time-keeping

Just a few years ago I dumped a beautiful double bedspread like a silky tapestry of the queen of Sheba and her entourage and not long before that a leather patch cushion stool cover I bought in 1947 and were given back to me when my mother passed on. They were looking a bit tatty towards the end and I was eventually persuaded that they should go.

The Bumboats with the ropes with bags or baskets attached were racing backwards and forwards like ski lifts. I hardly opened my mouth to call out and the voice came back "G'day Aussie" probably they heard a bit of Aussi lingo only a few years earlier. Another disreputable character who called himself Jock MacGreggor used to spruke in a Scottish accent that would have made Gobelles' Johnny Stark envious.

Those that got on board were pretty slick at evaporating stuff from you cabin.

"Kum feloosh" -That was "how much".

Richard

The bum boat guys that came aboard UCL ships in Las Palmas were something else. You could buy just about all you needed in exchange for 'silver'. The silver of course came courtesy of the plate room. If I recall the rate of exchange was 200 smokes per silver tea pot. I used to get 600 at a time.

On the Raranga, bunkering coal in the stream at Las Palmas in October '47 up the ramp they ran with big baskets on their backs. Everyone on the ship was selling their blankets, anything they could lay their hands on - not those -. As Galley Boy I had the key to the spud locker and reckoned it was all right to let them have the wooden boxes of spuds as long as we had enough to get to London. Getting ashore was sixpence but coming back was negotiable relating to the urgency.
Richard

Now Richard mate tell the truth, you just did not want to peel all that lot!!!!!

I always wondered where the silver off the UCL boats went , I assumed through the porthole in 101 berth Southampton , no bloody wonder you could never find a teaspoon

Stirling Castle, Southampton 1959. Tourist gallop sailing morning, the head waiter got all the wingers together and showed them a large box in which were all the tea spoons. He then proceeded to lock the box in the store room saying there will be no problems with tea spoons on this voyage.

They used to reckon that if the sea dried up you'd just have to follow the SS&A and P&O and NZ Shipping marked tableware and you'd have no trouble arriving in Qz or NZ.
Richard

Yes Richard, Board of Trade wash up was very popular with UCL, never mind the gold in South Africa, there is a silver mine from Southampton to the Cape.