What motivated you all to join the Merchant Navy.

[George Gunn]

I think it would be very interesting to find out some of the reasons that made our members decide to want to go to sea.
My story is very simple; when I was about 14 years old I met a local guy who would have been around 16 or 17 he was in denim, cowboy boots and very unusual for Inverness a suntan !! he said that he was in the Merchant Navy and that he had just returned from a 4 month trip to various countries. I just listened and looked at him and thought ,: That's for me !! Following that and talking to some of my friends we all became fascinated with this idea and discovered a number other local guys who were also at sea and they all looked so confident and cool with a certain swagger that really sold the deal to us in the end there was 5 of us who applied when we were old enough and we all subsequently tripped off to Gravesend or the Vindi then off to sea.

[Doc Vernon]

My reason was that first of all i was Working in the Docks as a Tally Clerk at 17. this of course gave me lots of good time seeing the Ships come and go.
Besides that my late Brother who was three Years my Senior joined up, and off he went, leaving me and my young Sister behind!
So at that point i had then decided to follow my Brother when i could, it took a Year but i got there , and was lucky in that a Ship in Cape Town Port the Dunnottar Castle, was short Crewed , in the Catering Dept.
Having had experience in that field on the Long Distance Trains in South Africa (Silver Service) i was taken on as 1st class asst stwd. Wow! what excitement!
From then that was it, again though having to leave my Young Sister behind. However she understood, and was of course with our Mum, in good hands.
Cheers

[j.sabourn]

My choice was originally think I have said before was to go into the RN as a boy seaman. My heroes at the time were the crew of HMS Amythist and the Yangste incident. At School the headmaster who was a past Hostilities only naval rating called my parents in and told them or advised them not to let me join the armed forces and if still wanted to go to sea then join the MN and said he would find out any schemes for doing so. He did with all the appropriate money aids .My old man wanted me to go as an apprentice in the building trade the way of his life style and said to me I will have you clerk of the works by the time your 26 and was very disappointed when I said no thank you he was very disappointed .After my first 6 months at sea I was extremely fortunate to be let off the ship in Purfleet on the Thames and think the old man made a mistake thinking I was a cadet. Anyhow to cut a long story short I got a telegram to rejoin the ship 2 days later in Cardiff where she was ,loading coal for South America. Anyhow when I did arrive home late in the evening and knocking on the door my father answered it and was surprised to see me, the first thing he said was “ well have you had enough ?” . If he had kept his mouth shut I would probably have said the same thing in the affirmative. Just him saying that I replied
“ no it’s a great life” , I would be a lying basket if I said anything different. Once making a decision I have always made it my aim in life to abide by it. That’s why I stuck it out through all the bad times on rust buckets and lousy jobs to reach 65 and when asked to stay on to 70 said no thank you. The worse of the rot started after 1966 and I blame the government hand in hand with the shipowner at the time. Cheers JS

[Des Jenkins]

When I left school at 14 I went to work like most kids. boys and girls in the area in the Tin Plate works, a boy doing a mans job all for 2 quid a week for six and a half days.
When I was fifteen and a half I applied to the Shipping Federation to go to a sea school, they sent back all the details , but then I had a letter to say that over 16 and to old for the next intake, but someone must have relented and put me in right then I was I think 15 and a quarter years old. Then had to battle my mother to sign the papers, my Dad having lft home, in the end she relented and signed. it was June 1949 and Vindi here I come.
Des

[j.sabourn]

I remember the first words said to me on joining my first ship in Avonmouth Des. Think it was the punch drunk bosun saying who are you , and my reply , I’m the new apprentice, his reply was what we need are ABs and not BAs. I was that innocent then I was chuffed at first to think someone would think I was a Bachelor of Arts, until I found out the real meaning. The ships officers was an oft remark to me “ you’ll never get a ticket as long as you have a hole in your rectum”: so I made the effort and proved them wrong even sailing with some of them in later life me in a more senior role to them , the pleasure I got out of that is indescribable . Life is what you make it on your own efforts. If one likes one’s job one aims for the top and not take orders from people you don’t respect. Cheers JS