Manning Scales.

[Les Woodard]

Yep I stuffed up and the first to admit it. How about when bored on lookout one would gather the rat guards and tie them together then hang them from a heaving line. Then run the heaving line down alongside the hatch's. Relief would come and after a while you pulled the heaving line to make the rat guards rattle and end up in stiches at the reaction of the lookout at the sudden noise especially on a very calm night.

[Des Jenkins]

Hi Ivan
Have a nice time dangling your fandango
Cheers Des

[James Curry]

Another great pleasure was just lying on the boat deck aft of the funnel , an old Doxford plodding away and star gazing. Disgusted with myself I should really have added to my education learning the names of different stars and constellations. Are there more stars visable in the Southern Hemisphere than the North. I could locate the likes of Orion, Southern Cross , Sirus and the North Star/Polaris.

I know this sounds soft but I am usually late to bed and have the dish washer timed to start at midnight, often on how it is stacked it sounds like a Ships engine going slow ahead, often sends me to sleep, but wake up with a start as I have dropped my book

[John S Martin]

Manuel Labour........

[happy daze john in oz]

Yes James. just lying on deck, some of the guys covered with a mixture of oil and vinegar to improve the tan, just to get some color.
But leave your watch on so there is some whit visible so when you go ashore in Cape Town they know you are not a local.

[Ken Atkinson]

with just the sound of the bow wave. Anyone that did those lookouts would know how peaceful and serene they are I would just love to do a few more now to realign the old self.

As an engineer coming off watch I often used to sit on a bollard on the foscle reading a book with the bow wave splashing close by and a muffled thumping to tell me the infernal confusion machine was still working. One day this peaceful idyll was interrupted by a change in the background noise. Wondering at the cause, I looked over the bulwark to see that I had been joined by a school of porpoises playing in the bow-wave. While not quite as peaceful and serene as before it seemed as though the display was solely for me, as an audience of one.

[Terry Foskett]

Does anybody know the maning scales for WWII merchant ships?