Remember when.....

Excellent stories John
I knew the Clowes and the Salisbury, I was on the Manchester Merchant and also only a short bus ride from Bolton.
A mate of mine who lived just around the corner from me was on the Liners for years, now deceased.
He was Jack Lomax, sometimes known on the Liners as Dhobi Jack. did you ever come across him.? he became a Bosun.
Cheers
Brian

I think i remember my mother saying to me being born on my mothers birthday SOME BLOODY BIRTHDAY PRESENT

When I was five I said to my mother,
"I came out of your.... What???!!!!!!"

or as the saying goes

Nine months trying to get out and nearly the rest of your life trying to get back in!

CHAPTER TWENTY ONE


NAVICELLA


Next, the Navicella.An experience that I wouldn’t have missed for anything. She was a ship that was crewed by eccentrics. From the skipper down everybody was nuts. Captain Lee must have been eccentric to allow me to do four trips on her and I was one of the quiet ones. In those days the most popular radio show was the Goon Show and Capt Lee had standing instructions that no matter what time or where we were when it came on BBC World Service it was to be played over the ships speaker system and the officer of the watch was to wake him, if he was asleep. Many times I have been steering the ship with half of a set of headphones to my ear sharing them with the third officer who was usually my watch officer. The whole crew used to go around the ship saying “needle nidle noo” and other goon sayings and strangely when we took new crew on they soon got into the spirit of things.
Navicella,s normal trip was from Curacao in the West Indies to the Manchester Ship canal with various grades of lubricating oil. This was a better cargo for us than normal tankers as firstly it gave us more time in port and secondly, when cleaning out the tanks between cargos there were not so many fumes or such terrible sludge to clear out. Also there was not the fire hazard from inflammable spirit
Curacao didn’t consist of much in those days. It certainly wasn’t a tourist resort. A refinery, a town (Willemstad) and the biggest brothel in the world, was all that there was to it. The workers on the refinery and construction sight were shipped in from all over Central and South America and the West Indies. As were the girls in the brothel, known as Happy Valley or officially as Camp Allegro. In Willemstad was a square that was full of bars with jukeboxes. The custom seemed to be that the workers would stagger into a bar, order a drink put some money into the jukebox, dance around to the music until it finished and then stagger out again. Great fun. In the refinery dock there was the Wharf Inn. This was the official establishment for seamen to drink .It was the scene of a lot of wars, allegedly, and it was rigged out accordingly. All the furniture was of bamboo, which meant that it wouldn’t do a lot of damage when thrown around, everything else was screwed down and there were no windows in the place for people to be thrown through.
While on Navicella I was going through my “collecting” stage and Curacao was a prime collector’s haven. I think I reach my pinnacle when I was waiting for the launch to take me back to the tanker dock when I felt lightness under each elbow. I looked to my left and upwards and there was a giant black policeman. I looked to my right and upwards and there was a giant Dutch policeman and they were basically asking me what I intended to do with the brass plate off a lawyers wall, a life ring off the safety station and a ten foot ladder over my shoulder. Being intoxicated I couldn’t think of a reasonable explanation so I agreed to accompany them to the police station where they had a special cell for important visitors such as me. It consisted of an eight foot square cell with a concrete bed with no sheet and a nice air conditioning unit in the shape of a square hole in the wall with bars instead of glass. The fact that just outside was what must have been a swamp or a breeding ground for mosquitoes. The night was spent alternating between trying to get my short sleeved shirt to stretch over the whole of my upper body and arms, and shouting at the Dutch b*****ds to let me out.
Next morning they loaded me into a police launch and took me back to the ship so they could collect a fine, as I had no money on me, which didn’t please the skipper. He claimed that he was saving the money to go ashore and buy his wife a present. My guess is that I was his salvation and that he then had an excuse for not getting a gift.
There are many stories about Navicella and her crew. By rights sailing on her should have been sailing on a ship that we would want to forget. She was one of a class of tanker that was built during world war two at a knock down price to fill the gap that was left by the sinking of so many tankers by the U-Boats. This was another of those ships that wasn’t expected to survive many trips across the Atlantic, but she did. There weren’t a lot of comforts or frills built into her and she was a slow old diesel engined boat that had to be stopped frequently for engine repairs. She was however the source of a lot of entertainment to myself and the others of the crew that I sailed with.
We unloaded some product at Ellesmere Port at the end of the Manchester Ship Canal one weekend and as the refinery workers for some reason weren’t unloading us and we had a whole weekend in port. Most of us went to a local pub in a nearby village for a Saturday afternoon drink, or two, or three or more. I can repeat the story related by the Chief Officer’s wife who was spending a few days aboard while we were working round the coast. She tells how on walking from the village she passed by about six of the crew who were walking in a slow procession down the lane all humming the bridal march and it would appear that two of them were getting married. Now I know that neither of the two hands concerned were batting for the other side, they just fancied making fools of them selves. Anyhow she left them to their games and continued on her way and a little later she was passed by a truck carrying milk churns, it was also carrying the party she’d passed earlier getting married. They were all sat on the back of the truck helping themselves to the contents of the milk churns. I suppose that would be a new experience for most of them. Drinking milk. So she continued her walk and passed a field containing the hands she’d already seen twice. One of them had his shirt off and was endeavouring to engage a cow in a bullfight. It would appear that the cow was blessed with more intelligence than the deckhand as it ignored him and carried on eating grass. What was surprising was that given the amount he must have had to drink that he didn’t get down on all fours and join the cow in eating grass also. I probably would. The tail end of the story was that I was leaning over the rail on the ship and saw these guys come into the oil terminal and creep on hands and knees up to a fire wall surrounding the tanker dock. They were peering over the top and whispering to each other. Suddenly as one, they jumped up and ran towards the ship yelling like red Indians and pretending to fire bows and arrows. I should point out that these were grown men who made their living at sea in all sorts of conditions and at times had control of a ship worth millions of pounds. Not schoolboys or even deck boys.
The unfair part of that incident was that one of them somewhere gained a trophy of a pennant of some sort and climbed the mast to hang it there. On seeing that the skipper remarked to my watch officer “I see your pal Sutton was drunk again in Ellesmere Port”
We were in Rotterdam and had a good night ashore and on the way back to the ship one of the lads complained that it was a long way to walk; he had drunk a fair bit and was struggling. I don’t know whether it was because we were just passing a building sight and there was a wheelbarrow on the sight or whether it was pure coincidence. Whatever it was, somebody climbed over the fence and hoisted the wheelbarrow over as transport for the flagging member of our team-We made our way back to the oil terminal half a dozen drunken seaman, one of us being pushed in a wheelbarrow and then we passed a Shell petrol station. This was before the days of twenty-four hour petrol stations so the station was closed, it was also in the days that Shell stations had petrol pumps with a plastic shell on top that was illuminated.Navicella was a Shell tanker with a shell sign on the funnel. This shell on the petrol pump was just too good to ignore so I borrowed it. Now we were half a dozen seamen with one of our number being pushed in a wheelbarrow with a Shell sign on his knee.
On arrival at the ship we had a discussion regarding the usefulness of the wheelbarrow on board. One of the engine room hands pointed out that in his younger days there were always wheelbarrows to transport coal to stoke the fires. We pointed out that Navicella was a motor vessel and burned oil but someone suggested that it would be handy to have the wheelbarrow on board in case we ever ran out of oil. With sensible reasoning like that the only answer was to carry it up the gangplank.
The shell sign did not present such a problem as we had a Jack staff at the stern of the ship where the Red Ensign was flown and that jack staff didn’t have a Shell sign on it so it seemed reasonable to lash a sign to it.
By now it’s two or three o’clock in the morning but the job had to be done. I managed to lower the jack staff and wire the shell sign to the top of it and it had to be secure as who knows what weather we could face in the English Channel so I made sure it was secure.
Next morning we left Rotterdam and once we had dropped the pilot and were in open sea the Skipper as was routine took a walk around the ship making sure everything was shipshape. His comment to my watch officer on retuning to the bridge was “I see that your pal Sutton was drunk again in Rotterdam” He suggested it would be a good idea to remove it and would Sutton see to it right away. It was far more difficult sober to remove from the jackstaff than it had been to lash there while drunk.
After two trips on the Navicella I was getting some flack from the lady I was seeing at that time. I was seeing her for one weekend every six weeks as her family had moved to Cleveleys and although I had a motor cycle it was a difficult relationship so I promised that I would only do short trips in the future. However I needed to do one more trip on Navicella.
Back to Curacao for another load of lubricating oil. It was usual practice on Navicella for the company to radio our orders to us two or three days before arriving at Curacao. This time it was a shock because we were to load for Hamburg which meant that the trip would be longer than the normal six weeks. We were all looking forward to Hamburg which had the reputation of being a fun city however the edge was taken off it for me as I had told my girlfriend that the trip was six weeks and then I’d do short voyages. Never mind Hamburg was worth a bit of ear ache. Allegedly.
Navicella arrived at Hamburg and was finished tying up by one AM and Captain Lee as usual looked after his crew. The ships agent was waiting for us to dock with our mail and German money for us to go ashore and I can imagine that he was not best pleased to be called out just to keep a few sailors happy but that was his job and I can imagine Captain Lee putting pressure on him to keep his lads happy.
It was probably two AM by the time we had ourselves showered ,dressed and collected our money but then we were away to the bright lights, And what bright lights they were at two o’clock in the morning. Several of us set out together and as we were walking down a street in St Pauli the hot spot area we past a side street with a wall most of the way across it with a large sign saying “Out of bounds to Allied Personnel” it was a leftover from the occupation years. I was about to walk past in ignorance but my pal John Anderson, who had been to Hamburg before dragged me round the barrier into Skipperstrasse.This was the first time that I had seen women in shop windows and although it was intriguing we didn’t stay long. The place was there purely for carnal activities and quite frankly we had a thirst so we carried on our search for the Reeperbahn which was where I was reliably informed all the action took place. While on Navicella my main drinking partner was a Scot from Edinburgh, the same John Anderson that dragged me down Skipperstrasse, we usually went ashore together and so it was in Hamburg. The other hands with whom we went ashore soon disappeared to do their own thing and John and I persevered. Bearing in mind that we hadn’t started drinking until after two AM by four we were just getting into our stride. Most of the bars on the Reeperbahn close only to clear up so we agreed that if we got split up that we would meet at eight AM in a certain bar. We did get split up but sure enough John was at the bar at eight. We decided that it wasn’t worth going back aboard the ship as it was quite a way and we would only come ashore again anyhow so we treated ourselves to some breakfast and set about the days drinking. Sometime during the day John decided that he needed more money and as he had some in a bank in Scotland and he would get it wired to him in Hamburg. This was before the days of credit cards and the modern way that we do this sort of thing today but we set out for the main part of Hamburg to do the deed. We obviously didn’t stand a hope in hell of getting this money as by the time we had found an American Express office we were both well on our way to LaLa land. It is surprising that we never finished up in jail for attempted bank robbery as neither of us looked like the sort of person that would have money in a bank, anywhere.After several telephone calls to god knows who in Scotland John gave up and we made our way back to the Reeperbahn to do some more drinking. Once again we agreed to meet in the designated bar a eight the following morning should we get separated during the nights festivities and sure enough we went our separate ways later and met up in the morning as arranged.
By this time we were starting to get a bit high, and not necessarily through alcohol so we decided to get back aboard and shower and change in order that we presented a better front to the world. On the way back to the ship I collected an English newspaper as I thought my watch officer might appreciate that but on retuning to the oil terminal the ship was gone. It turned out that they had unloaded some of their cargo and moved down river to unload the rest. The location they were at required the services of a launch to go to and fro so we found one and when we got to the ship we told him to return after thirty minutes, and went aboard. As I’d bought a paper for the second officer who was my watch officer I sought him out before going to freshen up and he was on deck with the skipper and another officer that I didn’t know, he looked at me and the conversation went something like this.
Officer “Who are you?”
Me “Sutton”
Officer “What do you do?”
Me”AB.Who are you?”
Officer”I,m the new first officer”
Me “Nice to meet you chief”
Chief Officer “Where have you been?”
Me “ashore”
Chief Officer “What are you doing now?”
Me “Going to my cabin to clean up, chief”
Officers “Never mind getting cleaned up. Get some work clothes on and get some work done.We,re painting over the side”
Me “OK chief” and made my way to the accommodation.
There was a surprise waiting for me when I got to my cabin. Three young ladies (I use the word purely because being a generous soul I wouldn’t want to label them with an insulting title) in various stages of undress. Apparently some of the deckhands had gone ashore to a local bar, made their acquaintance and suggested a party on board. The girls agreed and they all made their way back to the ship with large amount of booze. Somehow or other the new chief officer discovered their presence and suggested that the leave the ship and the response from the crew was to the effect that he should do to himself what they were intending to do with the girls. He made a complaint to Captain Lee who suggested that he forget it as they were his lads ,they worked hard and were entitled to a bit of fun That was the new chief officers first introduction to the eccentricities of Navicella.The bits of fun were in my cabin and I needed a shower and reasoned if they didn’t mind populating my cabin in a state of semi undress they shouldn’t object to me being in my own cabin in a state of full undress .The launch was returning and I had to be showered and dressed in time to skip aboard as I had to meet a young? Lady? In a bar in St Pauli. So I stripped off and made my way to the showers. It is worth noting that none of them swooned at the sight of me naked. Showered and changed into clean clothes, John and I asked one of the deckhands to keep watch for the launch as we knew we had to get aboard before the chief officer saw us. The launch arrived, John and I hurried down the gangplank and the launch took of. As we were leaving the ships side the new chief officer looked over the side, saw us and shouted something. We couldn’t hear what he was saying so we assumed that he was wishing us “Bon Voyage” so we gave him a friendly wave. That was the new chief officer’s second introduction to the eccentricities of Navicella.
The following morning we met up in our usual bar at eight AM and then decided that it was time to call it a day as far as ST Pauli and the Reeperbahn were concerned. We had been drinking for almost three days and spent most of our money so we made our way back to the ship. I got changed into my working clothes, without the benefit of the female audience and turned too on deck. The new chief officer spotted me, made a bee line for me and told me to report to the boatswain and tell him that the chief suggested that I go over the side and paint the name on the bow. Not a pleasant job. Hanging on to a painting stage with a three day hangover trying to paint the foot high letters forty foot up over the dirty waters of whatever river it was going past Hamburg. By dinner (lunch) time I had had enough so I went down to the paint locker for a sleep. John Anderson was the Lamptrimmer who job it was to be in charge of issuing paint and brushes and he had the key so nobody could disturb me. Being a Scot he was a more experienced drinker than me so he carried on working for the rest of the day...
We were sailing from Hamburg the following morning so there was one night ashore left and we all decided that we would go to the local bar. The fact that the girls that had been on board may have influenced the decision regarding the venue. Captain Lee had expected that we would require more money and had instructed the shipping agent to bring some to make sure that we didn’t go short. As it happens we were all OK for money and nobody took up his offer of a further sub against wages. I remember him walking up and down the flying bridge shouting “You bastards I got this money for you and now I’m stuck with all these German Marks.I,ll never get you all extra subs again. Someone please take some of this f****ing money”
When we got settled in the bar we were joined by the girls and for some reason one of them took a shine to me. What I didn’t realise that one of the locals was her boy friend and he kept giving me the evil eye. I don’t know why, I had nothing to do with the performance the previous nights but he still kept scowling at me. Of course this was great entertainment and I started to wind him up until finally he threw his beer over me which was a signal for all hell to let loose and we all finished up on the street with my shipmates making sure that I didn’t get mobbed. After a while he realised that not only had the Germans lost the Second World War they were going to lose this one as well and scarpered.We decided that there may be reinforcements coming so made our way back to the ship and the following morning said goodbye to Hamburg. Besides my shirt hadn’t been ripped, just soaked in beer. Got away with that one.
Curacao and then back to Canvey Island to pay off so that I could keep my promise to the girl friend and sign on ships doing shorter trips. By the time we retuned to the UK the new first officer had become the first officer having become completely familiar with the eccentricities of Navicella.Just to confirm completely the eccentricities as I was packing my bag prior to leaving the ship and officer apprentice came down to the crew accommodation on the orders of Captain Lee to claim the Shell sign so he could get the electrician to install it on his bedside table as a reading lamp.



CHAPTER TWENTY TWO


BLACK PRINCE


The next ship was the Black Prince for a trip round the Med again. Our first stop was Tripoli in Libya and this was the days that for some reason we had troops stationed out there. We had a deputation from the army camp.”Would we care for a game of football?” There wasn’t much else to do on a Saturday afternoon so we arranged it thinking that they had a nice pitch laid out, as one would expect the army to have. They picked us up in army trucks and took us out into what seemed like the desert and there was a pitch laid out, in sand and only sand. The lines were marked by dragging some sort of implement around for the penalty area etc.Soldiers are usually fit. Merchant seamen are usually drunk (in Port).They slaughtered us; I think the score was something like twenty two nil. I was in goal and lost count and the army barely broke sweat. So they took us back to the camp and fed us. Some time in the afternoon one of our lot invited the team back to the ship for a drink. We finished up in our recreation room (yes we had one of those on the Black Prince) and got stuck into the beer. As usual after a few drinks a sing song developed but soon that got a bit boring so someone suggested a game of “sing, sing or show us your ring” This is a traditional game whereby everybody points at one of the company and chants, inviting that person to stand on the table, sing a song, tell a joke, recite a poem (obviously dirty) or failing any of these drop, their pants and expose their ****.Not a pretty sight. After a few hours of this we put them back in their army trucks and sent them back to barracks, well pissed.
Next port was Alexandria in Egypt and as we arrived in the night we were met about a hundred meters from the jetty by a harbour boat to take a line ashore for us to tie up. This was normal procedure in some ports where there were no tugboats available. So we lowered a mooring rope to them and they moved toward the jetty shouting the usual “slack away Johnny, slack away Johnny which we duly complied with. This went on for a while until almost a full mooring rope had been fed out through the hawsepipe.Just then a tug boat came alongside with the intention of assisting us to tie up and the other boat sloped off into the darkeness,having cut the rope and making off with more than half. At least they had a profitable night. Our skipper was severely dischuffed.
In ports like Alexandria e were blessed with characters coming aboard trying to con us or steal from us or anything that could somehow get what little money we had out of our pockets, or try and buy stolen paint or paint brushes,rope,wire tinned food,cigarettes,anything.One Arab came board with a diamond secreted on his person. Picked out the simplest looking member of the crew he could and proceeded with his spiel that this diamond was stolen and worth a fortune but I could have it for one hundred pounds sterling but only if I promised not to mention it to anyone until we were well out of Egyptian waters on pain of both of us being put in prison. He proved to me how genuine the diamond was by scratching the mirror with it and only diamonds will scratch glass, as everybody knows, also he cupped the diamond in his hand and showed me how it glowed in the dark. As it happened I couldn’t see it glowing but he said that this was a genuine diamond and it was obviously worth a lot more than one hundred pounds sterling once I got it back to the UK
I pointed out to him that one hundred pounds sterling was a lot more than I could get my hands on so as he thought I was a jolly good fellow he reduced the price to fifty pounds sterling but I mustn’t tell anybody. All this theatre went on with him looking furtively around to see if anyone was watching and saying I mustn’t tell anybody etc, etc.When I said that there was no way that I could get fifty pounds sterling he then asked how much I had which was about ten pounds stirling.OK I could have it for ten pounds but I definitely mustn’t tell any of the crew as they would all want one and it would ruin the market for him. Which seemed strange as previously it was exclusive having been stolen. When I checked my pocket and found no pounds sterling and told him that one of his countrymen must have stolen it he wanted to know if I could borrow a fiver of one of the crew and I could have it for that but only because he liked me and would like me to have this valuable diamond. I was quite touched and almost burst into tears but instead, I told him to f**k off.
One of the other invaders we had in Alex was a man looking to do some work, dohbie (washing), washing dishes or running messages. As proof of his reliability he produced written references from one of the crew of a British ship that he’d worked for in the past. He carefully produced this piece of paper and unfolded it spreading it out on the mess room table, proudly, for all of us to see. He obviously was quite proud of this reference and had had it some time, I don’t know if it ever got any work for him as it read some thing along the lines as follows. From memory.
TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN
This is to introduce to Abdul who is probably asking you to give him some work in return for money.
Don’t, he is a lazy thieving bastard who has dirty habits and if you let him into your accommodation he will steal you blind. He will probably offer you his virgin sister when she gets home from school.Dont accept his offer as she works in the local whorehouse and hasn’t seen a school for probably twenty years. One of our crew took him up on the offer and has been attending a clinic ever since. We let him use our heads (toilet) once and everybody caught crabs.
So be warned
Your friend
A Scouser.
Having read the glowing testimonial and told him how impressive it was we said with regret the skipper wouldn’t let us have anyone doing jobs on board but only this morning a crew member from the ship astern of us came aboard looking for someone to do odd jobs around the crew quarters...
We went on to Beirut, it was the days before the troubles and at that time it was probably the most sophisticated and cultured city along the southern coast of the Mediterranean. Wandering around with one of my shipmates who had docked there before he dragged me down an alley saying “you’ve got to see this” and the next thing we’re in a brothel. But what a brothel. The women were like models and the bulk of the customers, sat around drinking tea and perusing the stock were what looked like Arab Sheiks, in their full costume who every now and again would sent a henchman over to talk to one of the girls and when the henchman came back both the sheik and the girl would disappear into the nether regions of the building.
The produce on sale here was definitely beyond the financial means of a couple of merchant seamen and I was not in the market for that sort of recreation as I had someone waiting at home so we made our excuses and wandered off to the nearest bar.
Malta was the next port of call and apparently the place to go in Malta used to be the “Gut”. I gave it a miss and wandered out of town a bit and stumbled across a small bar with a few Maltese locals and sat at the end of the bar were two large naval types. They were, by the look of their uniforms chief petty officers and as they were wearing what the navy call “fore and aft rig” (similar to officers) they probably would be medics or engine room artificers. The enduring picture that I still have ,what must be at least fifty years later is of them sat there with drinks in front of them, holding hands and looking into each others eyes.
After the Black Prince I took some time off so that I could visit my girl friend in Cleveleys.At the time I had a motorcycle so it was not too difficult to get up to Cleveleys at the weekend. I have to say that owning a motorcycle in those days was most unusual for an AB and the only other hand that I knew was a man called Keith Spencer. There wasn’t really much similarity between us as his bike was a Vincent Black Shadow thousand cc and mine was a Francis Barnett one two five the other difference was that his family owned a large haulage company and it would appear that there was money to burn. Still my little bike served its purpose. It also got me the nickname “Put Put” which I lived with for the rest of my time at sea.
Some time previously I had promised Joan, (lady friend) that I would sign on with Manchester Liners again and stick to four week trips with ten days in port. Unfortunately there were no berths going at the time I was looking so I was hanging around kicking my heels. One way I had of passing my time was to go to the Derby st Ice Rink in Cheetham Hill and get some practice in. Hopefully one day I would get some work on ice. Some hope. It really surprised me to see a member of the Navicella, s crew. He was a West Indian called Fernandez who originally joined us as a stowaway. He was found hiding in the engine room some days after leaving Curacao on one of my previous trips. He had no papers, no money and there was no chance of him getting ashore legally. Nobody could find out his past, which was probably a bit murky and all we knew about him was that he originated from Trinidad and didn’t want to go back there. The skipper being a kind hearted sort signed him on as a supernumerary and had him set on in the engine room doing cleaning jobs. He stayed for a long time and probably had to stay until the ship was scrapped as without a passport or seaman’s discharge book no country would take him.
Anyhow there he was skating around the ice at Derby Street which was a bit of a surprise to me as firstly one doesn’t expect West Indians to skate, secondly one also didn’t expect merchant seamen in port to skate and thirdly what was he doing in Manchester anyhow?



CHAPTER TWENTY THREE


NAVICELLA AGAIN
It turned out that the Navicella was in dry-dock in Manchester Docks and had been there some time but was due to sail in the next few days with most of the old crew that I had sailed with before, including John Anderson so I had to go and see everybody ,just for old times sake. Bad move. By the time I’d had a drink (or two) with the crew they had persuaded me to ask the chief officer for a job. By now he was no longer the New Chief Officer as the crew had converted him to a proper member of the Navicella lunatic asylum. When I asked him about a job he said there was a vacancy which he was just about to fill but I could have the berth, with usual proviso that I behave myself.
The day I took my kit aboard and settled in a cabin an apprentice turned up at the door with the famous Shell sign compliments of Captain Lee as he no longer required a reading light in his cabin as he was being relieved by a Captain Hedley. What a dirty trick, had I known that captain Lee was leaving, I probably wouldn’t have rejoined and as it turned out had I known about captain Hedley I certainly would have run a mile. Though on reflection I’m glad I stayed as it was more fun with a supposedly tough skipper than a compliant one.
Two days later we set off down the canal headed for Curacao as usual. I had spoken to the light of my life and promised that the trip would only be six weeks and then I would definitely, definitely sail only on Manchester Liners doing four week trips. Within a few days of getting to sea I had my first run in with the New Skipper. On his ship inspection, when he looked into my cabin and saw the Shell sign on display he gave the order that it should be disposed of. When I pointed out that the previous skipper had kept it as a decoration it was to no avail. It had to go. That evening we had a ceremony, when we had our beer ration we propped the sign on the aft rail, said a few words over it, those wearing hats removed them out of respect and we launched it into the sea. Before doing so we had attempted to seal the end, after putting a message in it to the effect that it and we were victims of a tyrannical skipper and anyone finding said sign should return it to Shell’s head office in London. I actually think it sank straight away.
What wicked tricks are played on us by life. As usual two days from Curacao we received our loading orders giving details of different grades and which ports fully expecting to be heading back to ports in the UK.What we actually got was four ports in Aussie and one in New Zealand. This threw the cat among the pigeons big time and I knew that the dog house was going to be my residence in the not very far off future. A grovelling letter was written to be posted in Curacao explaining that the gods of shell had dealt the hand and swearing that this was the last tanker trip. To no avail ,when we arrived in Aussie I received a letter in the terms of what the American troops used to call a “Dear John” She had met a professional footballer and our association was at an end. How foolish, in those days footballers were not paid as they are these days and after a brief spell of semi affluence they would probably spend their lives skint whereas if she had stayed with me we would always be skint so she wouldn’t have to go through the ignominy of a comedown in life.However,prior to arriving in Australia we had a trip to make.Navicella was a slow old tub and once we’d cleared the Panama canal we had a spell of thirty days at sea and apart from small island seen in the distance somewhere in the Pacific we did not sight land until arrival at Brisbane.
Things got tense, some of the crew were not talking to other members of the crew and there were a number of sallies onto the main deck for fisticuffs. Anything to break the monopoly pleased our simple minds and one of the diversions was when we were painting the officers accommodation passageways. The chief engineer had a cat that was absolutely phsyco.I suppose it fitted in with the rest of the beings aboard. While we were painting it would sneak up behind one of us, sink his claws or teeth into our ankle and the race off to his lair in the chiefs cabin. In the tropics all the doors were kept hooked back and a curtain pulled across the doorway for privacy there was also a hook to semi close the door so that during the night unwanted visitors would have to unhook the door and this would probably wake the occupant. The cat would race through the curtain always assuming that there was nothing behind it, however we got fed up with being bitten and scratched and some wag hooked the door forward. Next time the cat scratched and ran he ran into a solid door
We arrived at Brisbane early afternoon and squared everything away in anticipation to a run ashore when we received our “subs”. The ships agent was seen going to the skipper’s cabin mid-afternoon and a representation was made to Captain Hedley for the subs so we could go ashore. The hand that made the enquiry was told that quitting time in port was five PM and money could be drawn after that time as he was well aware that we had thirty day thirsts and as soon as we were paid we would be away. So about six o’clock we hit the port. That was a memorable night, as far as I can remember. Brisbane at that time was the only place in the Commonwealth were there were legal brothels and it would appear that there was a lot of overtime earned that night. Rumour has it that as one set of Navicellas crew was leaving another team was rolling up for some action.
Elsewhere the booze was flowing and I was sat in a bar with some likely lads, among them were two Maltese brothers. They were firemen (Stokers) and although Navicella was a motor ship, firemen were still signed-on even though there was very little fire to stoke. Also sitting with us was Fernandez the West Indian stowaway. On the other side of the bar were a bunch of Aussie soldiers, suddenly the stowaway jumped up, broke a bottle on the edge of the table and said
“Come on lads lets go and sort out those squaddies”
One of the brothers stood up, without saying a word hit Fernandez, laid him out clean on the floor and sat down saying “Stupid bastard he’ll get us killed”. We all left the Fernandez lying there and carried on drinking. After a while he came round sat at the table and joined in the drinking as though nothing had happened.
We all made it back to the ship that night though most of us could not say how but we were well aware that the ship was sailing the following day so there was little chance of a prolonged run ashore.
Next morning we awoke to cries of who has a drink. It was custom to have a “hair of the dog" the morning after a heavy bout. In turn we went round the crew’s quarters looking for something in the way of a “livener”. It was as the desert, we even went round to the engine room crew’s quarters on the scrounge, without avail.
It was decided that none of us were fit to work without a hair of the dog so a kitty was raised and four of us were elected to go and hunt down some alcoholic beverage. Of course Sutton was one of the four; it seemed the natural selection together with Scots John and two others. We set out in search of somewhere that supplied “take outs”. I cannot remember the licensing laws in that part of Australia but I do remember that we had to visit several bars before we found somewhere that would sell us what we were looking for and if memory serves me we bought it over the bar as there were no liquor shops around. Not having any idea where we were and how to walk back to the ship we took a taxi which dropped us outside the gates of the oil terminal, from there we wended our way through the terminal carrying our kitbag of booze. Singing helps the walking process after a few drinks and we eventually arrived at the oil jetty quite proud of ourselves for having been successful in procuring the required medical supplies.
Captain Hedley and the chief officer were waiting at the top of the gangway and they were not in the mood to be soothed by our musical efforts. Going up the gangway I was first as I had the supplies and as I reached the top and stepped onto the deck the captain took the bag of drink from me and said to an apprentice “Escort these men to their cabins” I really am convinced that Captain Hedley had watched the film “Bligh of the Bounty” many times and practiced (not very successfully) being Charles Laughton as the masterful skipper. Having spent considerable effort and other people’s money to acquire the drink I was loath to surrender it to the skipper but he took it anyhow and when I enquired as to when it would be returned to us he suggested that if we behaved ourselves it would be returned, possibly at the next port. This wasn’t really the answer I was looking for so I turned round told my companions that I wouldn’t work until I got my beer and walked off. The followed me.
Four of us sat on the loading dock not really knowing what to do next. The skipper was walking up and down the flying bridge with his hands clasped behind his back, obviously as he’d seen Charles Lawton do in the Bligh film. We would occasionally shout to him that if he gave us our beer we would return on board and the ship could sail. As all four of us were Able Seamen we knew that the ship couldn’t sail without us as it would be below the legal compliment of qualified hands and this would not only be a contravention of board of trade rules but could be contravening the terms of the ships insurance in case of an accident.
After a while I started to find the inactivity starting to pall and seeing some potatoes on the dock that had fallen out of the bags when stores were being loaded I decided that they should be put aboard as they probably were paid for and it would be a waste of companies money to leave them behind. So I started to throw them aboard the ship and by coincidence most of them seemed to head in the general direction of the skipper. Soon the other three joined in and in no time at all we had cleared the dock of the company’s potatoes. While we were throwing the potatoes we were shouting to the skipper”Soapy, give us our booze back.”(At a later time, while I was on the wheel the captain asked me why the crew called him Soapy. I had to explain that in Trafford Park , Manchester there was a soap factory owned by Hedley’s Soaps, his name was Hedley ,hence the name.” That’s very good” he said “I hadn’t thought of that “.Probably during his career as an officer he hadn’t encountered any crews as eccentric as the Navicellas crew.)As it happens none of the missiles hit the skipper, he was quite nimble and we weren’t the best shots in the world and probably had enough sense, even in our inebriated state, not to hit the skipper with a missile.
Potatoes gone, things got boring again. Could this have been what they call a Mexican standoff?
The decision was made that we should adjourn to a bar and take stock of our situation as it is easier to make decisions while clutching a beverage so we made our way back to the entrance of the termiunal.Somewhere along the way we lost John and by the time we arrived at the gates the gateman had been warned to close the gates’ didn’t make it in time and when he tried to stop us physically we simply pushed him out of the way and left the premises. Apparently John had seen the gate being closed and set off looking for a ladder to use in climbing over the terminal fence. As it happens he found a ladder and climbed over to join us sat on the kerb waiting for a taxi to take us to a bar. It should be realised that these are not normal clear thinking people that were involved in this escapade. We were “nutters”sober, it was a requirement needed to be a member of the crew, with drink in us there wasn’t a commonsense thought between the lot of us. At one stage we had a visit from the Chief Officer, having gone through the process of being the New Chief Officer he was now almost one of us. This time he was serious and asked us to get back aboard so that Navicella could sail. There was a chance that we could miss the tide which would put the costs up and put us behind schedule for the other ports in Aussie.At this stage we felt that we could negotiate and agreed to return if the drinks were returned on boarding the ship. We had forgotten that we had already been through these negotiations and our offer had been rejected out of hand by the skipper
The New Chief gave up and made his way back to the ship but only minutes later a black Hillman Minx came screaming round the corner and stopped near us. We were under the impression that a taxi had turned up until four of the biggest dock policemen climbed out. They must have put them in the car in the morning with a shoe horn. “Right lads lets stop messing about and get back aboard” One cop took each of us by the elbow and started to lead us back to the terminal gate. The other three went peacefully but me being an idiot decided that if I didn’t get my drink back I was not going aboard. I informed my carer of that fact and as he wasn’t in agreement with my stance he grabbed me by the neck and informed me that I had no choice.
Had I been sober and in control of my faculties, such as they were, I would have realised that I was tilting at windmills as there was no chance that the dock police were going to brook any arguments on the matter. No matter I reached behind and grabbed his collar and pulled him over my shoulder and onto the ground and then sat on him. His colleagues, seeing that he was having a problem and that their charges were going peacefully left one of their number to escort the men to the ship and came back to assist my adversary.
It developed into one cop on each arm and the other putting handcuffs on me. Then I made another big mistake, one that was guaranteed not to endear me to an Australian policeman.
“You can’t put handcuffs on me you bastards.You lot are the bloody convicts we threw you out of our country for being criminals” It earned me a thump right in the gut but being fairly drunk I didn’t feel it. They dragged me through the terminal and, if I say so myself I put up sterling resistance but there could be only one outcome. We got to the end of the oil jetty and I had one last effort at gaining some sort of brief victory from the ultimate defeat. The tide was almost halfway out and on either side of the jetty was a fifteen foot drop into some ugly looking viscous mud. The jetty was about five foot wide and fifty foot between the shore and the ship and they had to negotiate it while struggling with me. I put it to them that if they attempted to get me down the jetty in handcuffs, one or more of them would finish up in the mud, probably I would go in also but to me it wouldn’t matter as I was wearing working clothes but they were wearing their nice clean uniforms. We could do a deal. Take the handcuffs off and let me walk down the jetty under my own steam and nobody would take a mud bath or take a chance and fight me all the way. To me in my state of inebriation it seemed like some sort of victory but on reflection I suppose I could have made the decision that I would go aboard earlier and saved myself some bruising (I didn’t get my shirt ripped though) Agreement was reached and they removed the cuffs and walked me down the jetty to Navicella.At the bottom of the gangway I shook hands with each of them and thanked them for their assistance in getting me back to the ship. One of them made the suggestion that if I was ever back in Brisbane I should get in touch with them and maybe we could get together for a few rounds in the gym. Funny sense of humour these Aussies.I went up the gangway and to the stern of the ship which was my mooring station for leaving port and fell asleep on a coil of mooring rope.
At a later date one of the officers told me that he had seen the dock police climb out of their car and they made a point of removing their truncheons so they really weren’t such bad types.
Sydney was the next port and after leaving Brisbane, John Anderson took it on himself to take the lead in the rebel club. He refused to work until we had our alcoholic supplies returned. He was the Lamptrimmer,a job that dates back to sailing ship days when there were only oil lamps on board ship and one man had the duty to make sure that these were kept full of oil and the wicks up to scratch. Of course that duty was no longer the main job of the Lamp trimmer although there were oil lamps aboard in case of anchoring and having no electrics aboard. His main job was to look after the paint locker and he kept the keys. Without him we could not turn too and do any painting. That really upset us (I think) The Captain true to Captain Bligh form issued orders that if Anderson didn’t turn too and work he was to receive no food and what’s more he would be paid off in Sydney and sent back to England on the next Shell tanker heading that way (Probably to be hung or flogged round the fleet) It was ridiculous really as we just drew more food from the galley and gave it to John. He also banned Sutton from going ashore in any of the ports round the Australian coast and a threat of a bad discharge stamped in my discharge book.Thats a book that is carried through the whole career at sea and a bad discharge would prevent me working with some of the better shipping companies.
Waking up later in the day and at sea I decided that I still wanted to recover my kitbag full of booze so I took a trip to the Captains cabin and knocked on the door demanding the return of my possessions. He told me politely to go away, skippers were like that, nice and polite. When I persisted he threatened that if I persisted in bothering him he would have me manacled to the flying bridge until we arrived at Sydney. I then suggested that would be stupid as I had watches to keep and it would be difficult to steer the ship in manacles. We reached a compromise. I bugger off and he would get some sleep. Seemed reasonable to me so I went back to my cabin.Alchohol helps with logical reasoning .I think.
Next day while keeping my watch on the wheel the skipper paid a visit to the bridge. Having told me already that I was banned from going ashore I informed him that I had to go ashore in Sidney as I was having trouble reading the compass card and needed some reading glasses. He was a disbelieving sod and suggested that it was a load of old bull and the ban still stood. Later that night while on the wheel again I steered a somewhat erratic course and the second officer enquired what the problem was and while squinting at the compass and doing some theatricals I persuaded him that I definitely needed reading glasses. On the following watch the skipper informed me that I could go ashore in Sydney but I was to have no money for drinks only for glasses and if I came back without glasses there would be big trouble.
Sidney. I got ashore early as I needed to be at the opticians before closing time and when the man gave me the card to read he told me that there was no way that I needed reading glasses so I had to come clean and explain the situation. Being an Aussie he understood where I was coming from and to the amusement of the technical staff had them make me up some glasses with plain glass in the cheapest frames they had on the premises and gave me a receipt for twice the price that I actually paid. I still have those glasses fifty plus years on. The downside was that for the rest of the trip whenever I was on the wheel I had to wear those stupid glasses. Still they served their purpose.
Australia in those days had strange drinking laws and a feature of this was the “five o’clock swill”. People left work at five and had an hour to imbibe enough beer to get a start before getting a carryout and going to a private party. I met up with a couple of the crew in a pub near the ship and made the effort to get outside enough beer to justify the expense of the glasses. At closing time when we enquired about finding a drinking hole for the evening we were told that if we didn’t have a private party laid on then the only way to get a drink was have a meal .We found our way to a restaurant in the middle of Sidney. It could have been an Italian restaurant, we didn’t notice. All we knew was that we could get a drink. We had to order food, which we didn’t really want so I chose the cheapest meal on the menu which happened to be “spaghetti marinera”.Up to that time I had never eaten spaghetti ,it wasn’t the sort of food that was eaten much in England and when it arrived I didn’t fancy it with all that funny looking bits of shellfish sticking out of it so I just left it in front of me and kept ordering more beer while the chefs best efforts lay there and gradually congealed into a disgusting looking mess. Still I had food in front of me and if the constabulary paid a visit the proprietor would be seen to be complying with the drink laws.
John Anderson joined us and we were very surprised to see him ashore, thinking that he would now be on his way to England and the gallows at least. We asked the question as to how he managed to get shore leave and not paid off and detained. Apparently Soapy took him to the Shore Supervisor at Shells Sidney office and the reception they got was “this happens on every f***king ship that comes down this coast, now sod off and don’t bother me with trivialities “.Soapy reinstated him to lamp trimmer and told him to get ashore for the evening, somehow John had managed to trace us. He was now OK but my ban apparently still stood as I never got another draw all the way round the Australian coast and I still had to wear those stupid glasses when steering the ship, for the rest of the voyage.
Things were pretty quiet in the following ports as we had pretty well run out of energy and back pay to sub although we had one or two little diversions. Leaving Melbourne we had stowed the mooring ropes away and the deck crew were washing down and clearing up. I was washing in the midship shelter deck where all the store lockers were located. I could hear voices and laughter coming from a locker which I knew was the bonded store where the booze and cigarettes were kept. I also knew that the deck crew had worked hard loading the stores, including quite an amount of beer and now the Chief Steward was in the locker with the other stewards, none of whom had assisted in the graft, sampling”breakages”.The door was normally kept secure with a heavy padlock which was hanging open on the hasp so I slipped it through both parts of the hasp and left, giggling.They were locked in there four hours and nobody figured out who was responsible. Not that they could prove any how. Someone had filched a porters trolley while loading stores in Melbourne, I found it in my bed looking distinctly as though someone was in my bunk with their knees up under the blankets’ I was taking it out of the bunk when John came in (I think he was the culprit).He looked at me and I looked at him and we both started giggling as we both knew where the porters trolley was going next. We grabbed one end each and scurried down the flying bridge and into the Chief Officers cabin and into his bunk. We knew that he was on watch and would have a nice surprise when he came from the bridge to turn in.
One of Captain Bligh’s (sorry Hedley’s) foibles was to stick to the companies rules regarding beer issue which was one can of beer a night. That was the company rule and as everybody knows all budding Captain Bligh’s stick to the company’s rules. What the skipper didn’t take into consideration was that Aussie beer comes in cans that are twice the size of the English cans and also the alcohol content was higher. We took our weeks ration on a Friday night and everybody got pissed.Soapy never figured it out and nobody was going to tell him, even the officers.
We stopped in Auckland, New Zealand for two nights where a lovely New Zealand lady tried to persuade me to jump ship and stay with her but after trying to find my way back to the ship in the morning I figured that the country still had a long way to go before it was civilised. Just another one of my wildly inaccurate predictions.
After New Zealand it was back to Curacao and load for England to pay off. I didn’t get a bad discharge as was promised but I didn’t get invited back and I didn’t try to change their minds. I still have a lot of great memories of Navicella and in addition I still have the glasses. I don’t know why as they are just plain glass and the frames are so horrible that I would never have used them with prescription lenses.
I came back to England with no hope of repairing my lost love; in fact I never even thought to telephone and try to resuscitate it. I was also getting the idea that there was more to life than the merchant navy, getting drunk and fighting and I could see myself in a few years time being one of the characters of Manchester docks with a kitbag and a couple of bottles of beer ,that’s all. If I had thought more about it I would have realised that I had spent seven years visiting some of the great spots in the world and the only thing that I knew about them was the nearest bar to that particular port. I had been to Paris never visited the Eiffel tower,Pireaus which is close to Athens and the Acropolis, never got there,Istanbul,didn’t visit the famous Mosque, Beirut only saw a brothel and so on for seven years at sea. My world, as with most other merchant seamen, consisted of finding a bar with some action and drinking myself silly.
It was impossible to get a job ashore as at that time I was twenty two and accustomed to earning reasonable money, if I left the sea I would immediately be eligible for national service and the idea of twenty eight shillings a week did not appeal to me. It was possible to try for a mate’s certificate and become an officer but that would mean studying which was not my forte and even if I did become an officer I would still have to go to sea for long periods, in addition I would have to toe the line of the company for which I was working. I could see myself as junior third officer for the rest of my life. In later life when I was recruiting and training men to sell insurance on “commission only” I interviewed many ex merchant navy officers who just were not trained for anything but the sea, they had spent all that time and money becoming an officer, get to a reasonable age, married with kids and decide that they wanted to spend more time with their families .All that was open to them were jobs that basically needed no qualifications recognised ashore. In addition to all these negatives there was the problem of having an aunt who was really my mother and also having no base to call home. It was easier to live far away and never have to be exposed to the stigma of illegitimacy which still bothered me, and my mother more so, even in the fifties so I thought Canada would be a place to go to solve my problems. Avoid national service, not have to explain to people about my relationship with my aunt/mother and have an excuse for not having a proper home base.
All my life I have made decisions that are life changing, without the benefit of advice from parents or family and with very little forthought.It didn’t occur to me that I didn’t have enough money to support myself or that I might not get a job when I arrived in Canada ,I just decided to go. It was one of the many decisions that I made without too much thought and I usually was lucky enough to get through problems that came from lack of forward thought...
Having decided that Canada was the place to solve my problems I set the ball rolling and applied to emigrate, I also booked a passage on Manchester Liners for Montreal.





CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR


LAST DAYS AT SEA.


In order to accumulate enough money and also to be in the UK at the time my passage was booked I signed on with Manchester liners for a few trips to Montreal and back and in the process made enquiries about work. Montréal was never the best place for an Englishman to seek work. Most French Canadians would not give the time of day if you asked for it in English and to prospect for work seemed to be an absolute waste of time.
My last two trips were on the Manchester Spinner which was one of Manchester Liners newer ships. Apart from the regular trip times it was easy to see why crews like to work on the Liners. The quality of the accommodation was so luxurious in comparison to ships like the Generton that it was surprising that those ships ever managed to acquire a crew apart from the fact that not many seamen could read upside down and then it didn’t stop me being shanghaied on her.
I was booked to go to Canada near the end of April on the Manchester Trader, as a passenger. The Manchester Spinner arrived in Manchester Docks around the middle of April and as I was short of money and had a couple of weeks before my passage I asked the chief officer if I could work bye. He was in agreement and every morning I arrived at the ship and worked at whatever was required. The routine on the Liners was, if you worked bye, your weeks pay arrived for you at lunch time on Friday which was a stupid idea as everybody then went to the pub and spent it.
At this time the D,Oyly Carte Opera company were in Manchester for their annual visit and one of the members of the caste was a Scotsman called Jack Habbick.Every time the company came to Manchester he stayed at my mothers, some times other members stayed but Jack always booked months in advance to make sure that there was a room for him. He was a real character and as he was a Scotsman he was a great believer in supporting the Scottish economy and was never far from a bottle of their national beverage.
As it was my last day as a merchant seaman the boys had decided that it would be an idea if we had a lunchtime session in the Clowes Hotel and I thought it would be a good idea to invite Jack along. It was going to be a culture shock for both the crew who were not familiar with Gilbert and Sullivan and also for Jack who had no experience of drinking in dockside pub but everyone had one piece of common ground.Alchohol.I gave Jack instructions on how to get to the Clowes, order a taxi, and what time we would be there.
It didn’t take long before everybody was getting along famously and Jack was intrigued with the atmosphere as most of the ladies of the night had decided that there might be a few free drinks going. Pretty soon singing Lucy was up on the mike and belting out some songs that must have been popular in her teen years before the war (probably world war one) and one or two other songsters got up to “do a turn”. Shortly we were all on the high side of merry and as I’d mentioned to the boys that Jack was an opera singer they insisted that he gave us some songs. He went down a “bomb” and everyone was buying him scotch to keep him up there. I don’t think that there was anyone there who had ever heard a Gilbert and Sullivan song but they were captivated. It goes without saying that the session went on long after the three o’clock closing time but the landlady was enjoying the music and the pub wasn’t the sort that was bothered by police, in fact they never called in during opening hours in case there was a fight, so nobody disturbed us until about four o’clock when most of us decided that lunch hour was over and made our way back to the ship. Jack went back to the digs to get some sleep before the evening show.
As I made my way up the gangway slightly unsteadily the chief officer was at the top.
“Have you just come back from lunch, Sutton?” he asked
I believe your right, Chief”was the answer.
“Well pack your bags and f**k off, you’re fired”
That was fair enough as I had taken liberties. So that was my last day employed as a Merchant seaman.

CANADA
CHAPTER TWENTY SIX
Getting started
It was different being a passenger. A steward took my bag from me at the bottom of the gangway. I didn’t mention that I’d come by bus to Trafford road and walked down to Number Nine Dock where the Manchester Trader was loading for Canada. Of course I didn’t need to tell him that I’d come by bus, he knew me as we’d sailed together in the past.
The Manchester Trader was one of the older Manchester Liners and like most of them was designed to carry twelve passengers. In the days before cheap air travel they usually carried the full amount as it was the cheapest way of crossing the Atlantic at the time. My cabin, which I shared was OK but in fact it wasn’t as good as the crew cabins on the Manchester Spinner which I had just paid off(from which I’d just been fired)
I settled in to my cabin for the ten day trip to Montreal. This wasn’t a difficult task as it was what I’d been doing for the past seven years and in addition I had brought very little with me. Just a kit bag containing the bare essentials. Once I had established myself it was time for lunch and I made my way down to the passenger’s dining room and was shown, by a steward to my seat for the trip. Ships must have been the originators’ of the British holiday makers passion of having the same table in a hotel for the duration of their stay.Anyhow, I took my seat and to my surprise was joined at the table by the chief officer. This was the chief that had fired me several days ago off the Manchester Spinner. He was not amused. I thought it was a gas and greeted him like an old colleague would. He never spoke to me during the whole of the trip across the Atlantic. I do believe that if he had fallen into the water and I was the only available help he would have asked somebody to ask me to help. Several years later when I was selling insurance I had reason to call in to Manchester Liners dock office and he was working in there. Not only had he fired me, wouldn’t talk to me but he wouldn’t buy insurance from me either. Also I probably wasn’t on his Christmas card list.
Most of the trip across the Atlantic I spent down in the crew’s mess deck as some of them I had sailed with in the past and also there was always a good cribbage game going. The passengers preferred games like bridge or whist. Not the sort of card games that deck hands were really qualified to participate in. Poker and cribbage were about my limit. Of course these visits to the crew’s quarters were not to the liking of the chief but who cared. I was the customer and the customer could not be wrong.
It was typical of my organising abilities and forethought that on arrival in Canada I had no real idea where I was going and what I was going to do, however while in a jazz club in Manchester I’d met a girl who was heading to Canada to join a friend in Toronto and suggested that I look her up when I arrived so I thought that might be a starting point to establish myself.
One should realise that in nineteen fifty seven that currency laws existed I have no idea what the limit for foreign travel was at that time but recently I found my old passport and entered in the back is the amount of forty five pounds for the Canadian trip so I obviously not overburdened with funds.
On the way across the Atlantic there were two other men my age that had just finished university and were taking time off to tour Canada. They had suggested the YMCA as a place to stay. This was many years before the Village People brought out their record on the organisation and to my knowledge in those days there were never any indications that it was anything other than a good, cheap place to stay. I checked into the YMCA in Toronto as a starting point and started to look for work which I found out was not always a productive activity. One of my fellow residents was a Londoner who had been in Toronto much longer than me and had yet to find gainful employment. His occupation in England had been making advertising films for Pearl and Dean and had given that up to seek his fortune in the colonies, so to speak. One day while perusing the classifieds for job opportunities I found an advert for trainee short order cooks. This seemed to be an opportunity to not only earn some money, which was getting to be a desperate need but also to acquire a new skill.
I discussed it with my pal and we both agreed that it was an opportunity that we shouldn’t miss. The advert told us to apply in person at an address on Yonge st, which we knew, was a long street but we thought we would walk it to save the subway fare. What we didn’t realise was the buildings were numbered in a way indicated how many city blocks it was from the water front. I seem to remember, when calculating later that the address was about thirty blocks from where we started It was a hot afternoon and a long,very long street and as we passed each intersection we checked the street numbers and never seemed to get any closer to the number that we were looking for. As we got nearer we became more discouraged and at one stage the sole of my pal’s shoe came loose. Flip flop flip flop, we walked and walked until we seemed to be about four blocks from the address and outside a tube station. I looked at the station then at him, he looked at me and then at the station then his shoe, so I asked him
“Do you really want to be a trainee short order cook?”
“Not really “was the reply.
“Should we pack in?”
“Too f**kin true”
So we caught the subway back to the YMCA, spending the money that we had saved by taking the long walk.
Work was difficult to find for an English ex seaman so I considered trying my luck down the waterfront. One of my advantages in life has always been an absolute positive mental attitude and if some idea occurred to me I could never see a negative outlook. It didn’t occur to me that to get a berth on a Canadian Great Lakes steamer that I would have to be a member of some sort of Canadian Union or federation so I just made my way down to the waterfront searching for a berth. As it happens there was a Manchester Liner in the port. She was the Manchester Pioneer, one of the first ships to make the trip from Manchester to the Great Lakes after the opening of the St Lawrence Seaway. I went aboard, knowing that there was bound to be some member of the crew that I had sailed with in the past and I could at least get a free meal. It was mentioned that there was a berth going and they were looking to fill it as someone had “jumped ship” in Toronto which left them short handed for the homeward bound leg. I resisted the offer, still determined to try to make it in Canada but I was desperately short of funds. One of the crew told me of an offer he’d had at a dockside bar by a Steeplejack contractor who was short of riggers. The pay was two dollars an hour, which in those days seemed a fortune.
What the contractor really wanted was anyone who could work at two hundred and twenty foot, taking scaffolding down from the side of a newly erected office block on one side of Yonge Street and start to build it on the other side .I have never been very good with heights unless I can work on the old seaman’s maxim” one hand for the company and one for yourself”. This job entailed standing on a scaffolding cross bar and holding a piece of tube, using both hands to slot it into another tube. I needed a job, desperately so I agreed to start the next morning .I’ve always been lucky in the way that things drop into place for me. When I turned up next morning the boss reckoned he had enough men working aloft and would I mind working the “tag line”. This entailed working on terra firma guiding the bundles of scaffolding tubes down to the ground with a line attached to them. It was hard work but it was on the ground and I had yet to be found out. However the following day he sent me up the tower to work and although we were down to only about fifty foot it was a nightmare for me and in addition I was slow but at least I lasted the day. At the end of the day we had the whole tower down and the boss suggested that I wouldn’t be needed for any other contracts, paid me off and said goodbye, or words to that effect.
There was talk around the YMCA that there was plenty of work on the oil rigs in Alberta and the money was good, I decided that it would be an idea to head west. My total worldly fortune was around fifty dollars , a train trip was out of the question so I was rather handicapped until someone suggested that there were plenty of people driving west delivering cars as they were cheaper in the east and a profit could be made.
The evening paper produced an advert for someone to share expenses and driving with the owner of a Chevy, heading for Regina in Saskatchewan. When I telephoned the advertiser he explained that he already had someone who fitted the bill so I was too late. I explained to him that didn’t matter as I didn’t have a driving licence or the money to share in the expenses anyhow, I was just desperate to get across the country to the west. His comment was “you cheeky bastard, you,d better come over and meet with the other guy and me”. They took me with them on the proviso that I paid for my own meals and motel bills. Once again luck had come to my rescue.
Were I a true world traveller I would now be relating the adventure of crossing from one side of Canada to the other and the wonderful images that stayed in my mind. No way, I was a hard up ex seaman trying to get to a place where I could get a job and the images that stayed with me for life were, my first ever pizza cooked in a brick oven and we only had that because we stopped late at night in a place called Duluth,Minnisota and the pizza joint was the only place open, the other one was the statue of Paul Bunyan at Lake Bemidji,Michigan.It was quite interesting to see a statue forty foot high of somebody that was a figment of the imagination. Only in America, though I wouldn’t voice that opinion in Michigan where Paul Bunyan is their greatest hero. I suppose in that part of the world they must be short of real life heroes, like, for instance King Arthur. So those were my main memories of the wonders seen on my travels across Canada and the States to the West. This was in the days when it was only possible to cross Canada by dropping down into the States. I believe that now there is a Trans Canada Highway, therebye depriving people of the experience of seeing Paul Bunyan’s statue. The other notable event was my first experience of a speed trap. We were barrelling through, what we would call a village, and as we hit the open road again there was a siren behind us coming up fast. The driver pulled over and was informed by a sheriff, looking not unlike the sheriff from the Dukes of Hazzard but obviously long before the television show was written, that we had been exceeding the speed limit. We didn’t know whether he was right or he had seen the Canadian plates and knew we couldn’t argue. We followed him back to the village hall where the local judge was waiting, it must have been the way they raised the money for the sheriff’s wages. Anyhow there was an on the spot fine to pay or a night in jail. While my travelling companions were paying the fine I took a look inside the sheriff’s car and he had a stopwatch hanging from the steering column and a clipboard on the dash with what must have been elapsed times and speeds. He must have spent his day sat in the car waiting for likely prospects and as they passed a mark up the road he started the stopwatch and stopped it as the car went passed him. It was clever and accurate but obviously used to trap out of town Americans. Canadian cars must have all had to pay regardless of speed through the village. That was a nineteen fifty seven style speed trap.
My travelling companions dropped me off at the bus depot in Regina and I headed west. Fate would have it that the bus stopped at Edmonton. Had the first stop been Calgary I probably would have had a different story to tell. They were both Oil Towns and I could have found work at either. Talking to people on the bus it appeared that there was plenty of work in Edmonton so I headed for the YMCA (again) and settled in. It wasn’t very long before I landed a job with a painting firm. One of the things learnt at sea was painting and varnishing. We did plenty of that on long ocean trips. The first job that I started on was finishing painting the seating at the local football stadium. It lasted a couple of days and then the boss informed three other English lads and me that we had a major contract to take us right through the summer. The contract was to paint ten bridges across the Peace River. We would be living on the job so that there were no expenses for lodging and he would supply us with food.
In reality it was four Englishmen who had never been anywhere near the Canadian Bush in their lives, two Canadians who were mainly there to drive us, a truck with a compressor ,a van with some sleeping accommodation and storage for paint and food and space for the tent. Yes tent.
The living arrangements were, the Canadians slept in the van and the four Englishmen slept in the tent. Washing facilities were the river which had plenty of fresh water. It had just been made in the Rockies, two days previously it was probably snow. The cooking facility was a fire which we made ourselves and kept going day and night with wood we collected ourselves, just like cowboys in the movies .This was supposed to heat our washing water and also cook our food. What actually happened, we washed in the river, it was cold, really cold in fact so cold that we all thought we had lost our genitals, permanently.Our meals consisted of corned beef sandwiches and cold tinned beans and sometimes tinned soup, with an occasional cup of tea, which of course none of us English would work without It was not nice sleeping in that tent with four large men whose main diet was cold tinned beans, Then there were the mosquitoes, lots of them, big ones. I really mean big ones. They didn’t just bite; they wrestled you to the ground and held you there so their mates could eat you.
Toilet facilities were rudimentary, in fact less than that. We English waited as long as we dared and then grabbed the toilet roll and rushed into the bushes. Nobody stayed out there long as, crouched down with trousers round ankles left you a prime target for the mosquitoes. I think they all acquired a taste for nice white English buttocks. Of course the bears encouraged us to hurry back to the campfire. Did I mention the bears? We saw several of them on the opposite bank of the river. Of course we had adequate defence against them should they attack. An axe, one axe between four of us. Bears on the loose are not something that we English tend to see in the normal course of our daily lives. The Canadians said not to worry as they very seldom attacked humans, unless they were really hungry. As we were English we didn’t talk bear language to enable us to determine whether they were hungry or not before we ran for our lives. The Canadians of course were sleeping in the van with metal sides for protection and a motor to take them away from trouble.
At night, just as we were dropping off to sleep, some idiot would say” what was that noise?” All of us would become rigid with fear, not daring to make a noise in case it really was a bear outside the tent.
The job was hopeless. It was impossible to spray paint on the steel bridge while the metal was wet. In the mornings everything was wet from the dew that had fallen in the night and we had to sit around until noon to let the sun dry it off. A bridge that should have been painted in a week was a quarter painted by the end of our first weeks work. At that time we expected someone to turn up with some wages for us as it would be nice to find a town with a bar and have a few drinks. Somebody turned up to check the progress but no money and give whatever excuse they could dream up for not paying us.
The English team decided that we’d had enough and forced one of the Canadians to drive us to Edmonton to confront the contractor and get some wages. His reply was that there was no money, the company was bankrupt and closing down. At this time we were broke,absolutely.I didn’t have enough money to even afford the YMCA so I took someone’s advice and went to the immigration hall where ,I was told, they would find me a bed for a couple of nights and possibly a job.
The bed was in a dormitory sleeping about sixty of us. All down on our luck, skint and looking for work. I awoke in the morning to the sound of foreign voices and an unbelievable smell of sweaty socks. There had recently been a revolution in Hungary and many people had escaped, a lot of them to Canada and they seemed to be in a worse financial situation than me. I just wished that they had put clean socks on before leaving home. God knows what their underwear must have been like. I resolved that I wasn’t going to be a resident there for long but I needed some money, a job and somewhere to stay. The immigration office gave me some money, enough to get something to eat and I tolerated the dormitory for several days, trying to spend as much time away from the place and only sleeping there.
A job came up; it was decorating the inside of a new motel and was about two weeks work. I had to join the union before the contractor would take me on. I would have joined the French Foreign Legion to get away from the smell of Hungarian socks. He took me down to the union office where I became a member of the Painters and decorators Union, with a card and everything, then we started work. I was still staying in “Smelly Socks Hotel” but at least I was earning and the boss subbed me so I could get some decent food. At the end of the week he paid me and I was able to move back into the YMCA.
Four of us shared a room, Aussie, New Zealander, a French Canadian student, taking his summer break and me. We were all being very careful with our money. I was still trying to get a job on the rigs but it was a "catch twenty two" situation. If you hadn’t worked the rig, nobody would hire you so you couldn’t get experience to work on the rigs. To eke out our money while we were looking for wages our lunch consisted of coffee in the coffee shop opposite the YMCA, where we knew we could get as many free fill-ups as we wanted after the first cup, they also had dishes of crackers on the counter which were supposed to be for those ordering soup. We used to commandeer one of those each and demolish the lot. The waitress obviously knew what we were doing but we were four good looking young men and it wasn’t her money so she just kept topping up our coffee cups until we’d had enough. That was how to get lunch for ten cents (in those days’ prices).Every Friday the hotel restaurant put on a Smorgasbord ,which meant we could eat as much as we wanted for one dollar fifty.Stewart,the Kiwi, although he was only about five foot six and probably weighed around ten stone could eat, really eat. On Fridays, which was the only decent meal we were having, he would go back to the buffet at least three times and after that he would have dessert, sometimes three. We admired him greatly and all of us reckoned that he had camel blood in his genes.
One morning someone stuck their head round or door and told us that there was a guy in the lobby looking for workers. In a flash the French Canadian (Michel) and I went down there looking for a job. The work was roofing. We had to put tongue and groove planks on the roofs of the houses on this development and when we had planked it someone would then put, what the Canadians called shingles. The pay was twenty five dollars a roof between the two of us which seemed a reasonable return for our labours. What I didn’t know at the time was that Michel was scared of heights. Even though the houses were single story he was crawling around on his hands and knees, scared to stand up. In addition the only tools we had were a hammer, and a hand saw to trim the corners. Looking across at the other workers, who were obviously pro,s, they had nail guns and chainsaws and seemed to be doing at least two roofs a day. We worked until about eight in the evening, having completed about one quarter of a roof which meant we were earning at the rate of about three dollars a day each, took our hammer and saw back to the site boss and told him we would not be back the following day, the work we had done was our donation to the success of the site. He looked relieved as it must have saved him the embarrassment of getting rid of us. I just feel sorry for whoever bought the house that we had put some of the roof on.
It was back to looking and once again money was short. The Aussie and Kiwi had moved on and I was still hoping to get a job on the rigs. A chance meeting gave me the opportunity I was looking for. Somebody told me that the Drilling Superintendent for Petrolia Drilling was looking for a couple of Roughnecks; also he was English so I thought I had a chance. They also gave me his telephone number so I rang him. As a newcomer to Canada, what I didn’t realise was that when Canadians called somebody “English” it didn’t really mean that he came from England, just that some time in the past his ancestors came from there. So I got an interview with Mr Sinclair. I turned up for the interview wearing a white shirt and tie, looking more like somebody looking for an office job than a roughnecks job. He took one look at me and said “It’s a rough job you know. Do you think you can handle it?” I explained that seven years at sea hadn’t been as a steward or purser and I had done my share of dirty jobs.
He took me on and told me to be ready to be picked up the following morning at the YMCA.There was a geologist going out to the rig and he would give me a lift.
The following morning I’m waiting outside when a Volkswagen beetle rolls up and I’m told to hop in. Its worth remembering that this was nineteen fifty seven and in a country that considered the size of a mans car an indication of the size of his appendages. It must have been the first VW in the Canadian oilfields and I’m quite sure that the owner must have taken some stick from the roughnecks. I had an experience of this sometime later when I bought an Austin A40 and some of my colleagues picked it up and carried it up some steps to the hotel in Drayton Valley.To be fair they carried it down again for me.
My new home was a wooden shack on skids in what would now be called a trailer park,although all the other shacks were the same.Wooden container based shacks on skids so that they could be moved around as the drilling contractor got new contracts.The accommodation was basic,six bunks and a table ,lockers for our gear and a wood burning stove.Eddie the mechanic introduced himself and showed me the cabin with an empty bunk and told me he would meet me at the diner at 7am the following morning.He also pointed out the diner which was basicly another shack.Bigger and more permanent but still a shack which could probably be moved if the work round Buck Creek(the name of the village/hamlet/cluster of shacks) moved somewhere else.
/am i made my way to the diner and Eddie was ther with what turned out to be my crew.They were not impressed with having a Greenhorn on their crew,anEnglishman to boot.Subsiquently it turned out that I was the only brit working on the northern Alberta rigs

Lou, I'm sure she gave you a kiss and a cuddle and purred like a pussy cat.
Richard

According to our news the Sunday roast here and in UK has gone the way of so many old rituals.

In many instances replaced by sausages and beans with gravy also being replaced by Tomato sauce.

Me too, thats almost a religion in our house, Sunday roast, even if i eat out in a pub, must be the roast, and preferably beef, kt