I have always said that Devis was the happiest ship I ever sailed on, and it’s probably true; but the MV Viajero was not far behind. Certainly of all the places I have been on earth, the Amazon experience is right up there with the best of them. Viajero was built in Hamburg in 1957. She was powered by an eight cylinder four stroke 1500 horse power MAN diesel engine which after the brutish B&W engine on Devis was an absolute pleasure to behold.
I arrived in at Pier One in Brooklyn on a cold day in November 1966 as the most junior of the four engineers on board. Geoff Laws, the new third engineer from Keighley in Yorkshire had arrived a day or two earlier on the Queen Mary and it wasn’t long before I joined Geoff and the second engineer, Frank Stinchcombe from Bristol in the regular haunt for Viajero engineers when in Brooklyn, a local bar and grill about 50 yards from the dock gates. Frank was one of the most remarkable, of the many remarkable characters I was at sea with. Known to all as The Saint, he was about 45 years old, as skinny as a rake with a face only a mother would love and could mix a Cuba Libre like no one I have met before or since.
All deck and engine room officers that joined Booth Line for the Amazon service were required to sign on for a period of 12 months (or four round trips from New to Iquitos) and Frank had already done two trips and had been on board for six months. It was always in New York that most of the major repairs and maintenance work was carried out since it usual took one to two weeks to provision and load the vessel prior to the journey south.
The engineers had a good working relationship with the Brooklyn dockside maintenance crew. I can’t remember the names of the local guys, but it was my first time in the US and where better to begin an education in US culture than Brooklyn, New York. I also can’t remember the name of the bar, it was probably just called Charlie’s or something. It was here that I became familiar with such epicurean delights as the ale and chicken dinner (a pot of Schlitz beer with a pickled egg chaser).

---------- Post added at 06:44 PM ---------- Previous post was at 06:41 PM ----------

Booth Line (and the sister company Lamport and Holt) had half a dozen or so ships running up the Amazon from New York. All the Booth ships had Spanish names beginning with “V” (Viajero, Venimos, Veloz, Vamos) The three month run was down through the Caribbean on to Belém at the river's mouth and 3,000 miles up river to Iquitos in Peru. We were going to be spending six weeks on the river each trip – what a prospect!
First we were off to the Caribbean and our first port was St Kitts. I was quite excited about these island nations we were about to visit. As a stamp collector in my youth these romantic names like Barbados, St Vincent, Dominica and Grenada filled me with visions of pirate ships, plantation owners, sun, palm trees and of course, cricket.
It was only a few years earler in 1961 since the tied cricket test in Brisbane between Australia and the West Indies and the images of that smiling black giant, Wesley Hall with his crucifix swinging from side to side thundering in to bowl is one that all cricket lovers remember. Hall played Sheffield Shield in Queensland and was much loved by all.
And now I was going to the West Indies and the home of cricket, rum, and calypso.
Viajero had a Barbadian crew who were exactly the type of people I had expected. The ship had its own steel band and once the weather warmed up, they were to be found practicing on the poop deck every afternoon playing songs like Peanuts and Latin Sun - songs that made you want to dance and clap your hands. The third engineer, big Geoff did – he was always there, leaning against the capstan banging a couple of claves together in time to the music and generally making sure he was part of the fun.