seafaring stories

[Captain Kong]

Tony was asking about some new stuff about seafaring , here is one I may have done before.
It is about a Hardship, not many of these around today. THE BEECHFIELD.

This was a hard ship,

SS BEECHFIELD
W. SAVAGES, Ltd. ZILLAH STEAMSHIP CO

I joined the BEECHFIELD in Liverpool in at the end of November 1952, she was built in Lytham, around 1900, a coal burning steamship, tall woodbine funnel, and an open wheelhouse, oil skins and sea boots were required when on the wheel, I was 17 years old and an Ordinary Seaman.
We lived in the focsle underneath the chain locker, a square hatch on the deck next to the chain locker with a vertical ladder going down to a dark and smoky open focsle with two firemen, two ABs and me, it was a death trap down there
There was no electricity on board, all the navigation lights and accommodation lights were oil lamps, and my job was to keep them trimmed daily. Down in the fore peak where we lived was one grimy oil lamp, and it was still dark with that on, there was a coal bogey in the middle surrounded with ash, cinders and coal and the smoke was thick, there was no ventilation down there, we were below the water line when she was loaded. There were five filthy bunks, black with coal dust mattress, one filthy blanket, of course no sheets, pillows or towels. There was no bathroom sinks or toilet, it was unbelievable.
One old fireman was 84 years old and permanently bent over at an angle of 90 degrees, he had never paid off for over 25 years he had no where to live and would have lost his job if he had paid off so he was there for ever.
The other fireman was a completely mad Irishman, always talking to himself and sometimes he had terrific arguments,
There were two ABs, one was over 80 years old, and had no where else to live, the other one joined with me, he was OK but after one week he leapt ashore, I was going as well but the Skipper, Captain Jim Marshall, made me up to AB, with a big increase in pay, so I stayed on for a bit longer.
We loaded coal for Dublin, Belfast, Londonderry, and stone from Paenmenmawr and Trevor in North Wales and Peel Island back to Liverpool. If you wanted a crap or a shower you had to wait until you got to the other side and leg it to the Seamens Mission.
It was December, the weather was atrocious, and on the open bridge the wheel was six feet in diameter with chains and rods to the rudder. When she was shipping seas they would go right over the open wheel house and you would get swept off the wheel and if you hung on to the wheel and a sea hit the rudder it would spin and throw you over the top and across the bridge if you tried to hang on.
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.
Then he got rid of the Mad Irishman, he was in the focsle and started an argument with the coal bogey and because it would not stand up and fight he kicked the crap out of it, flaming coals and hot ash and smoke was all over the focsle, fire was burning every where. We had to leap up on deck and throw a heaving line with a bucket attached over the side and the pass the bucket of water down the hatch to pour on the flames. After a few of these the focsle was full of smoke and steam.
"That`ll teach the baatard not to fight wid me". said Paddy
The Captain kicked him down the gangway. I was going to follow, `I`ll promote you to Fireman` said Captain Marshall, `it is a good experience`.
It sure was, four hours on and four hours off, two furnaces, do your own trimming. Feed `em, throw a pitch on, a little twist of the wrist and jerk and spread the coal evenly across the fires, rake and slice break up the clinker, dump your own ashes at the end of the four hour watch, keep her on the blood, 180 psi, and watch the water level, I got myself a belt with the buckle at the back. A buckle at the front could blister your belly with heat of the furnace on the metal. The sweat would cut rivers in the ash and coal dust stuck to my face and chest.
No lights down there, just the light from the flames in the furnace, like something out of Dante. After dumping the ashes and handing over with a load of coal on the plates for the next man it would be twenty minutes later, then fight my way forard between the waves and then crash on my filthy mattress still covered in ash and coal dust, at seven bells, three hours later, get down to the galley have a bacon butty and then stagger down the fiddly to the furnaces.
After one month I had had enough, and paid off, a much wiser and fitter man. Even though Captain Marshall pleaded with me to stay on, "I will teach you Navigation if you do, and then you can go Mate".
Next week I went back to the Pool, Mr Repp said, "Why didn?t you stay there you have only been there for a month" it seemed like a lifetime to me, I had aged ten years, "Here is another coaster, one of Everards, the `Amity." . That is another story.

[Phil Crawley]

A good yarn, the old Ramsey Steamship weekly boats were run like that right into the early sixties, no cook but they did have a toilet aft. looking forward to reading about the Amity.
Phil Crawley.,

[Captain Kong]

Thanks for that Phil, I am still recovering from that trip 59 years later. costing me a fortune on the `Grouse`.

[Doc Vernon]

Hi Capt!
As always your Yarns rare just Great to say the lesat.
I sometimes wonder how you manage to put in all in Words that seem to hold (me anyway) in awe,its so nice to be able to read of all those past Yers ecperiences that you have had,be they good or bad!
Your time at Sea is something to be very proud of,as i know you are,and i wish that i had at the time been more Mature minded and not just fooled around with life as i did!
But then that was me Young and Silly,and never knew when i was on a good thing! Well later i did haha!
Good on you mate!
More of these stories would go down well i am sure!
Thanks again!
Cheers

[Captain Kong]

Thanks for that Vernon.


I didnt learn to read or write until I went to secondary school. until then, there was a war on and a lot of us took advantage of that and never went. My first teacher was Miss Dawes, a lovely young lady of around 21. I fell in love with her, I was six years old. Then in 1940/1, she left and went into the WRNS, I swore I would join the Navy and find her. All our teachers went into the Services and were replaced by old retired teachers, they didnt care if we were there or not, so very day we played hookey. i lernd nofink for five years, I spent all my time playing in air raid shelters and collecting shrapnel and bomb tail fins etc. No one cared.
After 11, I decided I wanted to learn and so I tried to do my best, Those war kids were at a disadvantage with no education, we had no 11 plus exams, so we could never go to grammar school or even Uni. This was always held against us when looking for a job.
Then after a few years at sea I got fed up of ex grammar school boys who were Cadets and Third Mates telling me what to do so I went to College and then got Mates and Masters, just to prove I could do it. I now enjoy reading and writing. Should have done that in 1940.

[Captain Kong]

Here is another , you may have read before.

S.S. CORRALES,
ELDERS AND FYFFES, BANANAS

The Steamship CORRALES was built at Alexander Stephen and sons at Linthouse on the Clyde.
she was completed in March 1930
SHP 3750,
Dimentions, Length 400 feet, Beam 51 feet and depth 33 feet
GRT 5362.
She was scrapped around the early sixties.

She sailed out of Garston, Avonmouth, Southampton and London to Tiko in the Cameroons, West Africa and the West Indies to load bananas for the UK.

I joined the Corrales, in 1956, one of Fyffes Banana boats, in Garston for a voyage to Tiko in the Cameroons in West Africa. The day we joined we had to load all our stores, boxes of food, sides of beef and so on.
The following day we sailed down the Mersey, it was lunch time, and as we sailed close past the Pier Head all the girls from the offices were there cheering for us as we sailed close by.

We had a six day run down to Las Palmas where we stopped to load bunkers, It was during the night, a lorry came alongside the gangway as we finished rigging it. Then we were told to carry the stores we loaded down the gangway and onto the lorry. And at the end the Chief Steward with the Mate and Captain pocketed a wad full of notes. We got nothing. We had 12 passengers on board so we thought there must be plenty of food left on board. There was for them. The feeding was bad after that, we went hungry. Every meal was made of bananas, fried bananas, grilled bananas, roasted bananas, stewed bananas, boiled bananas, sauted bananas, mushy bananas, frappe bananas, and we were going bananas.
We couldn`t sleep at night because of hunger pains.
The Captain, `Mighty Joe` Young was a huge man, and when I was on the wheel he would be on the wing of the bridge lifting a 400 pound barbell, `Can you do this ` he would say to me.
`If you gave us some food I could, I am weak with hunger.`
`Don`t be so soft ` he would say.
All we had for evening dinner one night was a thin soup with bananas instead of potatoes, called Irish stew.
I was voted in as the one to go and kick to the Captain, `Mighty` Joe Young.
I went up the boat deck with my plate of "Stew", I knocked on his door and he opened it, towering above me, `What do you want` he said, `The crowd want to complain about the food, it`s diabolical. This is supposed to be Irish stew`. `What`s wrong with that? he said. Me forgetting he was an Irishman said `It`s alright if you`re Irish, but`. ? .
and with that he smashed me in the face with a big iron fist and I did a somersault down the ladder to the boat deck and ended up under a life boat. My face covered in blood from my nose and lips. I crawled down aft and all hands laughed at the state of me. They had eaten theirs, mine disappeared somewhere over the boat deck. So I went hungry again.

On the outward bound voyage on the Banana boats the big job was to clean all the holds and tween decks for the new cargo of bananas, they were swept and then mopped out with disinfectant. The big problem being down there was the spiders, uncountable thousands of them, most were giants, bigger than an out spread hand, some were poisonous and a bite could make you very ill or even kill you, the ship carried serum if you were bitten. Sometime if we caught a big one it was put in a glass jar and taken back to the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine for research. These spiders would get into the accommodation, and I have woken up in my bunk with a huge one sat on my face. Not very pleasant looking up a big spider`s tail pipe with one eye. Too scared to move, until it went off on its own. Sometimes there were snakes and banana rats, the snakes got aboard by being coiled around the stem of the stalk of bananas, the banana rats were small and black with a bushy tail, like a small black squirrel, also Rhino Beetles, big black ones around five inches long with a head and two horns just like a Rhino. This menagerie of wild life in the holds would make their way to the cabins at some point in the voyage.
We arrived in Victoria in the Cameroons, and anchored in the bay we had a few tons of cargo, usually items for the Expatriates who lived and worked there.
These were discharged into a barge and towed ashore, and then we would have to wait for the tide to get over the sand bar into the creek that went for several miles to Tiko our loading port.
On board we had a sheep dog for an expatriate family in Tiko, he had a kennel on the after deck and we looked after him and took him for walks around the decks.
One day the dog was demented, crying and rolling over and over in obvious distress.
We examined him and his fur was full of spiders galloping around and biting him.
We rigged up a bath for him and gave him a good shampooing, and removed dozens of spiders off him. We up anchored and started to go up the creek, the dog began to get excited again. On the way up the creek, to get around the sharp bends, it is necessary to run aground, the bow is rounded for this, and the focsle crashes into the jungle, with trees crashing on deck, dropping monkeys and other wild life on deck. Then the ship goes astern and then does it again and again, working its way around the bend. An unusual and interesting way of rounding the bend in the creek. Then it was straight up the creek to Tiko, There just a small wood jetty in the middle of the jungle, with a few people stood waiting for us.
The dog was really excited by now and as we were approaching the jetty he jumped over the side and into creek, he was swimming alongside of us heading for the jetty.
We were cheering for him and on the jetty an English couple were also cheering him on
and as he got by the jetty he scrambled up the bank and onto the jetty and was reunited with his owners.
We moored alongside the jetty, there was a small narrow gauge railway line there, and the small train brought the bananas down from Tiko village, several miles inland through the plantations. When we went ashore we had to go on the train, the carriage was a bench where we sat back to back facing outwards, and this took us to Tiko which was a collection of mud huts and a bar. There was an Expatriate club there for the Colonial types and that is where the Officers went. We were not allowed in there, on a previous voyage two stewards went in there, got drunk and robbed the gramophone, so we just had the one bar to go into.
There was no electricity there just oil lamps, we walked into the mud hut bar, it was lit by a couple of oil lamps, and against one wall was a huge Westinghouse Refrigerator.
The man greeted us and said `Ice beer for de sailors`, he opened the fridge and it was full of Heineken cans. The beer was warm, no electric, but the man was excited about his fridge, some super salesman must have turned up in the village and sold him one.
He also had a wind up gramophone with a big horn on top and HMV and the picture of the dog on the front. He only had one record, it was Gene Autry singing, `Riding Down The Sunset Trail`. We all sang it while supping warm Heineken and he put it on again and again, and again, and again.
Even today I know that song off by heart; we had a good time though, being simple sailors. Afterwards every time we had a beer anywhere we would always imitate the man, `Ice beer fo de Sailors`.
After a good bevy in the mud hut we staggered to the rail line and waited for the train.
I was wearing Khaki keks and a khaki shirt, I had taken off my belt, the warm Heineken was blowing me up and buckled it and put it over my shoulder so I wouldn`t lose it, it looked like an army `Sam Brown`, Some of the Africans asked if I was Army, I said yes, I was here looking for recruits for a new army for Camaroon. They seemed interested so I got them lined up and got them marching up and down, I got a brush that was leaning against the shed and showed them the Rifle Drill. They were very keen to do this, Then the train turned up so I told them to keep on marching and do not stop until ordered to, `Quick March`, and off they went. I climbed on the train and off we went. I often wondered where they ended up, Mombasa maybe on the East Coast of Africa,
I sat on the train facing outboard with all the crowd, I could hear the booming voice of Mighty Joe Young behind me. I looked and he was directly behind the first trip Cadet, Mr Bell, `Ding Dong` who was sat next to me.
My nose was still swollen and buzzing like a fire alarm from when he thumped me.
So as the train rattled on in the darkness through the jungle, I decided that some action was required to even up the score. I turned around and thumped Mighty Joe as hard as I could on the back of his head. He shot off the train and straight down the monsoon ditch head first. The screams were terrible, the driver stopped the train when all hands were shouting that Joe had gone.
I could hear his foot steps coming down my side of the track, crunching on the gravel, I closed my eyes and waited for death.
`Its you, you ? ******* *******" I heard him say, and then he grabbed the Cadet, young Ding Dong, who was sat next to me. He flung him down into the monsoon ditch and dived in after him and battered him, then he picked him up and flung him back in his seat, `Don?t ever, ever do that again` he said, and then walked around the other side to his seat.
They were both covered in blood, mud and slime.
I was lucky that night. Thank you Ding Dong. I felt better, honour had been regained.
We completed loading Bananas the following day and sailed down the creek over the bar and into the Guinea Gulf, a few hours steaming and we anchored off the island of Fernando Po.
It was a small island covered in trees, palms and banana plantations. A few barges came out to us and we loaded the bananas through the side Shell doors. That completed we heaved up the anchor and then set a course for Liverpool and Garston calling in at Dakar in Senegal on the way for fuel bunkers. During the voyage home, every day we had to inspect the bananas and if we found one banana turning yellow we had to take out the whole stalk and throw it overboard. Sometimes we had young Ding Dong with us and we would turn all the lights out and leave him down below in the hold, we could hear him screaming in fear, as the holds were full of spiders, snakes and banana rats. I think it was his first and last voyage to sea, I don`t blame him, it must have been an horrific experience for him.
We arrived in Garston after a month long voyage and paid off. We always had a big stalk of bananas to take home with us.

[Captain Kong]

Here is another one of my trips..........



I was Shanghaied once on a sailing ship.

I was on the `Auris`in 1958, an experimental, the only pure Gas Turbine tanker in the world.we eventually arrived in Curacao and we were to stay there for over six weeks with the work on the gas turbine.
I went ashore in Willemstadt and got legless as usual on the rum. On the next table to us was the crowd of Venezualans off one of the market schooners that traded around the Carribean and Venezuela. I got talking to them as I was fluent in Spanish in those days and ended up on their table drinking all the rum they could pour down me. then oblivion,
I awoke on a coil of mooring ropes with the sound of the sea and the creaking of sheets in the blocks and the crack of a sail, I thought it was a dream gone wrong.
I opened one eye and nearly wet my knickers, I was at sea on a sailing ship.
I leapt to my feet and nearly fell over the wall still dizzy with all the rum. The crowd that I was drinking with were on deck laughing at me . "Que Pasa hombre" they shouted.
I was outward bound for Caracas , Karapita and the Orinoco in Venezuela. Kinnel.! now Que pasa nada.
Any way I sorted myself out and joined in with the crowd as there was nothing I could do to get back to Curacao.

I learned to sail a topsail schooner and we did the little ports and rivers round the Venezuelan coast loading and discharging small parcels of cargo.
We went as far as Trinidad, Tobago and Barbados and then eventually we got a cargo for Curacao and after 32 days we arrived and I could see the `Auris` `still lying in the lagoon.
I bade farewell to my old shipmates and thanked them for a fantastic experience.
I made my way back to the `Auris` and old Capt. Brown went mad when he saw me.
They thought that I had gotten drowned crossing the lagoon on the launch and had told my parents that I was missing. I told him that I had been Shanghaied with a `mickey finn` and ended up on the sailing ship. he was amazed. He had started his seafaring career as a Midshipman under Sail on the `Monkbarns` a square rigger. I told him the story and after he gave me a tot and let me off with out a logging. Telegrams were soon flying home to say that I was safe again.

[Captain Kong]

And theres more, Tony.

CUNARD`S `PARTHIA` -
The PARTHIA was built in 1947, at Harland and Wolff at Belfast, the only Cunard ship to be built there, , to be used on the Liverpool-New York service. She was a sister of the MEDIA, By 1960 they were becoming uneconomical and were both sold in 1961, the PARTHIA was sold to the New Zealand Shiping Co, and after rebuilding and the accommodation extended to accommodate 350 passengers, instead of the original 250, she was renamed REMURA.. She entered service in in the NZSC`s London New Zealand service in June 1962. (Both Parthia and Media were used on the Liverpool-New York services. In 1953, she was fitted with the same Denny-Brown stabilizers which her sister MEDIA had fitted a year earlier.
Cunard Line?s all first class RMS PARTHIA and MEDIA were very popular ships, smaller than the great Liners and more intimate.
`The Cunarders` the Media and Parthia are my favorite ships` said Katharine Hepburn
Hollywood stars and celebrities like KATHARINE HEPBURN preferred to travel from New York to England via Liverpool on the smaller, deluxe, all-first-class liners like Cunard`s PARTHIA and MEDIA. They could avoid the crowds and have much more privacy. Hepburn made many such trips.

I joined the PARTHIA on 21 September 1961 then we moved from the dock around to the Liverpool Landing Stage and the loaded our Passengers and baggage.
We had an uneventful voyage across the Atlantic until we got off the Nantucket Shoals. Then there was a big crash and the ship lurched, I thought we had been in a collision with another ship. We ran out on deck and look over the bow, the ship was stopped and there was a large whale impaled on the bow, it had cut into it at the middle. about half way in, it was still wriggling around and blood pouring out of it. A few minutes later it stopped moving. It must have been sleeping on the surface and never heard us approaching. Very sad.
The Captain investigated it and then went back on the Bridge and went astern , nothing happened , we did this a few times , stopping and then going astern again. It was stuck fast. We carried on to New York and the US Coast Guard was informed and off the Ambrose Light, a Coast Guard Cutter came out to us and we stopped in the water again, the Coast guard got a couple of lines around it and then heaved away and then pulled it off us. They towed it clear and then we carried on, the Coast Guard disposed of it.
We moored at Pier 92, opposite the Market Diner. at the bottom of 52nd Street and 12th. I always enjoyed New York, everything you wanted was in a walking distance. After having a few drinks in the Diner it was a short walk up 52nd Street to Broadway, past the 21 Club where Edward G Robinson was appearing, then on to Broadway to Jack Dempsey`s Bar, so you could `shake the hand that shook the world` and have your photo taken with him for a dollar.
Across the Road on the Strip was all the Clubs, with the Tommy Dorsey Band playing to dance to and many others with the famous musicians, Dizzy Gillespy, and singing recording stars, You could be with all the famous show biz stars and it was affordable. It was a Technicolor world up there. We would go to bed at 6pm and get a call at 11pm and then go up to Broadway and dance the night away until sun up around 5am. New York came alive at midnight until the early hours, `The City that never sleeps.`
After a week the PARTHIA sailed from New York for the last time,
We sailed through Long Island Sound and into the Cape Cod Canal. What a beautiful place that was in the Autumn, all the trees the full length of the Canal were Gold, Red, Yellow and all shades of colours, a fantastic sight.
Off Boston the Pilot came out to us in a sailing ship, and took us in.
We tied up outside the city in a place called Maverick. Not a lot there just a couple of bars, we took a subway to Boston City centre but it was very quiet, not a bit like New York. We came back to Maverick and had a few drinks there.
Six of us were staggering back to the ship through the dock area. It was quite a way so we stopped for a relief against the wall of a cargo warehouse. The six of us were stood in a line with it all hanging out when searchlights lit us all up, and a loud haler shouted `FREEZE, DON`T MOVE OR WE SHOOT, POLICE. HANDS ON THE WALL AND SPREAD `EM`.
We froze, Kinnell, with hands on the wall all with our nudgers still hanging out. I think the whole of the Boston Police Department were there behind us.
The cops came over to us and frisked us for weapons and tuned us around, we were blinded by the search lights. `And put those away` the Cop said pointing his night stick at our nudgers. We zipped up quick.
We are Limies, we kept saying ,but didn`t make any difference.
One at a time they took us to a Patrol car, `Hands on the hood and spread `em`. Geof went first, a big black Cop towered over him, `Where ya from``, Geof said `The Isle of Wight`, the Cop hit him over the head with his club, AARRWWGGHH, said Geof, as a large lump appeared on his head. The big black Cop said `Ya trying to be funny wise guy.`. `No` said Geof, `I am from the Isle of W-I-G-H-T not W-H-I-T-E. its in England`.
They went through all our pockets and found our US Immigration Passes.
A bunch of Limies off the Parthia, eh. So we got a Police escort back to the ship to make sure we got on board. The cops who were taking us back told us they had a stake out on that Warehouse as they had a tip off that it was going to be raided and we had ruined it. They were not amused.
We sailed the following day bound for Liverpool.
One of my Mates was my next door neighbour from home, Shaun, he had been in the army and then working as a steel erector, but he got laid off so I got him a job as an Uncertificated Deckhand. The Bosuns Mate, I think his name was Steele, was a big hardcase and he hated UDHs, and always tryed to wind Shaun up, Shaun was good on deck, having been a rigger and erector on the steel he was as good as any ABs I have seen.
The day out of Boston, Steele got onto to Shaun and a fight started in the alleyway.
It went down the alleyway out on deck, Stewards started taking bets on the outcome, Steele was first favourite as he was a well known fighter.
Shaun had been in the Army in the war in Malaya and was also the Regimental Boxing Champion.
They stood on deck slugging it out, their faces being covered in blood then rolling over on deck battering each other then up again, It was the `Duelo de Titans`
No one had seen a fight like it, they were fighting to the death. smashing each other, covered in blood their shirts ripped off, hammering and battering each other, it was terrifying just watching. As time went on they started slowing down, rolling over on top of each other gasping for breath through the blood in their mouths, spitting out broken teeth.
Eventually Shaun gave a last punch and rolled off Steele who lay there semi conscious in a pool of blood and broken teeth.
Shaun crawled over to us, we were sat on the Hatch, and pulled himself up, his face was just a mask under a curtain of blood, he smiled and his two front teeth were missing. Then Steele slowly got up onto his hands and knees and crawled over to the hatch, `I think he want`s another go` I said to Shaun.
Steel pulled himself up, his face a like a piece of battered liver, swollen and covered in blood with his front teeth missing, he held his hand out to Shaun and they shook. `You`re the best ` he grunted through his swollen lips. They both lay back on the hatch to rest. The Stewards paid each other the winnings from the `book`. Most had lost, with Steele being first favourite and Shaun the outsider.
After a while and a couple of ciggies later one of the Stewards took them both to the Medical Centre to see the Doctor who had the job of trying to patch them up. Their faces looked a mess for the rest of the voyage going home without their teeth and black and cut eyes swollen lips and noses.
It was the fight of the Century. They were friends for the rest of the trip.
We arrived in Liverpool on 16th of October 1961 and paid off, leaving the ship in the hands of the Shore Gang, After discharging she was taken away to Belfast for rebuilding for the New Zealand Shipping Company, and renamed REMURA.

[Captain Kong]

CUNARD`S MEDIA

built by John Brown Clydebank,
Yard No 629
Engines by shipbuilder

Last Name: LAVIA
Previous Names: 1947-61 MEDIA / 61-82 FLAVIA / 82-86 FLAVIAN / 86-89 LAVIA
Port of Registry: Liverpool
Propulsion: 4 team turbines dr geared to 2 sc shafts 15000shp 18 knots / 2 x Water Tube Boilers supplying steam at max pressure 450lbs (430lbs Superheated)
Launched: Thursday, 12 December 1946
Built: 1947
Ship Type: Passenger Vessel
Tonnage: 13345 grt now 15465 grt
Length: 531 feet now 556 feet 0
Breadth: 70 feet 4
Draught: 30 feet 2
Owner History:
1947-61 Cunard Steamship Co Ltd Liverpool
61-68 Cia Genovese Di Arm SPA Italy
68-82 Costa Line Italy
82-86 Flavian Shipping S.A PA
86-89 Lavia Shipping S.A PA
Status: Scrapped - 1989
Gutted by fire at Hong Kong 07/01/1989 while undergoing renovation. Towed to shallow water where she heeled over onto her side on a sandbank. She was righted and towed to Kaohsiung, Taiwan, arriving 17/06/1989 for demolition.




I sailed on Cunard`s `MEDIA` in December 1955 to January 1956. I didnt intend to, the Western Ocean in Winter is atrocious, but a crowd of us had just paid off the GEORGIC after taking her to the breakers and we were having a bevie in `Tom Halls` at the back of the Cunard building and someone came in and shouted `The MEDIA` wants a crowd signing on in the Cunard Building.`
So somehow I was swept along in the rush as someone else said she was a good job. When I sobered up I found I was signed on and due to sail the following day for New York. I also discovered that I had signed on as a Quartermaster, well that would keep me out of the weather on deck. It was the only time I paid off one ship and signed on another one on the same day, must have been bevied and I was due to be home for Christmas as well. Ah well, Cie la vie as the froggies say.
We sailed bound for New York and it was blowing a gale and sleet. on the way across I have never seen before or since seas as big as that trip. She was climbing verticle upwards and on top of the huge swells it was terrifying looking down the deep valleys then falling 70 or eighty feet and the next mountain of sea waiting to smash her under shaking like a dog out of water as seas cascaded off the fore deck. Very difficult to sleep when you float off the mattress weightless and then fall and the mattress wraps itself around you. By the time we got to New York we were knackered. We had Christmas at sea but we were getting smashed around so much it was a no no. All the big plate class windows on the Prom Deck for the lounges and restaraunts smashed due to the ship twisting like a cork screw, We had no passengers on board that trip and we were one of the few ships at that time to have Stabilizers fitted but we never used them, the Captain said it costs a lot more in fuel with the drag. There was a Pig on board but it didnt get used much, the ale was being spilled all over. I was glad when we got into the Market Diner in New York.
Up on Broadway at night time it was very glitzy, bright as a sunny day with all the lights, Santas, ringing bells everywhere collecting for charity. snow flakes falling, a whole technicolour world. No contest with Liverpool`s dull and gloomy atmosphere, pubs shut at 10pm and surrounded by all the bomb sites around town. New York was a good place to buy the winter gear, thick wool Tartan three quarter length jackets, shirts and hats with ear mufflers on, gloves and scarves, it was freezing and we needed to have this gear.
We had New Years Eve on Broadway and Times Square, fantastic, I have never ever been kissed by as many women in all my life, some pretty ones, Ugly ones, fat ones, thin ones and some of doubtful gendre, ugh, spit. but a great time was had by all until the early hours.
When the Long Shoremen were working cargo , they sometimes called us over, "Hey what size shoes you wear?" I would say tens, `OK here try these` and give us a pair of export shoes, It was so bad over the years that they started to export shoes by shipping all the left shoes on the Media and all the right shoes on the Parthia.
On the 2nd of January we were sailing and the Hudson was frozen over, the temperature had gone down to 28 degrees below freezing, The Captain tried always to get her off the pier, going ahead and astern , the ice was holding her fast. so Ice breakers were called for and they smashed their way through and got us out, jeez, it really was cold, and so we went to Norfolk Virginia to load a cargo of Tobacco, we did`nt go ashore there. A week before some Royal Navy ships had paid a visit there to the US Navy base and as always when the RN and US navy get together there is always a big battle, some men were killed and many injured so feelings ashore were a bit tense so we were advised not to go ashore.
We completed loading in a couple of days and made our way back across a wild Western Ocean to Liverpool. where I paid off and caught up with the leave I should have had off the GEORGIC.

7A
The MEDIA was a cargo passenger ship. she carried 250 first class passengers, six hatches and 20 derricks.
The ship was built for the Cunard as a cargo-passenger liner in 1947.
In 1961 traffic across the Western Ocean was getting a bit thin so she was sold to Codegar Line of Italy and rebuilt as the Europe-Australia emigrant ship Flavia. In 1968 she was chartered to Costa Line, who refitted her as a cruise ship. She operated Caribbean cruises from Miami, and was so successful, Costa bought her in 1969. Her engines became troublesome, so she was sold in 1982. She was sold to Hong Kong based C.Y. Tung Group. Her name was changed to Flavian and was to commence cruising locally. Instead, she was laid up for four years and was sold in 1986 to another Hong Kong shipping company, Virtue Shipping, who changed her name to Lavia. She remained laid up at anchor near Landau Island.
On January 7, 1989, but neglected Lavia caught fire. She was completely gutted and her hulk was sold to
Taiwanese shipbreakers.

[Captain Kong]

And here is another one of the old days...............

NICHOLAS K.
I joined the Nicholas K in Liverpool at the end of 1954, she had completed discharging grain from Argentina and had loaded fertilizer in bags for Cochin, India.
She was a Fort built in 1943 and was now owned by Kiriakides of Athens.
She was manky, the accommodation was rough, four seamen to a cabin next the steering flat. the other two had three seamen in. Across the alleyway were nine Somali firemen. On deck were two mess rooms one for Deck and one for the Firemen.
We sailed outward bound for Suez and then called in at Aden for bunkers. The cabins were stinking hot and mostly we slept on deck on top of the poop. The food was diabolical, after three days at sea we were on our `pound and pint`, our `whack`
6 ounces of fresh offal per man per day per haps.
6 ounces of brackish water per man per day perhaps.
Or so it seemed. We got one small can of `Connie Onnie` condensed milk, every ten days. If you left your tin in the mess room all hands would use it, you had to keep your own stores locked up in your locker. Then we would have to stick a few match sticks in the holes to keep out the cockroaches.
The only fresh meat meat we got were the cockroaches. Did you know, pound for pound there is more protein in a cockie than in a beef steak.
So the Steward said we were well fed.
The ship was full of big rats, yellow coloured ones,, from the previous cargo of grain, These would get everywhere including the accommodation, it was diabolical. The Chippy would put rat traps out on deck every night and they were always full in the morning and he then emptied them over the side into the sea.
The fresh water was rationed, on the side of the house on the poop was a pump and we had to push this back and forth to pump up water from the after peak to a tank on top of the poop housing. There was a pad lock on the pump and the mate had the key, he would unlock it for an hour in the morning and an hour in the evening. Then no more water until the following day.
When we got to Cochin the Steward had ordered fresh meat to be delivered.
So one day a little Indian fellow came to the gangway with 12 goats, "Where`s the fresh meat"?.... "This is very fresh meat Sahib".
So we got them up the gangway and the Chippy had to build a pen from the dunnage for them on the afterdeck as they galloped all over the decks and up the alleyways. It was just as well they were on the hoof, we had no fridges on this ship. We got them a load of straw to eat while they awaited their fate.
When the Cook wanted meat he took one out, it was struggling and bleating, must have known what was going to happen. Then killed it by beating it over the head with a hammer and then cut its throat and hung it up off an awning spar, draining the blood into a cut down oil drum. The Galley boy would then gut it and skin it. Chop it up and a handful of curry powder and we were eating like champions.
We sailed then light ship to Port Lincoln in the Spencer Gulf in Australia for a cargo of wheat. The ship had a contract for two years to take wheat to Calcutta and then load iron ore in Vizaghapatam, down the coast from Calcutta, for the Steel works in Whyalla, again in the Spencer Gulf. We were going demented over that, two years, we were innocent men, what had we done to deserve a sentence like that.
We arrived in Port Lincoln and anchored on a Friday morning. They would take us along side on Monday.
That afternoon, the Captain told us to lower a boat , he, the Mate and the Chief Engineer were to go to the Agents Office. We rowed them ashore to the pier, they were each carrying a small bag.
Don`t wait for us, the Captain said, we will get a boat from ashore to bring us back.
We took the boat back to the ship and hoisted it back inboard.
A nice peaceful weekend at anchor, no work to do, lovely.
On Monday a tug came out to us with a Pilot. Where was the Captain, Mate and Engineer?. The Second Mate was running around like a scalded cat. No sign of them, in the end he decided to take it alongside. When we berthed the Agent came on board and said he had never seen the three of them. They had obviously skinned out and disappeared.
It must have been a bad ship when the Captain, Mate and Chief Engineer jump ship.
We loaded the grain in bags and when we had completed and battened down the Second Mate and Agent had been on to the owners about the loss of these men. The Second Mate had a Masters Certificate, so he went as Master, the Agent found a Mate who had jumped ship in Adelaide and was awaiting deportation so he was brought up to Lincoln by the Immigration man and put on board.
We sailed then for Calcutta, what a stinking hole that was, we were moored to buoys in the Hoogly and discharging into barges. The decks were full of screaming Indian dockers, spitting red beatle juice all over our decks that were covered in spilt grain. All the accommodation was battened down, because they would have been in it, using the bathrooms, and in the cabins. It was stinking hot and a mess.
The worse part of being in Calcutta is up River they push their dead into the river and then the corpses float down and get fouled of the anchor cable or rudder, these would be bloated and stinking, with the `Shytalks` sat on them pecking away.
Then one day we got the good news. Load a cargo of manganese ore in Vizaghapatnam and take it to Birkenhead. Fanbloodytastic.
We were singing all the way home.
We walked down the gangway in Birkenhead, six abreast, whistling, we were so thin.
I paid off, thankful that we didn`t have to do the two years, when I got home Mother could hardly recognise me, I had lost so much weight. There was more fat on a cold chip.