Hardest work

[James Curry]

Blimey! there's a place I've forgotten I've been to, Port Swettenham. I've just had a look on google maps, and spotted several places I went to in that part of the world, but completely forgot. Mind you, it looks as though the names have changed all over that area. Some of the places, especially in Borneo, didn't seem to have names. I remember asking older blokes, even officers, "where are we?" and they'd reply "f###ed if I know, it's just a river".

I think it was renamed Port Klang?

[Captain Kong]

BEST EVER JOB.......................
on Lookout in the Crows nest taking immigrants to Sydney
ALWAYS TOOK MY GIRL UP THERE with me
A 4 hour watch undisturbed for 6 weeks````````````````````````````````````````````` `````````````````````````
Brian

[Doc Vernon]

Girl!! >
Now what Girl was that Capt! Up the Crows Nest!
LOL

[j.sabourn]

Either a Robin Red Breast or a Blue Tit. ? Or if Into ugly things ones a big black crow. or as the present modification on words today a big White one. JS .

[James Curry]

Brian , that must have been interesting, so did the earth actually move. You could get a book out of that

[happy daze john in oz]

I do not think at that time Brain had any reading intentions.

[J Gowers]

The muckiest job for engineers was cleaning out scavange spaces afterwards it was a total body wash in swarfega to get the muck off. It was usually an apprentice or J/E who was chucked in to do the job. Changing piston rod stuffing boxes was also a fairly mucky job, here is a pic of me in a cleaned scavenge space of a RND Sulzer, BP Vigour about 1986.

img065.jpg

[Keith Tindell]

Nah, give me the bilges anyday compared to that. trust you were in proper uniform for the evening meal in the saloon.

[j.sabourn]

Looks like the thirteenth member of the second cooks batch ready to come out the oven? JS

[Tony Taylor]

Not the hardest job, just one that required a strong stomach.
Running up and down the St. Lawrence Seaway for a few months, the ship had a sewage treatment plant which was supposed to purify the eventual discharge to drinking water standards (no takers on that one). The system was basically a tank with macerator pumps which circulated the slurry around a system containing microbes which munched on this foetid mess. Unfortunately there were regular problems with debris e.g. match sticks, fag ends, unchewed mushrooms and carrots etc all mixed in with the slurry resulting in orifices being blocked (not just human ones), so required frequent attention with a chip basket to skim off said debris, and unblocking orifices.
There was also a sewage tank up midships which had to be pumped down aft daily. There would be howls from up there if the 12-4 junior forgot as it would overflow into the centre castle.