Bad weather

[happy daze john in oz]

Of course #7 the cook knew it all. On the Windsor the chef had in his office the biggest bottle of Asprins you have ever seen. Any one with a hangover or a bit crook knew where to go to get one.
Coming across the Australian Bight in the 'Paparoa' we hit some rough seas, cold food for three days as the cook refused to put pots on the stove. Sea so rough we thought we were in a submarine.

[Ivan Cloherty]

Re informing the galley of bad weather,==John B.

John in most of the ships I was on, we always sent down word to the galley in bad weather to secure everything if we were going to alter course to try and ease the rolling or pitching, sometimes this meant that we had to put the ship through a manouvre that would cause an excessive roll or pitch, again self preservation, we wanted our dinner!

[cappy]

off the lizard Ina coal burning galley the maltese cook had a large kit of oil on the range for chips ...the ship started to bounce and the oil spilled over the top and set alight .....the cook picked it up ...as he did so she took a hard fast roll which left the cook runnning backwards he hit the bulkhead and of couse the oil covered him from his mouth downwards .......he collapsed.....his cooks whites were welded to him ...we put about to falmouth the smell of him i remember now the ship was quiet for days ....he was a decent guy.......dont no if he lived or not ....a sad time regards cappy

[Captain Kong]

Similar to the BEECHFIELD I was on Cappy........
.
.The Captains way of navigating to Belfast or to the North of that would be ""Keep it on this magnetic course and if you see a light ahead it would be the Isle of Man so bring her round to port and when the light is abaft the Starboard beam bring her round to the next course, I will see you tomorrow," then all hands would turn in, I would be up there for about ten hours clinging to a spinning wheel, the sea, hail, snow and rain blinding my eyes, soaking wet and hands frozen to the wheel.
During one of these storms after leaving Derry, with big heavy seas and swell coming in from the North Atlantic, the Cook got burned to death, A large pan of chip fat was flung off the stove and went all over him when the ship took a big roll, and then it burst into flames when some went onto the galley fire and he became a ball of flame and collapsed on deck into the scupper screaming his last.
The Cook was dying in the scuppers, blackened by the flames, the Second Engineer caught sight of him leaping about and then collapsing. He got a bucket of water and flung it over him to dowse the flames but it was too late. He had gone to where all good Cooks and not so good Cooks go to, that great Galley, with unlimited stores, in the sky.
All this time the wind was blowing a hooley and seas crashing over the decks.
We had to pick him up and we laid him on the hatch, Captain Marshall certified him dead. He told us to lash him on the hatch, a line around his wrists and ankles and star shaped, he said the salt spray, would keep him fresh and stop him from stinking. He looked gruesome lying there especially at night his head moving backwards and forwards with the ship rolling. He stayed there until we arrived in Liverpool two days later. A Policeman and an undertaker came down and took him away.
The Mad Irishman would sit on the hatch and have some terrific arguments with the dead Cook, and became angry when the Cook was ignoring him.
The Captain told me I was to be the Cook, until they got a replacement but I still had to do the night watches on the wheel. There was not enough food to go round, what the Cook had done with the food money no one knew, but he had a few empty whisky bottles in his bunk.
On those Coasters, known as Weekly Boats, you got paid weekly and out of your wage you had to pay the Cook for the food every Friday, and then he went ashore shopping including getting drunk in the alehouse on the way.
I was knackered doing the night watch as well as Cooking, but a few days later he found some dead beat `Cook` from somewhere.
Brian

[John Arton]

Brian
re. yr. #9
Believe it was the Bencruacan that got smashed up by the Agulhas abnormal wave heights.
We did not experience an abnormal wave. There was a regular swell of around 4-5 metres running and she was handling it fine but an out of synch rogue swell of around 10-12 metres caught us out causing the crash stop.
Another area where rogue swells can be encountered is off the Entrance to the Bristol Channel and Admiralty charts used to have a printed warning of this on them but around 15 years ago that was removed but was still in the sailing directions. My mates ship, a small 5000 ton chemical tanker, got stuffed by one of these rogue waves coming down from Liverpool bound for Rotterdam and midway between Wales and Lands End this rogue wave struck and took half the fore and aft walkway away. He wrote to the Admiralty about them taking the warning off the charts and I believe they re-instated it.
Regarding slowing down with engines on Heavy Fuel oil.
Most slow speed diesels burning H.F.O. run at around 110 rpm, latterly I sailed on Panamax bulkers fitted with Burmeister and Wain engines running at 78 rpm but these had a fancy hull design and a high skew propeller. They could still do 14kts fully laden but only burnt around 30-35 tons of fuel per day as opposed to the 60 t.p.d of our earlier Pnanmax's.
On 110 r.p.m. you could sow down to 90-95 r.p.m. on stages without any problems but the ginger beers would need to increase cylinder lubrication, especially so in prolonged periods of reduced R.P.M.
In the oil crisis days of the 70's and 80's when tankers were sow steaming at 7 knots to the P.G. and even bulkers were doing the same, there was a different set of slow steaming fuel nozzles fitted to the main engines in order to allow for the slow steaming. The downside was reduced time between scavenge and cylinder cleaning for the engineers. C.P. actually had a flying squad of engineers who would fly out to join a ship to assist the engineers with these jobs before moving onto the next ship.
The beauty of all those steam turbine tankers was that they could shut down half their boilers and still run at around 7 knots making them almost as cost efficient as the motor tankers.
rgds
JA

[cappy]

therewas a lot of as you put it dead beat cooks on the colliers and small home trade ships i myself took a one of everards down the coast and back i was cabin boy but had served in a couple of galleys and was told i was on cooks wages.......but never saw them and never got a cooks discharge iether.....the grub was very simple and of course we were on weekly wages....the cook was one scruffy barsteward ......we all ate ashore each night in shields as we were just running down to middlesboro and back bunkering.......come the autumn i got out went foriegn......she came out the tyne in heavy weather down to her marks and never surfaced till we were in the tees......but as we came back in the tyne the old man would give a long blow on the siren and the managers wife in the lookout would put our dinner on .......i think we had hands a great crowd......happy days..cappy

- - - Updated - - -

therewas a lot of as you put it dead beat cooks......happy days..cappy

i think we had 8 hands.cappy

[John Blaney]

John in most of the ships I was on-- we wanted our dinner!

I can understand you wanted your dinner Ivan, but you guys knew your stuff, or non of us would have any dinner,
regards,
John B.

[Ivan Cloherty]

I can understand you wanted your dinner Ivan, but you guys knew your stuff, or non of us would have any dinner,
regards,
John B.

I think John when you love your job you get a feel for it regardless of what department or position on board, in our days I think we all went to sea because we wanted to, and not because it was just a job, naturally there were a few National Service dodgers, some I know suffered ten years in a job they didn't like rather than two years in the army, I could never understand that. Also in our day ships were of a size (say up to 30,000 dwt) where you got the 'feel' of them as a bridge-keeper and also the QM or the man on the wheel got to know them also, as different ships acted differently to wheel and rudder input. I cannot comment on those above 30,000dwt as never sailed on one but a few on here have been on very large VLCCs' and are more qualified to speak on them than I am, but I was on one ship 600' long used to bury about 200' beneath the waves when fully loaded and that's when you muttered 'come on girl, you can do it' and felt a relief when the bow started to come up. In ballast she would pound her way across the north Pacific and shake your fillings out as she flexed again ready for another pound on a wave, she also knew how to roll! and many a time the generators stopped as she heeled over and they lost fuel supply, but we always went back for more, my most frightening time when we had to turn through a 180 degrees in a hurricane to go to the aid of the 'Pamir' making us ride the crest of a wave and hurtling down a steep sea at an angle you didn't know a vessel was capable of. Unfortunately like many ships we never reached her in time and 84 young lives were lost. Everyone is important on a ship from Captain to cabin boy, from Ch Engineer to greaser and from Chief Steward to galley boy, none of whom would function to the best of their ability without the other, and that's what made us what we were 'shipmates' and we learned to judge a man for what he was and not by his creed or colour.

[John Blaney]

Of course #7 the cook knew it all.--- Sea so rough we thought we were in a submarine.

On BP tanker "British Fame" I got constipated eating too much board of trade duff (remember that stuff?, jobby brown colour
and spicy with raisins), the cook gave me Epsom salts, it worked but worse taste ever in my life, but interesting how on some cargo ships the crew called him "doc".

[gray_marian]

#19,Mmm, Sounds delightfulJohn, what did 'board of trade duff' consist of?