Taiwan Straits

[Des Taff Jenkins]

Bonus? What was a bonus? To me getting a bonus was a breeze coming through the port up in Kuwait.
As for the Straits of Formosa I wish that Nancy Pelosi falls out of her plane on the way home, read her history she is an idiot extreme.
She has had her life and a bloody good one, apparently she doesn't want the youngsters of today to have the same.
Des

[Doc Vernon]

Yea and she is worth so much Moolah too 120 Million Bucks US!
Only Bonus i saw was the Tips i got from my Bloods , and they were pretty damn good at most times, with the Envelopes given at the end of each Trip , i hardly ever touched my Wages and OT Money! Sent a Monthly ammount to Mum as well.
Cheers

[j.sabourn]

Federal Commerce of Canada were always good for bonuses , not big but just enough to say thank you if no trouble on ship , especially to crew if had assisted in readying ship viz. shifting boards and feeder boxes for a grain cargo. Never told the shipowner though as would of given him an excuse for cutting the overtime. Federal Commerce being of course the Charterers. One trip coming out of the Lakes the Chinese crew built a feeder box on passage to Three Rivers the topping up port in the St. Lawrence , I was handed three thousand dollars which I gave the lot except $5 dollars to pay for my dry cleaning , $2995 to the bosun, when we got to Taiwan they put a big meal on ashore , put to shame the Chinese chop we see in the western world . Cheers JS

[Colin Wood]

.This is fairly close to subject, when on charter to BPC (running rock phosphate to Australia) our Chinese crew all got 2 passports, one for mainland and one for Formosa. At end of charter we loaded coal for Japan then light ship to Hong Kong, home port to dry dock.
On way through Straits of Formosa, someone said they saw a war ship following us, not being certain whose it was, all crew out and through both passports overside.

[happy daze john in oz]

Bonus? What was a bonus? To me getting a bonus was a breeze coming through the port up in Kuwait.
As for the Straits of Formosa I wish that Nancy Pelosi falls out of her plane on the way home, read her history she is an idiot extreme.
She has had her life and a bloody good one, apparently she doesn't want the youngsters of today to have the same.
Des

Des, she is one of the most dangerous persons in the USA gov.
Trouble I fear is her middle name.
Said to be about 80 now and judging by the face lifts she has had that could be true.

[j.sabourn]

#11 what about that second egg you got for breakfast sometimes Des ? Even though it had been on the deck when the cook tried to toss it to fry both sides , what you didn’t know didn’t hurt. Cheers JS

[Tony Taylor]

Tony I think you will find they were only on double wages when they were actually in the Gulf so probably they were on double wages only for a few days. Now that I think on it I think this was what BP were offering memory starting to go it was a long time ago.
I did meet a C/E who worked on shuttle tankers running from Kharg island to some island in the South East of the Gulf and he was permanently in the war zone he said it was good money but after getting hit by a missile that did not explode he gave it up.

That would be right, we got same when running to Vietnam in 70s double pay from entering Vietnamese waters for minimum of three days or every day till clearing Vietnamese waters.

[James Curry]

Think if I lived in Australia I would be very worried about the building agression and threat of China attacking Taiwan.

[John Arton]

I was mate on a chemical tanker during the Iraq/Iran war and went up the gulf once during that time, went in on Christmas day and came out on New year's Day and we all got a 100% war zone bonus. The deal was we went up in convoy escorted through the straits of Hormuz by a British destroyer. The convoy gathered outside the gulf and were escorted through as far as Dubai where the naval vessel left us, after that it was daylight sailing only hugging the Saudi coast until we reached our destination, Al Jubail, once loaded the reverse happened, convoy assemble off Dubai, escorted through the straits then off we went on our own to our discharge port, Kwinana.
The inbound convoy had 2 Esso ULCC's as 1 & 2 in the convoy a world wide tanker (British Captain) , no 3, then us no4 was an ex C.P product tanker, still under Bermuda flag but Indian manned, lastly was a Saudi flagged tanker that the u.k government would tacitly allow to tag onto a British escorted convoy.
On setting off from the assembly point the captain's of the two Esso tankers were on the VHF to each other ( both ships were steam ships recently brought out of layup due to the hike in crude oil prices caused by the war and they were some of the biggest tankers in the world at that time), saying that as they were both Esso men, if they needed to communicate with each other they would use their Christian names , the world wide guy chipped in saying that in that case if they needed to communicate with him his name was Chris, only to be snottly told ,no, if they needed to call him they would refer to him as no3. ( The convoy instructions were to maintain a set distance apart and not to broadcast the ships name and maintain radio silence, so off

we went with Steve and Doug , chatting over the VHF constantly telling each other how they were adjusting engine revs to maintain convoy speed and position until a very annoyed naval officer came on air telling them that he was in a war situation and that they should shut up. On clearing the straits we turned to head for the disposal point off Dubai, not the Esso guys, they headed off straight up the gulf and when asked why by the destroyer, said they had to follow the company recommended route but on being told they would no longer be under naval protection, quickly changed their minds, especially so when an Iranian guard small boat was spotted heading their way.
Rgds
J.A.

[James Curry]

Was that code named the Amillia patrol John? Did the same thing many times and as you say they would let a foreign flag vessel tag on, yes we got war bonus. As you say some never shutup when they were told to. One such ship that was attacked with several casualties was the World Night. He never shut up think it was around midnight he got hit. I was on the UASC ship Ibn al-Haytham at the time. I think that was in 1984?