Bad

[Des Taff Jenkins]

Like you john I was never on a ship where one could buy beer, even up the Gulf on tankers, must have started after I went to NZ.
Des

[j.sabourn]

They didn’t want to introduce the new rules until you were well clear of the sometimes Sunny Islands in case you drank the ships dry Des , I wouldn’t call Cappy a lad better to call him Dad that really gets him going , doesn’t like to be inferred to as an ancient mariner, Cheers JS

[happy daze john in oz]

As officers steward with UCL going to the first class bar in the service lit was almost a full time job to keep the engineers satisfied.
Chief engineer was very fond of Vodka buy the bottle.
But never saw, apart from one Christmas in Durban ,any of them worse for drink.

[James Curry]

I can understand why engineers and engine room crew enjoyed a drink. Let's face it not exactly a healthy working enviroment especially in warmer climates + the bloody noise. There are not many who worked in an engineroom have got great hearing after years spent in the pit. It is especially noticeable when in a bar and it is their round.

[Tony Taylor]

Like you john I was never on a ship where one could buy beer, even up the Gulf on tankers, must have started after I went to NZ.
Des

As first trip apprentice I had a bottle of rum and a case of beer in my cabin, and whatever I wanted in the bar, never had any query or raised eyebrows even. I suppose if I had a abused the privelige that would have been the end of it.

[cappy]

Never was on a ship with a bar .......best i got was 3 cans per night at the bond door on the ore carriers ..........but once managed to get a key to the bond on a tramp .......and many made merry from the big rum holders ........6 months rum went by we got to dominica ....on the way to oz......and nothing was ever said by anyone....got a bottle of whisky of the old man for my 21st and once had 26 jugs of plonk leaving auckland for fiji in my cabin .....and all sold by we got there......the mate was put ashore with the DTs after nearly putting us into an atol .....and detained in his cabin till he was put ashore in japan.....these days i suppose that would be impossible to do.....but that was in the old times on a tramp .....R683532

[J Gowers]

JS My mistake it did not say sobriety in the older discharge books just checked the wifes grandfathers book, my memory playing tricks.
Below is a copy of one of my Engineers certificate of service, I still have them all, this one is with J@J Denholm but later ones when I was with BP are similar where it mentions sobriety.
My first ship a tanker the Naess Soverign which I joined in 1974 and had been built in 1960 had a bar and every subsequent ship I was on untill I left merchant ships in 1988 had a bar so I assumed all ships had bar or at least they were on ships bigger than coasters..
Normally they were run by one of the officers and no actuall cash was involved you signed a book which was tallied at the end of the month and you wrote a cheque to the company for your bar bill and the amount was docked from your wages.
The other methode was to pay cash and whoever ran the bar paid the Chief Steward for the drink. Some guys liked the cash bar as nosey parkers (Chiefs and Captains) used to check the bar book each day to see who had been on the piss.
I always found that every one was much more social with a ships bar, where noone would run the bar we resorted to cabin drinking or drinking out on the poop in good weather.
I then went to rigs with no bar or booze, but the longest trips were 4 weeks so no big deal, I wonder what it is like on foreign going ships today without a beer must be very boring on long trips maybe they take their knitting with them

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[j.sabourn]

The first bar I was with was the Beechwood the ore carrier , we got permission from the owners to take the bulkhead down between the 2 apprentices cabins , the steel deck head I painted black and had the steel beams in and not coverered I bought wooden lathes to space out with gaps in between these were painted high luminosity orange with plastic foliage intertwined between plus coloured lights behind. The brewery put the professional bar in freegratis plus all the optics on the understanding we bought all the keg beer from them as we had at least 200 kegs per trip each keg holding 40 pints ,easy to work out consumption but not all seamen the likes of Betty’s bar clientele used to sometimes try for admittance , a pint was 10p and the chief steward used to give it out as subs in plastic cash bags of 5 pound a time or 50 ten pence pieces . It was the talk of the whatever port we were in , even had professional performers hired at times such as musical groups in port. Cheers JS. PS the ship never carried apprentices if it ever did they could sleep outside on the boat Deck. JS

[Des Taff Jenkins]

John.
Made up for that on the NZ coast, joined the Karwerau in 62, timber to Sydney then Melbourne, where we loaded for Fiji, which included one hold full of Fosters Lager, the mate forgot to lock the mast house, we could have been followed from Melbourne to Suva by the floating cans.
Des

[j.sabourn]

They talk about all this free aid to countries . Ivan must know a lot about all the BS of such Ashe was employed superintending such . I went one trip with the company I started my seagoing career with , which didn’t work out. However we were chartered for these poor M….m countries. Sudan was the first to receive the handouts and one complete hold was alcohol of all types. So much for lifesaving aids it was similar as far south as Mogadishu , with the bags of flour went the cases of alcohol . JS