My first deep sea ship
by Published on 26th March 2018 06:19 AM
It’s the end of November 1964, i’m 16years old, when Mum & Dad say goodbye to me and see me off at the station. I’m feeling both excited and somewhat nervous at the prospect of my coming journey as it will be the greatest distance i’ve ever been from home by myself.
I’m off to join my first deep sea ship as catering boy after 3 months or so on the British Rail ferries at Dover.
I need to get to London, then to Truro, and on to Falmouth and find the British Energy in the dry dock.
This journey will take me most of the day as the train services then were not as efficient as today. My Mum has tears running down her face as she kisses me goodbye and hands me two brown paper bags of sandwiches she’s made for the journey.
I can’t remember much about the actual train trip but do recall that when i finally got to the ship it was dark, and the night was misty and the orange glow from the dock lights looked very spooky. The place was deserted and the ship looked very quiet. I boarded and spent some time trying to find another human being. I think he was a cadet and i recognised him from my old school but he was a year or so ahead of me so we hadn’t been school mates. He showed me to my cabin and informed me that I was by myself at present and others would be arriving the next day. I was also told that the toilets etc. were ashore and not to use the ships, then left me alone.
I locked myself in my cabin and ate the rest of Mum’s sandwiches and got out a book to read. I dozed off and woke with a desperate need of a bowel movement and was completely bewildered about where to go to find the toilets that were somewhere on the dockside. I left my cabin to find someone to ask, but the ship was absolutely deserted as far as i could see.
I was desperate, so back to the cabin, got the 2 brown paper bags from my sandwiches and taking care and positioning them precisely did my business inside the double thickness brown paper and out the port-hole.
This was my introduction to life on board .
The actual trip to Venezuela and back to Tilbury is a distant memory now and nothing eventful can be recalled, but it did reinforce the love and attraction i’d had for the sea for as long as i could remember and it is something that never leaves me.
Signed a contract with B.P. and did 2 more of their ships - British Hussar and Grenadier, but fed up with Persian gulf and decided to give tankers a miss and then went on 3 or 4 Union castle ships, but that might be another story sometime.
