The Lamp Lighter

[Jim Brady]

John S#38.I remember when the daily rate was four shillings per day and I was told by a couple of different guys that Bowaters were very good feeders and their rate was seven shillings per day.The story was a chf.stwd joined Bowaters for the first time,on returning to UK after his first trip he was boasting to the Catering Super how he had got the rate right down.He was told by the cat/sup they did not want the rate brought down the food was put aboard to feed the crew well,the result was the chf/stwd was fired.
Regards.
Jim.B.

[cappy]

well ivan respect to you regards cappy .....ps do you know the name of that straight by krakatoa please regards cappy its driving me potty trying to remember.......

have googled it ...the sundra strait .....thanks to myself cappy

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John S#38.I remember when the daily rate was four shillings per day and I was told by a couple of different guys that Bowaters were very good feeders and their rate was seven shillings per day.The story was a chf.stwd joined Bowaters for the first time,on returning to UK after his first trip he was boasting to the Catering Super how he had got the rate right down.He was told by the cat/sup they did not want the rate brought down the food was put aboard to feed the crew well,the result was the chf/stwd was fired.
Regards.
Jim.B.

they must have sent him to runcimans on the avonmoor...regards cappy ....ps little beasts in the pickled onions jar swimming about .....cappy

[j.sabourn]

Came back to Oz the one time only that way. Too many suspected pirate vessels further north in the straits. Always used the straits between Bali and Lombok, or known as the Lombok Straits. Thought was going to be boarded going via the Sunda Straits, must have looked us over and thought wasn't worth the effort. Working one time as a fill in on a Norwegian Seismic vessel at the top end of the Singapore straits and had to have Indonesian soldiers on board, it was the turn of the century 2000/2001 was a very high tech ship at the time and everyone expected all the computers to go down as well. The ship was the Ramform Challenger. Cheers JS

[j.sabourn]

#38... Was that your work then Cappy putting a blanket over the North Piers light and causing the Greek ship the Zephros to go aground in Cullercoats. Were you after the coal from her thinking she was a coal burner. One of the excuses given apart from the notrocious winter of 47, was that he took one of the new fangled Zebra crossing beacons at the time as the North Pier Light. The last time in that area is hard to find anything remaining of her now. Cheers JS

[John F Collier]

#35 Thank you for that John S. Reading the post of many of you blokes on this site has been an education reading about the different procedures that I didn't even know existed, and it's always a pleasure to hear of your escapades and especially cappy's and Brian's with the things they got up to . As a kid I'd always had a thing about the sea and a wish to see the world, I had two brothers in law, one ex RN the other one ex MN they
both served some time in the war, I used to listen to their stories and this only made me more determined to go to sea. The one who had been in
the MN was also a steward he told me, "go into catering you get better food and conditions". Well as I'd been raised on war time rationing, my self
preservation instincts kicked in and my first thoughts were for my belly. I only ever wanted to see and experience enough of life at sea and had no
intentions of staying more than a few years and only ever treated it as a very enjoyable job and I learned some very valuable lessons in life. Some of you made it their career and became officers, to come through the ranks and to make it as a ships captain is to me something to be very much admired, and behind all the banter etc I do still respect you and your rank as I think most of us do. cheers JC

[John F Collier]

#38 Hi cappy. That winter of 63 was a cold one, my parents had gone to stay with my sister and my wife and me lived at their house. At Christmas
we travelled up to stay with the family for the holiday, when it was time to return home we went back to mums house in London. The first thing is always a cup of tea, I went to the scullery and saw that the place had completely flooded, and then frozen solid the scullery floor was like a skating rink, the cause was the overflow in the toilet had frozen, luckily no burst pipes. With all the mention of coal it made me think and because of C/H I can't remember the last time I saw a lump of coal, until I remembered going t an exhibition of the Titanic artefacts at Greenwich Maritime Museum in the late 90s. If anyone here saw this I'm sure they will agree, it was fantastic, the lump of coal from her bunkers was bigger than a toilet pan. There was a 17 ton section of her hull with 3 portholes still there, one of the bronze cherubs from the grand staircase, the ships telegraph, a silver
cigarette case that still had cigarettes in it, the most poignant was a stewards white jacket that had been lovingly restored and saved, in all 5,000
items in the collection owned by the American Co that salvaged it, the collection was valued at £122 million and was due to be auctioned April 04 2012. cheers JC

[j.sabourn]

#41... Jim on one ship I was on only about 8000 ton deadweight. We had 3 galleys on. Three different cooks. Chinese crew. Think the Chinese Firemen/motormen were from Foochow, the Deck crowd from Shanghai, spoke different dialects as well as eating different foods. The midships crowd a real mixture of nationalitys, the chinese third mate spoke passable English, his brother the bosun spoke none so did all my communicating with the bosun through the 3rd. mate. The Ch. Stwd. fed the midships crew money wise, and the stewards used to live off the saloon stores and pocket theirs. The Bosun and number 1 fireman ditto. Used to go ashore with their shopping bags for their monthly stores. This money was paid into their hands at the end of every month. This is or was then the Hong Kong system and as said in a previous post the incoming Ch. Stwd. had to buy the job off his predecessor. On that particular ship we had no 2nd.Mate for the 11 months I was there, but received no short hand money, I walked off in Japan after they had changed the crew in Hong Kong from Chinese to Philipinos , which caused a lot of friction all for the apparent reason that the chinese were a pound a month more expensive. Funnily enough on the previous ship to this I had been on a 37,000 ton vessel I had been on in a different company, I had had the same 3rd. mate and bosun so we must have been following each other around. Anyhow I walked away from the latter ship in Japan, lost my balance of wages, had to threaten the owners of calling in the British consulate to get my air fare home. Spent a week in bed getting home was the next best thing to a nervous wreck as thought the ship had gone down and blamed myself for leaving her. Found out all those years later on this site that she hadn't but had gone to the scrapyard. All those years of self blame for nothing. The sea in a lot of cases as had its money worth out of me, would I do it again, of course, certainly those years, however the years today and the way shipping is run, would need to be in dire straights to contemplate. Think have mentioned this before the Indian/arab 2nd. Mate jumped ship in the Kiel canal outward bound with coke for Karachi from Gdansk. He literally did jump as well. He was never replaced. Cheers JS

[happy daze john in oz]

On the subject of gas lamps and the like, we have a kerosene lamp here at home. It belonged to the mother in law and comes from Ireland. In the 30's when she was a young bride there was no electric in the house so the lamp was taken from room to room.

Second stewards on UCL must have also got a bonus, for some reason they treated dry tea like gold dust always in sort supply. In the tourist gallop scramble eggs at breakfast had to et a special request for some unknown reason

[j.sabourn]

Having relations up North of England John, you must of had the odd Davis Lamp knocking around. Cant remember if the correct spelling was Davis or Davies. We still have one kicking around somewhere probably in the bottom of a case somewhere. Cheers JS

[j.sabourn]

Ref to # 47... We must all be different and have different views on certain ships, as one subscriber to these posts was on the same ship before my time and painted it in different colours. I still have vivid recollections of this ship and the people who started the same time as me and how they disappeared either through death, bad health or like myself walking off. Started in Rotterdam discharging Copra from one of the Pacific Islands, most of the cafes in the Dock area had to close because of the Copra Bugs from the ship infesting their premises. Went to Gdansk to load coke for Karachi, ship had been chartered wrongly and had to fiddle the books to get the tonnage in to her, the harbour master turning a blind eye whether he was really drunk or not I don't know. The sailing Crew was The Master Irish. myself mate, an Indian citizen as 2 mate, and a Chinese 3 mate. Ch. Engineer from Sunderland, 2 engineer from Aberdeeen Scotland, but lived permanently in Aberdeen Hong Kong. 3rd Eng cant remember but the chinese fireman cook was promoted sometime during the trip to same. The master don't really know what experience he had of deep sea, but he had to question the owners on which Dakar he had to take bunkers at for a passage to Karachi, so maybe that will give you some idea. Was a single screw steamer with the half off one blade of the propeller. Capetown was a port of refuge as was most ports between sailing and arrival ports, due to lack of fresh water which used to be consumed rapidly in the boilers. Domestic water was from a couple of 40 gallon drums on deck. Ch. Eng. was hospitalised in Singapore and died weeks later after we sailed there with cancer. The 2 engineer disappeared here also, we got 2 Indian engineers who were always shouting and screaming at each other, must have been different religions or something. Saigon was another port of refuge which couldnt get into because of war conditions. Made for Hong Kong and was nearly fired on by a Chinese gunboat as were in the wrong approaches. The ship whilst in Singapore had been arrested due to safety cert. out of date, we still weighed anchor and aweigh Silver, were going to be arrested in Hong Kong and I had to write out plans for a refitting of a projected expectation of new Lifeboats and davits. All bull dust. Sailed for Japan but couldn't make it and finished up in Kaoshuing Taiwan and had 3 goes from there to make Japan current too strong for a 4 knot ship. They wanted after Japan to load Grain by just pouring in, no shifting boards or feeders and I refused to do. These are only a few minor incidents on this ship, as regards stability alone things did not match up with the ships official information. Every ship has its challenges but there are sometimes you are on to a hiding to nothing. I could describe instances which happened nearly every day for the 11months I was there and people would not believe. It wasn't a short sharp shock it was a long drawn out one, and I put it down to experience never to get into such a situation again. Saying that under the circumstances of the day I may be telling fibs as would probably jump in with both feet again. Cheers JS