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Thread: Verses from my archives

  1. #1
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    Default Verses from my archives

    Found this old one of mine today. It takes me back to an Indian Ocean cyclone NW of Mauritius in 1956. It might be of interest here:

    Lost Ship

    We saw nothing on the wind-glazed surface,
    nothing floating in the spume as we steamed
    across her track on the chart;
    no scrap of cargo, no boiler suit,
    nor a crumb of last night’s rice.

    In the dark we’d talked
    in bursts of dots and dashes,
    that other man and me.
    We’d clung in chairs chained to the deck,
    one hand on the tuning knob
    chasing each other’s warbling signals
    as masts swayed
    and phosphor-bronze aerials swung out
    wild over the troughs;
    the other hand thumping a big brass key -
    in the cyclone.

    It was sixty years ago - she flew the flag of Pakistan,
    a new country. But the ‘Minocher Cowasjee’ was old
    I now discover - launched as ‘Parisiana’
    by Irvine’s yard in Hartlepool, where my father -
    back from his war with Kaiser Bill - might well
    have hammered rivets into her - hard against
    his own dad’s hammer on the other side of the plate.

    Three miles down they’re rusted now, those rivets;
    strewn about, forgotten, like Asian mother’s tears.
    She’s just another hull - after all,
    the ocean floors are flung with ships...

    Harry Nicholson, July 2007
    Harry Nicholson

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    Default Re: Verses from my archives

    Harry: I found this piece to be not only interesting but thought provoking. Thanks for sharing.

    Ian

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    Post Re: Verses from my archives

    That's a lovely poignant poem Harry.Well done !

    The 36 year old steamship ss. MINOCHER COWASJEE (East & West SS Co Ltd,of Karachi,Pakistan ,-completed as PARISIANA (O.N. 145584) by Irvine of Middleton,Teeside in 1921 for Furness Withy,later LONDON EXCHANGE,and BENRINNES,then FATAKADA.


    Missing-In Distress,25-30S,68-00E (South Indian Ocean on 24th January 1957.Dairen-Capetown and onward to Antwerp with soy beans. 51 Crew Perished.


    I have found some jottings of yours,Harry Nicholson ,from this site here about the incident. Hope you don't mind me posting the story to enlighten us of this sad loss , sadly so typical of many worlwide merchant shipping losses of often old,substandard,badly loaded or ill-maintained vessels at the mercy,as always, of natural weather conditions which all of us seafarers have endured...




    'The Suez Canal was blocked with scuttled ships in 1956 and so we had to go the long way round. In those lonely seas between Capetown and South Asia a Pakistani ship was overwhelmed close to us in a cyclone. A week later I met her British mate in a bar in Colombo; he was the only survivor because he had walked off the ship after his protest that she was badly laden was ignored.



    "Minocher Cowasjee" disappears with its 51crew after a last position signal 1,500 nautical miles southeast from Madagascar.I see from my seamans discharge book that I was 2nd radio officer on Thos & Jno Brocklebanks ss "Mahanada" at the time and have strong memories of that night and the storm and talking to the stricken ship by morse code. Her operator was sending out SOS; our bridge officers calculated that she was about 80 miles away. I remember when I gave our captain the distress message he said to "tell them we will come when we can, we cannot alter course at present, I have to keep her head into this or we will be over". It was a most savage cyclonic storm and the seas were huge, our course was adjusted so that we could ride out the storm more safely with the ships head into the weather. There were a couple of other ships in the vicinity and closer to the stricken ship than the Mahanada (traffic was heavier than normal on that route as the Suez Canal was blocked), none of us found anything in that area to the best of my memory.When we docked at Colombo I met a British mate in the Grand Oriental Hotel who told me that he had walked off the MC in Jakarta after his requests that the cargo be restowed were ignored. He said that the vessel had been incorrectly loaded in Vladivostok and behaved badly on her way to Jakarta.I notice on your site at ? you have a piece where you record the passing of Lord Brandon and mention his visit to Pakistan in order to be council in a marine inquiry and wonder if that was the inquiry into the loss of the MC. )Would the proceedings and result of that inquiry be available, or a newspaper report perhaps.? It is a long time ago, but I do think about it still and am trying to write up the story into a poem which might leave the memory with some dignity......etc
    Harry Nicholson'

    Attachment 34053

    (Photo courtesy Coll.of Clive Kelly,Tees built Ships Site)

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    Default Re: Verses from my archives

    #3 That’s a word I often forget and stumble to try and remember when asked the wrong question , and that is dignity . When seamen die under adverse conditions and someone asks you to describe the scene , one can get very angry, and not wish to discuss with someone who was not there. This may appear to be churlish on the part of the interrogator , but in actual fact it is protection of the dead , in not wanting others to know the undignified manner of his death. I can’t imagine anyone dying dignified unless it is in bed and sleeping peacefully. One tries to shy away from revealing that you know the dead person would not want others to know how he died , and you as a witness want to honour his memory and his probable wishes. There is no real dignity in death , the closest to it as said is in bed sleeping. JS
    R575129

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    Default Re: Verses from my archives

    Re my Post #3 . My attachment of the photo of Minocher Cowasjee not opening-here she is-as BENRINNES- Click to see caption on photo.:-
    Last edited by Graham Shaw; 3rd December 2021 at 07:18 AM.

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    Default Re: Verses from my archives

    Thanks, Graham - I had not come across that image. Perhaps ten years ago I made contact with the Minocher Cowasjee's grand daughter (presently in Brisbane), and through her, corresponded with his son a couple of times. The lady sent this picture of the ship with her grandfather marked by an x.
    Let's see if it will upload here:
    Minocher Cowasjee lost 1957.jpg

    I found the family by contact with the late Ardeshir Cowasjee, a journalist on the Pakistan newspaper 'Dawn' and descendant of the Cowasjee family of Parsis. Pakistan's first leader, Ali Jinnah, had asked the family to found his new country's first shipping line. The vessel in question was named after Ardeshir's uncle, Minocher. By a remarkable co-incidence, only a fortnight before my enquiry of Ardeshir, he had been contacted by the grand daughter of the radio officer, Thomas Chadburn, an Anglo-Indian who'd served with the signals in Burma but at the time of the loss was close to retirement. Strange how the memory of the cyclone erupted half a century after the event.
    Last edited by Harry Nicholson; 3rd December 2021 at 03:49 PM.
    Harry Nicholson

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    Default Re: Verses from my archives

    All appreciated and interesting.

    Keith.

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