with just one tarp and lorry straps instead of 3 tarps and batten bars, but each to his own

[j.sabourn]

Tarpaulins always was a big distraction to a newly painted ship arriving back in the uk after being away for some time Ivan. You had to please office workers who came to view the vessel, and to appease the stores manager who wanted to see the worse tarpaulin of each hatch as the top tarp,which was invariably the most patched and dirtiest, and detracted from the freshly painted ship. When I was second mate and. Trying to defend the mate against the store manager who said to me that the mate was costing too much money as the previous mate had only ordered 2 new tarps where this one had ordered 6 , so I said maybe the low spender should have ordered 4 and the present one could have done the same, it went down like a ton of bricks. When looking for promotion in the old days showed people in their true colours some blatantly with the long knives out , determined to get there anyway they could, pandering to shore based Wallies was never my way to go. jS

[Ivan Cloherty]

Well it was sensible to put the oldest tarp on top when on passage especially outbound because of all the overhauling and greasing of wires and blocks etc ready for weeks of cargo work, but didn't make sense when homeward bound as the object was to present the ship as well painted and pretty as possible, so new tarp on top should have been order of the day, So you approached home port and head office with a gleaming white bridge front, shiny buff masts and derricks, eau de nil bulwarks, red decks and greasy paint stained hatch tarpaulins, really made sense !!!!. One thing about Ropners you never berthed near head office, as it was in Darlington!

[j.sabourn]

Yes Ivan every seaman knows that, but in this case instead of hiding it so as not to upset the view of the spectators he made it blatantly obvious that what the eye sees is not always correct, mostly for the stores manager benefit who had the habit of putting a red pen and reducing stores to what he deemed necessary, he like myself were not bothered about promotion. If we didn’t like it we moved on which one could do in those days. Cheers JS

A good example of this was food stores , I had to put a store list in for 6 weeks for 9 men. To do this the cook was the one I saw and as far as I was concerned that was it. One time an ambitious catering manager got his pen out and practised drawing straight red lines, I said fine,when the stores run out I”ll just bring the ship back in, you can’t do that he said, I said just watch me. He got his rubber out and we got our stores. JS.

[happy daze john in oz]

Interesting.
With UCL liners on channel night the ship had to be cleaned to look as if new.
The galley had to be pristine looking.

Fine, but come back ten days later and it looked as if Whelan the Wrecker had been through her.
Never did know what happened in port.

[Colin Wood]

The stores manager in Mollers when on the Coral River had good reason to query the order for cornfour, the explanation was that the European officers were not eating enough rice, so they were using cornflour to starch our shirts, and everything. Stiffest undies I ever had.

[Red Lead Ted]

Thoroughly enjoyed that John. Brought back many memories of my days running around the land and up the north sea with Everades, To ports on the Continent as they where known, The one thing from a seamans point of view that i noticed was the young deckhand at the wheel when asked what's your head now. Obviously had, had no training at any sea school because they where basic things yet the skipper and owner was prepared to give the young lad a chance and explained when i ask for your head i am after what you are steering on the compass at that moment so i can then tell you to steady the ship on that course. We discussed this as i recall a few weeks ago loading and discharging bulk cargos such as grain and fertilizer and sweeping the ships bottom which had to be very clean before changing cargo, I done the job not only with small Everede ships but also deep sea. And what i did like about that film was the relationship all ratings had { First name basis } No ranks yes sir no sir, It seemed a happy little ship with both experienced and inexperienced crew. When one of the young deck hands said i couldnt work ashore now this is the life for me he was eluding to what we all experienced once it was in the blood it wasn't that easy to pull the plug, Thanks for that i certainly enjoyed it Terry. Only thing i couldn't agree with was when it was said some seaman snuff these little coasters and dont like us any more than we dont like them, I got all my jobs from the pool or shipping federation and if i was skint and got sent to a ship i never judged the job on its size it was more about getting back to earn money. Regards Terry.

[Ivan Cloherty]

Just spent ten minutes writing a post and it disappeared, strange! too late to start again and it wasn't exactly Shakespeare

[Des Taff Jenkins]

Hi John A.
Thanks for the post, like Terry took me back to when I was on the Leadsman, though she was a tanker we did all the same ports up and down the east coast mainly. I noticed like Terry that the young lad wouldn't have been to a sea school, as he would have repeated the course given, then told the mate when he was on it. I wasn't picking faults, but thank god I always remember some things.
All the time I was at sea I remember that the oldest tarp went on the top, never gave a thought about what any shore dweller would have seen. But I was a little concerned at the one tarp and lorry lashings, to late if they hit a big one.
Des