Cargoes

[Gulliver]

This is from a posting of mine a couple of years ago about evocative sea smells,and I can still recall those aromas 40 years on.
I believe that even those who later lose their sense of smell,can still recall any smells of their earlier lives quite vividly-remarkable isn't it.

Here it is:-
1.The salty,oily tang of West Float,Birkenhead on a still November morning,and the smell of a dozen ships galleys cooking breakfast.
2.The smell of oilskins and seaboots after preparing the old girl for heavy weather ahead.
3.The special smell of sisal and manila in bosun's Rope Store.
4.The aroma of freshly-baked bread emanating from the galley portholes on a glorious Indian Ocean morning.
5.The smell of a million bags of cocoa-beans we loaded in West Africa.
6.The delicious fragrance of fried flying-fish (some alliteration there!)that Chippy's just found on deck after morning soundings.
7.The all-pervading pong of petroleum(!) as we pass the refineries in the Bonny River
8.The sweet smell of log-fires drifting in the haze(Radar's on,lads) as we traverse the Malacca Strait.
9.And later,the smell of concrete,traffic,and a thousand 'noodle-stalls'-the smell of LIFE-as we wistfully glide past Singapore in the glowing dusk......
10.The heady smell of red-lead,kerosene and sun-bronzed bodies in the Paint Store as we clean ourselves up after a long day's painting.
11.The smell of cheap perfume on the Crew Deck as we depart our last South American port.


And the Nasty Ones?.None!.(Keeping our dreams Alive!.. Well O.K.,just one....how about the gut-wrenching smell of the cow dung that the Fuzzie-Wuzzie dockers use in Port Sudan to plaster their hair in shape. (Alberto VO5 it is not! Phwoar!) Combine that with discharging a cargo of hides at the same time,everything enveloped in swarms of flies,and you have a truly powerful sensation that cruise liner passengers would never experience!

[happy daze john in oz]

Then Gulliver the heady smell of the whale factory in Durban, or the smell of the bum boys as we went down the Suez canal. A body aroma of it's own, some may say a pungent aroma, others may speak the truth.