Where were you on your 21st Birthday?

Hi Bob.
Must be one of the best 21st stories I have read on site, thanks.
Des

#240. Hope you managed to recover the plug from the dock bottom, or did they take it out of your wages.? JS

What makes you think they paid wages, this is a shipping company we speak of!!!!!

Hi John in Oz, Where are you now? That photo looks a lot like the grave in my local cemetery. Regards Gerald Farr

I was Third Mate on Bowring's mv Knob Lake heading for Amsterdam up the English Channel in thick fog having had only a celebratory half can. About a week or so later sailing back down the Channel as Second Mate which made up for the lack of a Party. Good memories of a long time ago.

Writer on Cunard Line Carinthia, en route Canada, August 65. Filled up with Wrexham Lager in celebration. However, this did not make my 21st birthday any different than any other day as me, and the rest of the crew to a man were full of Wrexham Lager anyway. I read a lot of the reply's here from sailors who's beer ration was limited to a couple of bottles a day.......they should have come and worked for Cunard Line who's policy it was to sell as much beer as possible to the entire crew, as presumably there was a handsome profit to be made from it. And an even greater profit to the crew Pig barkeepers who would shamelessly water down the beer when the lads had had a few.

Austin

Cunard Pig barmen must have got that idea from the ones on UCL.
Never saw beer so clear and almost colorless at times.

Hello John,
yes, in fact I actually witnessed the watering one time, .....the door to the bar was always securely bolted with the barkeep being safely locked inside, but I had to go in there one time for some Writer business with old Joe the barkeep, papers or something to sign, and he let me in. As he was in the process of serving a long line of customers I had to wait and he forgot I was standing there behind him. At the fill station for the mugs there were two beer spigots, with a large cloth draped strategically over the whole station with only the tops of the spigots exposed. From the queue outside you could see outer spigot, but not the innermost one. So here is how it worked, old Joe would start filling the pot from the spigot which was visible from outside, then when it was about half full he would swap over to the innermost out of sight spigot which was connected to the fresh water line. I watched him adding a least a quarter of a pint of water to several pots before to his shock he suddenly remembered I was standing there behind him. He just grinned sheepishly and shrugged his shoulders. The crew would often get brave enough to complain and it was not uncommon for old Joe to be drenched with beer from an unhappy customer but nothing was ever done about it.....there were too many fingers in the pie higher up the food chain. He never dared to do this with the Writer's office beer though, for the same reasons that a crocodile never attacks a baby elephant at the water hole......he knew better.
One of the barkeeps who I was friendly with confided in me one of their scams in the passenger lounge bars. They would appraise the customers sitting out there in front of them and could tell who they could scam and who not. A group of ladies and grannies drinking gin and tonics would definitely be in the cross hairs.....the first round was always undoctored regarding the gin measure but for subsequent rounds the measures became smaller and smaller. In the end, when they were a bit tiddely, the measure became non existent, with only the rim of the glass being dipped into a saucer of gin kept handily under the bar for this purpose, so they would get the taste of gin from the rim but bugger all else.
Another joint scam was between the wine stewards and the barkeeps and it ran thus. Free red and white wine was given to the passengers at luncheon but not at dinner. It was junk of course. So the wine stewards would surreptitiously fill various specially cleaned coffee and tea pots which were spotted around the saloon and decant them later on into the legitimate wine bottles which they had judiciously saved for the occasion and re-corked. Later on, at dinner when the passengers were paying for the stuff, the same bottles were presented again, as with a flourish the steward would pretend to skin the seal off the bottle and remove the cork. This was only done in tourist class of course where most of the passengers had never had a bottle of wine with dinner in their life and could not tell the differeence, they would never had dared do this in first class. Yet another scam was when a passenger would get boastful and order a bottle of champagne. The steward would say in a loud voice for all to hear "Vintage sir?" to which the passenger would invariably concur, being to ashamed to refuse. Of course they were presented with non vintage champagne and 99.999999 percent of the bloods would ever be able to tell the difference between the labels. If ever they were caught out they would just blame the barkeeps in the galley who had given him the incorrect bottle. The difference in price being divided between the conspirators accordingly.

Oh well, happy days I guess, but they would have been happier if I could have witnessed one of old Joe's drenchings.

All the best.
Austin

Butcher Island Bombay discharging.
Dry of course but the Mate gave me a can of Tennants Ann's Day from his hidden stash.

Nice one!

Pinemore was my first ship,deck cadet. To the med then up the lakes to Chicago in the summer
A few years later 21st on Brisbane!