crew makeup 50-60s

[Keith Tindell]

I served on 3 Ellerman Papayani ships, and as i recall they always had Arab or that middle eastern type as firemen greasers, and as i have posted before, apart from egg and bacon we always had curry on the menu for breakfast. I always assumed that the curry was to satisfy the Arab taste for breakfast. could of course be wrong on that. As i recall we have some of the crew here who were also on Ellerman, maybe we will hear their thoughts on it, regards KT

[robpage]

Clan Line never had curry for Breakfast , but the Fireman (Agwahlla) used to bring a stuffed Japatti into the Engine room at 6AM when he called the day workers , stuffed with a very peppery hot wake up curry , Bangladeshi version of Toast and Jam

[cappy]

Louis in the 50s and 60s I usually found most crew were from the port she signed on at but we often had arabs down below this mainly on foreign goers but on the coast a mixture of uk residents as for officers being gentlemen the percentage of that was not large true engineersmost often scots but many engineers from the north east coast also I wonder what you would consider a gentleman iwould say a honest man who treated others as he would wish to be treated and from that gained respect this made a happier trip not some smart **** who would be scared to come face to face with u ashore who even went ashore in his uniform but that typeoff thing was rare and usually made fun of even by other orficers hope this upsets only them who are guilty lolregards cappy

[Jim Brady]

I used to hear it said "full English crew and scousers down below"
Regards.
Jim.B.

[Louis the Amigo]

Hi Shipmates, Hi Cappy you remember what they were like on ships some deck "officers" carried swagger sticks on watch, and thought they were tin gods? But I only came across a few of them ,As i said I was very lucky at sea most were proper gentleman and were first rate at there job. What I still remember is that we had no trouble with each other Arabs Africans e.t.c. The Crew lived together at sea like brothers.on all the ships I was on. The Good and Bad ones

[cappy]

hello Louis never saw a swagger stick on any ship out of shields if one was ever waved at me I know where it would have ended up once lost my rag with a drunk of a chief engineer and threw abucket of water over him but never got a dr for it and when we paid off months later and had no dr I said thankyou captain and he just smiled now he was a proper officer regards cappy from shields

[EIFION]

In this period I can remember sailing with a potugese engineer, a goanese 2nd engineer, a polish engineer, two Welsh chief engineers, several Welsh skippers ( one of them me ) a white russian 2nd mate. Crew both engine room and deck were so varied but included West Indians, a yank and several scandinavians. I can not recal any problems caused by this diversity. And the Somaly and indian cooks were great

[EIFION]

Dam the "( one of them me )" should have applied to Ch/ engineer not skipper , is nt old age great , even demoting myself now lol!

[Keith Tindell]

Hi, i think a lot of these posts back up my statement about mixed crews, but we were all of one class ie seamen, and i never met any racial tension in those far off days KT

[Robert T. Bush]

We had British officers, not all perfect gentlemen, three Cardiff Arabs in the Engine Room, a South African, a Chinese carpenter and the lamp trimmer was a Balt from Latvia signed on in Liverpool.

The last two were first class. The next trip we had a Bosun from St Helena, also a good seaman.

They did all have British Discharge Books as I believe the law required.