Remember when.....

[j.sabourn]

#37... Very well put together John, and there is no doubt will be appreciated also by future generations of your lineage. Some may feel proud to call themselves of bastard stock, the world is always changing. If you are of convict stock in Australia you are considered of almost Royal lineage. My mother whenever I asked about my Grandmother always used to come out with this tale about being involved in a motor bike accident. I found out from my sister in later life that she had run away with a probably more attractive and wealthy mineowners son and whilst living in England had been killed on a motor bike, the story was always kept away from me why I dont know, snobbery of a certain kind I suppose. I used to believe very little of whatever history my mother told me in later years as she used to read teacups for visitors and used to beleive her own fortune telling. She started work in Service at 14 in Scotland, was always saying she had served on the Queen Mother before she married King George, Was then Lady Bowater or something similar. This however was true as she showed me a letter and the reply she got from the Queen Mother before she died. My old man apart from trying to teach me to box, still finished up with a broken nose later in life. when he was in his sixties and went our for a drink with him, always finished up when drunk he tried to get me involved in some fight or other, New year was the best as by midnight he was usually under the table and Hors de Combat anyway. Relations you are stuck with in life but can fortuanetly pick your own friends. Going back to my Mother she had two younger sisters and if you werent looking at them when thay were talking you would never know which one was speaking. One of them was a bit nuts whenever went out with her to a cafe or anywhere and the Bill came in she always refused to pay saying she was related to Mary Queen of Scots and did not think she should have to. The Three sister were of the Douglas Clan or whatever but always insisted it was the Black Douglas Branch they were from. Maybe the true blue Scots on here may know more about the old tribal or should say clan system of that part of the world. Cheers John S

[cappy]

####well john i was enthralled with that ......the best i have read for a long time if not the best ....the reading flows .......please send more ......now a book worth reading....a friend of mine is david nobbs the writer ......he ses we all have a book in us butnever think of writing it ......i thought many of the different parts applied to my life and no doubt many others on the site .......congratulations for a good read ....regards capy

[Red Lead Ted]

Well, Guys and Dolls, We have had a good walk down memory lane nothing wrong with that know and again. I have really enjoyed this thread and thank our Marian for posting the thread. I cant leave it until those of you who have never heard this beautiful piece of music from Neil Sedaka Terry.


Turning back the hands of time Neil Sedaka - YouTube

[gray_marian]

#37, John, What a privilege to read of your early years. I'm enraptured, hope there is more to come. Thank you for sharing. As Cappy implies, there is definitely a book there......
Marian

#43,"Jings, crivens and help ma boab" Terry you nearly had me greetin' with this song.

[john sutton]

lucky bastard continued
BOOK TWO
SEA STORIES



CHAPTER FOUR..
CAPETOWN CASTLE
Seventeenth of May Nineteen Fifty .Two of us, Buzzer and me trudging through Southampton docks looking for the Capetown Castle.We,d signed on the previous day and this morning had made our way down to the docks to join the ship. It was Buzzers sixteenth birthday and mine was next week. After five years of having someone telling us what to do for every minute of our lives we were now our own men and could do what we wanted, in our own time. Yesterday we had been fitted out in our new civilian clothes and the shop assistants in the menswear shop kept telling us that we didn’t have to call them “sir” as we were the customers and they should call us “sir” Four years of calling any adult male “sir” was a difficult habit to break. I was fitted out with a “salt and pepper” sports jacket that had probably been in the shop since before world war two as it was the sort of jacket that was worn in the thirties, grey slacks and an open neck shirt finished me off. I must have looked like a younger and rougher version of Bertie Wooster.
We walked down the quay looking for the ship .The dock policeman had informed us that she was moored astern of the Queen Elizabeth (the first) so we walked down the road looking through the doors of the warehouses as we went then we came to the “Queen” and kept walking, and walking and walking for what seemed miles until we passed the stern and the could see the lavender coloured hull of the Capetown Castle and walked some more. In retrospect I suppose we should have been overawed. The Queen Elizabeth, then the largest ship in the world. A ship we had only ever seen pictures of and now we were walking past her with about as much awe as we would have for a Mersey Ferry.Capetown Castle, twenty seven thousand tons of steel that was about to become our home for the next six weeks. It was a tribute to Watts Naval School(and parkstone sea school) that at just sixteen we walked aboard, with slight trepidation, but totally unimpressed.
It was a warm day and we were both carrying all our worldly goods. Mainly what we had been fitted with the previous day, Where we had been for the past four years we didn’t acquire much in the way of personal belongings so our kit bags contained some civilian shirts and part of our naval school uniform to wear for work, oilskins, seaboots and that was about all our worldly possessions. Apart from a Bowie knife that I had seen in a sports goods shop in Poole and saved my pocket money for weeks to buy , as I always thought that sailors wore big knives(they did in the films).I soon found out that was one of my many in life “wrong purchases”. When I bought it and took it back to the sea school, after looking in the shop window for weeks and lusting after it until I had saved enough money to buy it, the commander confiscated it until I left, and when I wore it on the ship all the crew laughed at me with remarks like “don’t fall over the side wearing that, we’ll never see you again.
We finally made it to the ship and up the gangway, unfortunately we went aboard up the passenger’s gangway and not the crew entry. We were obviously not passengers so nobody was prepared to give us instructions until a Master at arms collared us and asked what the hell we were doing in the passenger accomodation.When we told him that we’d just signed on as deck boys he gave us short instructions where to go which was forward, “via hell”. We tried to follow his instructions, as far as the forward part but instead managed the hell part.
Down passageways up stairs, down stairs, down more stairs, down more passageways and trying to get instruction as to where to go from various members of the crew was a nightmare. On the day before sailing aboard a large passenger ship nobody has time for a couple of young lads who don’t know where they are going. Finally we reached the crew accommodation at the forward end of the ship and were directed to the deck boy’s cabin. One room with eight bunks and a locker each. Then we were collared by the bosun,s mate and given our duties for the trip.
I was given the job as “Petty Officers Peggy”. This meant that I had to look after the Petty Officers messdeck, fetch their food from the first class passenger’s galley (kitchen) and clear up after them and return the clean dishes to the passenger’s galley. For a sixteen year old boy this was not an easy job. First of all I had to line up with the first class passenger waiters to be served the food. This didn’t make me popular as they had to get their passengers food on the table and, being new to the job I was quite slow and was holding them up. Once I’d been served the food I had to stack the plates one on top of the other in a special piece of equipment designed for the job. It consisted of a cylinder closed at the bottom with a handle at the top and a slot down the side to facilitate lifting the meals out. There were usually six petty officers at a time which meant that I carried six plates of food and a large jug if there was soup and then after serving that I had to go back for the desserts. Then make tea for all of them and clear up after the meal washing the dishes and returning them to the first class passenger’s galley.
The name “Peggy” originates from the sailing ship days when a member of the crew would be elected to look after the mess deck and keep it tidy. Usually a one legged man (hence the name Peggy) was signed on specifically for this purpose as he would be unable to work aloft having only one leg. Since then there has always been Peggy’s although I believe in the modern merchant navy they went out several years ago and were replaced by stewards.
Being a wily young man I soon realised that when I was in the passengers galley nobody took any notice whether I took any plates back or not so I decided that I would save myself the trouble of washing and drying the crockery and retuning it by doing what was known as a “board of trade wash up”. When all the petty officers had finished their meal and vacated the mess I locked the door and threw all the crockery out of the porthole. As we were in the focastle and the hull of the ship curved inward as it got to the bow what I was doing could not be seen from directly above. Unfortunately it could be seen from the wing of the bridge and one day the skipper was idly leaning over the rail on the wing of the bridge having a relaxing smoke and suddenly plates started flying out of the starboard side of the forcastle.
“What the hell is that?”To the standby Quartermaster “Get down there and find out who the hell is throwing plates over the side”
I was duly hauled up before the skipper on report (I didn’t have the nerve to say that I thought the porthole was a large storage cupboard) and given an almighty bollocking and demoted to Peggy’s Peggy.
It would appear that as a Peggy there was no way that one could be demoted but we had seven deck boys on the ship some of whom were Peggy’s so they needed a Peggy and I was it.
Many years later in my more prosperous years I was on a pheasant shoot and over lunch I got talking to one of the other guests who was a retired general, I actually knew him quite well as we often shot together and we got to discussing our backgrounds. He told me that he didn’t start his working life in the army but in the Merchant Navy and his first job was Peggy. He seemed quite proud of that but when I told him that I had been a Peggy’s Peggy he was really impressed.
“I’ve never met anybody before who has been a Peggy’s Peggy” I think if I’d told him that I’d been a battle of Britain fighter pilot he would have been less impressed.
So I was a Peggy’s Peggy. Beside Buzzer and myself there were another five deckboys.These were all older than us as they would have finished normal school and then gone on to a training school so would normally start at sea at around eighteen or nineteen. We went straight from school to sea, as seamanship was part of our curriculum. Being quite a bit younger there started to be a bit of bullying and after a while Buzzer and I had to sort it out. Buzzer had been known at Parkstone as very handy in a fight situation and I, although not in the same class as him, was a bit handy also. We decided to call a halt on any bullying that was starting so one night after tea we sorted them out. From memory there were four of them and two of us, it lasted about five minutes and after that we had no further trouble.Dr Barnardoes training was a hard regime but in later life it paid off.
Having worn nothing but naval uniform for the previous four years we had been itching to get some civilian clothes. We were now wage earners and although the wage was only seven pounds ten shillings a month. Yes a month. We wanted to start to express ourselves sartorially. What we were fitted out with, while being very good quality was not what we wanted to be seen in. One of the other deck boys was a bit of a fashion buff and he wore the sort of gear that I had dreamt of wearing. One of his items was a double breasted sports jacket in a brown herringbone pattern. The cut was called a “drape” and it was the style that gangsters were wearing in the films. This was what I wanted so I pestered him to sell it to me at the end of the trip and I had some money. That was actually the second of many bad purchases I made during my working life. (After the Bowie knife)
My really nice pepper and salt sports jacket that was bought for me by Barnardos was sold to someone a bit older and wiser, at what must have been a knockdown price.
At the end of my first trip to sea I needed somewhere to go for the two weeks that we were in port before sailing again. Most of the other deck boys had homes to go to; even Buzzer had parents that wanted to see him after his first sea trip. I can remember that I was in a quandary, should I go back to the sea school and be the big returning hero after a trip to South Africa, or should I go back to Suffolk to the Fordham’s and enjoy some home cooking and hopefully get one of the village girls to be nice to me.I,ve always been an optimist and it never occurred to me that seeing as they had never been nice to me before I went to sea, there was little chance that the situation would change. Anyhow I went back to Suffolk and enjoyed Lena’s cooking for a few days, took a bike ride to Felixstowe which although only thirty miles away took the combined efforts of Ivan and his other pal to tow me back the last five miles. That was the last time that I visited while Harry was alive and for the rest of my life I regretted that I didn’t spend more shore leaves in Suffolk. I was certainly more welcome there than in Manchester with my mother. At least I had a bedroom to sleep in and never had to make excuses regarding my parentage. The girls in the village knew that I was from Barnardos so there was nothing to hide.
The second trip on the Capetown Castle I was promoted to bridge boy. This meant keeping watches on the bridge which involved fetching cups of tea keeping the wheelhouse tidy and at night standing out on the wing of the bridge keeping lookout. Also keeping out of the skipper’s way as he had not forgotten my misdemeanour on the previous trip. One day the Quartermaster on the wheel asked me if I could helm the ship. Having spent hours at Naval school on a steering trainer I intimated that it was a piece of cake so he asked me if I’d take the helm while went for a call of nature. Things were OK for a short while, then I “lost it” and the ship started a lazy S course and I started to panic. The skipper was on the wing of the bridge(Actually my life would have been a lot easier if he would have stayed away from the wing of the bridge)”Who the hell is on the helm?”, he looked into the wheelhouse and saw me “ you again, get of the wheel get of the bridge and I don’t want to ever see you up here again” Just then the Quartermaster came back from his call of nature to receive a first class bollocking , he took over the helm and I was sent off the bridge and demoted back to Peggy’s Peggy. The next time I saw the quartermaster he threatened me with a boot up the **** if I ever crossed his path again. I suppose it was lucky that I never got him demoted as quartermaster was a plum job for an able seaman as he would avoid jobs like scrubbing decks, holystoning and painting and in addition to that he was supplied with a very nice uniform free of charge. So it was lucky for both of us because if he had lost his job I definitely would have got a good hiding, or two.
After two trips out of Southampton I decided that I would be better off up north.Southhampton was mainly passenger liners and I had the urge to sail on cargo boats and tramp steamers (what a fool. Passenger ships were cushy numbers)





CHAPTER FIVE
ACCRA





ACCRA


I moved to Liverpool and believe it or not the ship I was offered was another passenger liner. I really didn’t want this but at sixteen when you are told to go somewhere by an authority figure you went. At least you did in those days. So I joined the Accra, an Elder Dempster ship sailing to Las Palmas and four ports on the West African coast. Once again I was a Peggy. This time Petty Officers Peggy again. This was easier as there were only five of them and the food came from the crew’s galley which was just next door. There was no Peggy’s Peggy so it was unlikely that I could get demoted.
The Accra wasn’t a cruise ship. The passengers in the first class were mainly “colonials” going out to work in Africa or returning ex-pats. This was before the time of mass air travel and at that time not many people could afford the air fare, or their companies wouldn’t pay it. The second class passengers were mainly Africans returning home from studies in the UK or in some cases English girls who had married West Africans(In those days every West African told English girls that they were tribal chiefs. In a lot of cases it might have been true but there would have to be an awful lot of tribes in West Africa). .Crews quarters were in the stern of the ship down the port side and the second class accommodation was on the starboard side of the stern.Someone, probably many trips before I sailed on her had discovered the second class female passengers communal shower room was back to back with our hanging locker for drying oilskins and there was a peephole. It was obviously when they were building the ship that a hole had been drilled to screw a hook in and when the job was finished a bolt was fitted to plug the hole. It wouldn’t take a horny deckhand long to “suss” that out. Breakfast time was the favourite time for “deckos” (that’s what peeping was called in the merchant navy) and most mornings someone would stick their head in the mess deck and shout “Deckos” and there would be a line of deckhands waiting for their turn to peep. The favourites were obviously the young ones, especially the white brides but most of what could be seen where middle aged mammas. On one occasion we were carrying an exceptional looking white girl and lookouts were kept for when she went for her shower or strip wash, until some bright spark put white paint around the peephole and half the crew were walking around with white eye patches. Most of the crew on the Accra were good sorts, mainly because they tended to be family men and they knew that they would be home every four weeks and also that lots of overtime was available. They tended to stay with her and lots of them had been on her for years. In fact the shipwright worked on her when she was built, joined on her maiden voyage and stayed until she was disposed of. Then retired from the sea. Twenty odd years at sea and only sailed on one vessel.
The usual trip was Las Palmas, Freetown, Takoradi, and Apapa (Lagos) then back in reverse order.
When we arrived at Freetown we took on board “crew boys”. These were there to work the ship on the coast and load and unload cargo. It was obviously a job that was prized and probably passed down through families. We had an indication that certainly one of them had a father who worked the ships as his name was “Steam on Deck”, really. They lived in a tent on deck and had their own cooks and cooking equipment but not washing and toilet facilities. We wouldn’t let them use our toilets as we didn’t like the condition of
them when they were finished and none of our crew wanted the job of cleaning after they had left the ship. Their toilet consisted of a little wooden shack hanging over the stern rail with a wooden bar that they sat on directly over the water, hanging on to another bar. The proceeds of their endeavours dropped straight down into the sea.
One afternoon, after a lunchtime drinking session one of the deckhands came back aboard half cut, and having had an argument with one of the crew boys in the morning decided to cut the toilet facilities adrift without checking if it was occupied. It was, and the unfortunate occupant (who wasn’t the one that he’d had a row with) finished up in the water. It was a drop of about forty foot; I suppose that might be one interpretation of the expression “bowel movements”
When we got to Apapa it was a tradition that the first evening we all assembled in the “Pig and Whistle” (this was the crews bar on board), for a knees up and when we had drunk enough to get our voices tuned we marched ashore to the tune of “When the saints go marching in” on voice, mouth organ, gazoo and spoons, to the Wharf Inn which was a seaman’s mission bar inside the dock gates and proceeded to make merry. The sight of thirty or forty inebriated Liverpool seamen marching through the docks must have been quite amusing, especially as there were several different versions of the “Saints” not all of them you would want your sister to hear. This is where I first saw somebody playing the spoons and began a lifelong association with them. The spoons that is, not the person playing them.
We very seldom went out of the docks in Apapa as there wasn’t a lot to see or do unless you had a liking for palm wine (which could send you blind) or somebody’s schoolgirl sister (which would probably take care of all your other bodily functions) It did appear strange that all the vendors we met had a sister at school who had no previous exposure to the male species and was completely unsullied. As it happens, I found out later during my career at sea that this was quite a usual phenomenon in sea ports (must be something to do with sea air).They were all full of young virgins. I suppose when they started their careers they were young and probably sometime in their lives they had been virgins. But only once.
The crew of Accra were all “Scousers” and obviously there were some characters among them. I palled up with a couple of guys from the passenger’s galley. One was a soux chef, the other a kitchen porter. They used to tell me stories about the area where they lived which was around the Dock Road area. It was the days when we could get white fivers in our pay off packet and according to them, to produce one at their local pub would signal an instant mugging on your next visit to the toilet. I use the word in the singular as there was only one toilet which was shared by both sexes. They took me up there once and I can remember standing at the urinal when a female walked through to use the cubicle and on the way offered to help me with my equipment. Even as young as I was I felt that I was quite capable of handling the said equipment alone.
Apparently one of their favourite moves was to go into one of their local pubs on the dock road just after they had paid off knowing that there would be the usual team of scroungers hanging on to the last dregs of a half of mild waiting for someone flush to walk in after paying off. These scroungers knew who was due is on any day of the week as they used Lloyds Register of Shipping (this used to be the newspaper which was the bible of seafarers) the way a gambler uses the racing times.
When my pals got to the bar they would look around at all the denizens looking hopefully for a free drink so they would say “drink up lads”. The dregs of mild would quickly disappear the the boys would say to the barman two pints of bitter please and the scroungers would be left drinkless and disappointed and would have to leave the premises as landlords wouldn’t allow anyone to sit around without a drink in front of them.
The other deck boy on board was Billy Leatherbarrow who came from Norris Green in Liverpool. It was just around the corner from where I’d stayed as a child but I had no intention of renewing the acquaintanceship. As I didn’t know anyone in Liverpool and stayed at the seaman’s mission when in port, he took me under his wing and showed me around. He took me home and his mother made meals for us and I will say that home cooking was something I’d been missing for a while. He also introduced me to Mrs Campbell’s dancing academy. The system here was that we did an hour of dancing classes and were then allowed into the main room to join the dancing. There were “girls” there and this is why we were actually there but cunning Mrs Campbell insisted that we took the lessons first as we had to pay for those, before we were let loose on the girls.Mrs Campbell’s was a tradition among young seamen. When Billy and I attended we would always meet other deck boys home on leave from various ships in the docks. The chances are that any other ex-seamen from Liverpool whose age is similar to mine, would have learned to dance at “Ma Campbells”.Though none of them would have dared to call her “Ma”
I met my first girlfriend there. She was called Audrey and she lived on Breck rd which was handy for me as it was on the tram route from city centre to Mrs Campbells, she worked at Littlewoods Pools which in those days was a cut above the jobs that most of the girls that we met. Quite posh really.
It was on the Accra that I had my first real drunken experience. We were leaving Las Palmas in the Canary Islands and I had done a deal with one of the” bumboat men” and traded something for a bottle of Anis. Once we were clear of port we started a drinking session in one of the AB,s cabins. I introduced my bottle to the party and unfortunately drank most of it.(the others must have been aware of its potency).The upshot was that I keeled over in the middle of the room ,the crew pounced on me, stripped my jeans off, threw the contents of a teapot over my genitals and threw me into my bunk. Sometime during the night I must have staggered somewhere and knocked a glass over and walked through it, cutting the bottom of my feet to ribbons. It was two days later when the discomfort of the hangover had worn off that I discovered the state of my feet. It was many years before I could stand to be around the smell or taste of aniseed...
While on the Accra I got my chance to spar with a champion boxer. We were on the way home from Nigeria and every day a passenger who was a boxer called Ogli Tetey “worked out” on the crew’s well deck .This went on for a few days with the crew watching and making comments until some bright spark suggested that even our deck boy could outbox this guy. So they wound me up and not wanting to show chicken I stood for it. Although only sixteen I was actually bigger than Ogli who was the bantam weight champion of Nigeria and he was very fast. I did a couple of rounds and the best I could say is that I gave him a good workout. We had a little scouse AB called Stan Neve, he was about the same size as Ogli and also more mature than me and he volunteered his services as a sparring partner. He put the gloves on and in typical scouse fashion floored the champion, twice.Ogli worked out on the second class passenger’s side for the rest of the trip.
For a sixteen year old every day had a new experience and the West Coast of Africa was the place to learn about life.
One of my big regrets was that I never tried the local food.Palmoil Chop. This was served once a week to the crew and most of old hands enjoyed it. At sixteen I had never even tried curry (apart from curried beans which were served for tea at Watts) so there was little chance that I was going to risk this odd looking dish which was chicken cooked in some sort of oily sauce and eaten with a semolina(?) paste. To this day I have never tried it as there are very few West African restaurants in Manchester where I spent the latter part of my working life.
After five trips on the Accra I decide that I still wanted to see more of the world and that cargo ships were more my style as on the passenger ships you were expected to look fairly smart any time you went on deck. I signed off and reported to the shipping office again and registered for a ship.




CHAPTER SIX
SPECIALIST








The next ship was the Specialist” belonging to Harrisons of Liverpool or as they were known “Hungry Harrisons” (There was a tendency that any shipping line whose name started with H was called “Hungry”. It just scanned well) the funnel was black with two white bands and one red band and named by the wags as “two of fat and one of lean”. We joined her in London as Harrisons preferred Liverpool crews so I was given a travel voucher at the shipping office and told to get to West India Dock.London.Even at sixteen it didn’t seem a big problem travelling to London, getting tube and buses to the East End and then walking through the docks to join the ship. I guess Watts Naval School did a good job, training me to be self sufficient. Specialist wasn´t the most impressive vessel to look at as she was a liberty ship and very different to my previous berths which were both passenger ships. A big come down but I had expressed a desire to work on cargo boats so I guess I got my wish. This crew were a different cup of tea to the crews on my previous ships. Most of them were real “hard cases” or acted as though they were and being a sixteen year old deck boy I was open to abuse and bullying and a general bad time. Their colours came out pretty soon on the trip, when we were battening down the decks, putting the mooring ropes down the hatches and lashing everything down that could work loose, someone discovered that we were carrying shoes in the hold, not just shoes but very nice brogues. The only problem was that they were black and white brogues, the sort that hadn’t been worn in England since probable the early thirties (and then only worn by Bertie Wooster) but were apparently all the rage in the West Indies (where we were heading) Any how a dozen boxes came out and disappeared down into someone’s cabin until we could sort them out. When we did get round to sorting them out we discovered that they were all left feet and the right feet were in another hold. It took about a week to match them up. The problem then was when could we wear them? None of us had the bottle to wear that sort of shoe ashore and we couldn’t wear them for work as it would be obvious where they came from. So we painted them black with some viscous deck paint. The skipper cornered one of the AB,s one day and asked why everybody was wearing black painted shoes. I think that the answer he got back was that it was done for a bet. Whether he believed that or not I don’t know but we never got any flack over it. The other indication that I was sailing with a hard crew was that, in the mess deck we went “on our wack” At sea in the merchant navy we used to have an allocation of sugar, tea and condensed milk each week. Normal procedure was that the Peggy would go to the stewards store and pick up everyone’s supplies and we would all share whatever tea etc was made. “On our wack”meant that we each went to the steward and picked up our own supplies and made our brew ups ourselves. The Specialist was the only ship I ever sailed on that worked that system. They were a tough crew. One of the AB,s took it on himself to make the trip hard for me. At every opportunity he picked on me and at times he would break into my locker and steal my sugar or tea,openly.This guy was about twenty three and I was sixteen so there was a size and experience difference but I was aware that sometime during the trip we would lock horns. The other problem was that he always sailed with his pal who we nicknamed “Garth” which was the name of a comic strip character in one of the national papers. He was huge, probably from time spent in a gym and nobody was prepared to take on Ford (the bully) because they would have take on Garth as well.
The first port we called at was Barbados. In those days it wasn’t known as a tourist resort, it didn’t even have a proper port that we could take the ship into. We lay off the harbour and “lighters” came out and were loaded from the ship and towed into the wharf in Bridgetown. If we wanted to go ashore we caught a launch, the same getting back aboard. Somehow during the first evening ashore I finished up alone and out on the edge of town (such as it was) and called into a bar frequented only by locals. Had I more sense or less alcohol I probably would have been aware that maybe I shouldn’t have been there. When I ordered a drink, the barmaid, who was substantial, told me in quite firm terms that she wasn’t going to serve me and would I vacate the premises, or words to that effect and came round from behind the bar carrying what appeared to be a “rounders” bat(I always thought that Barbados was a cricketing country)
Never having been blessed with an abundance of good sense I happened to mention her age, weight, colour, sex and physical appearance (fat old ugly black bitch) and found myself at the bottom of a flight of stairs as a result of her dexterity with the rounders bat. It was only when I met someone else from the ship later (by about three bars) who advised me that there was considerable blood coming from the back of my head that I realised that I was wounded. I finished up at the local hospital getting two stitches in the back of my head and being cleaned up a little. The shirt never recovered. Throughout my time at sea it was a constant in my adventures that my shirts got damaged. I always thought that had I been a gambling man I would have habitually lost my shirt.
Next port was Port of Spain in Trinidad. This was altogether a more cosmopolitan island than Barbados. There was a great mixture of races including traders from the Indian continent running a wide variety of shops and businesses. Having barely got rid of clothes rationing and also spent years in naval uniform to walk down the main street and look at the fancy shirts available was great. I certainly needed a new shirt to replace my blood soaked one so I fitted myself out. That night we were invited aboard a Canadian ship that was tied up astern of us and we had quite a drinking session. Me being me overdid it (at sixteen I still couldn’t hold my liquor or have the sense to quit before collapsing) I had to be carried back to the ship by my pal Brendan. On the way back we must have encountered Ford and he decided that the time was right to give me a good kicking.
When I awoke the following morning I was in a real state. My ribs were all bruised where I’d obviously been kicked, one eye had a cut over it, the other was black and worst of all, my shirt was ripped and covered in blood. Fortunately it wasn’t my new “go ashore”shirt.The deck boy that I shared a cabin with informed me that it was Ford that had done the deed and that Brendan had just let me drop on the ground as there wasn’t much he could do with Garth watching.
In port, every morning we had a brew up and normally sat on one of the hatches discussing the routine for the day. When I went on deck Ford was there with a smirk on his face and when I asked him if he was responsible he just told me to “sod off.” At that time I decided that I would have to sort the problem out, nobody would help me, that’s the way it was. We took care of our own problems. I told the man that I would get him before the end of the trip, one way or other. He just laughed and told me again to “sod off “(or words to that effect).After all what could a sixteen year old do to a twenty three, or four year old.
That night I went ashore for a drink (one) with two Irish pals. I had in my mind what I intended to do that night to solve the problem that I had and I asked the lads not to interfere. When we got back aboard I went to my cabin and changed into work clothes (I wasn’t going to risk another shirt, then went to the midships
accommodation where Ford lived and banged on his door. At first he told me to go away (those weren’t the exact words but they give the implied meaning) then after a few minutes of insults and the implication that he would only tackle sixteen year old deck boys when they were drunk, as sober they might be too much for him, he jumped out of bed and grabbed me by the throat. At that moment I thought that he was going to
“put the head in” so I beat him to it. The effect was amazing I almost knocked him out, he was definitely stunned and on the deck and his nose was spread across his face and bleeding profusely and there was no fight left in him. In fact he went to hospital where they set the nose, it was broken, and put a dressing on it which stayed on for a few weeks and probably saved me from reprisals.
Next morning at our normal brew up he was there with his nose in a dressing and two of the best black eyes I’d ever seen. There was muttering that he would get me one night before the trip was over and I informed him that for the rest of the trip I’d sleep with my cabin door locked and a “chipping hammer” under my pillow, anyone entering without invitation would get their head stoved in (cocky little bastard).We had a bosun on that ship who I reckon was one of the toughest men that I met while at sea. In his past he’d been a whaler working out of South Georgia and somewhere down the line he had lost a leg. It didn’t seem to handicap him much as he would climb the mast when necessary and he was as mobile as anybody. His name was Tom Pepper but we thought that this was a non de plume, as in history Tom Pepper was a notorious liar who apparently was hanged for lying. Anyhow Tom was not amused by my threats and made noises that I should cool it but did nothing else to sort the situation.
For the rest of the trip I was left alone and treated with a bit more respect.
Not a lot happened during the trip apart from my roommate suspected that he’d caught a dose of “crabs”, mistakenly apparently, and some smart character told him the sure fire way to get rid of them was to shave the area and douse said area with turpentine, which he did and came running into the aft accommodation and sat in a wash basin full of cold water for half an hour and for the rest of the trip he was ragged about it.
I had my seventeenth birthday on this trip
We docked in Liverpool and paid off. I couldn’t wait but I was aware that there could be a good hiding waiting ashore so I lay low, knowing that Ford and Garth had a train to catch and would probably think of getting me at a later date. Fat chance.

[Red Lead Ted]

#37, John, What a privilege to read of your early years. I'm enraptured, hope there is more to come. Thank you for sharing. As Cappy implies, there is definitely a book there......
Marian

#43,"Jings, crivens and help ma boab" Terry you nearly had me greetin' with this song.

LOL It is a lovely composed song though Maz. The first time I heard it was at my old aunts funeral years ago. There wasn't a dry eye in the church Terry.

[j.sabourn]

#42... Cappy if a politician can write a book after they have served a 3 year term as PM or whatever, what can they find to write about that would appeal to a normal person, apart from he said to me and I said to him. They all think they are something special when in reality they have lead the most boring and humdrum life imaginable, I would not even consider in buying a one of their life stories. You cant believe them when in office so why should we when out of office. The two last Labour PMs, now if they came out with the truth, it would probably be the first time in their lives it ever happened, still reckon they should be in the Tower. We have had a spate of self seeking glorifying egotistic baskets masquerading as politicians in the western world for the past 50 years or so, and a lot of the present day problems were made by the same, and they are answerable to no one. Cheers John S

[j.sabourn]

Ref. John Suttons problems with shirts. With me it was trousers. Being cleaned out in B.A. by ships thieves whilst asleep, had to continue with one pair of grey slacks I bummed off an engineer and an old reefer jacket and a couple of shirts. It was an 11 month trip and we were only into 3 months into it. Years later came back to ship with no trousers in Puerto Rico, and had nightmares of not being able to find any on board before the passengers got up. Ever since I have had a mania for trousers, and keep a large stock of, which I must say of various waist sizes, always hoping I may yet get back down to the smallest, sometime before I die. Always have to check at frequent intervals to make sure the wife hasnt parcelled off to the Salvation Army. JS

[Charlie Hannah]

The west coast ensign as the Jos On board i had the job when leaving the coast to dismantle said ensign allways managed to get something from the bumboats for the timber in it.

[j.sabourn]

Could you not sell the burlap as well Charlie, would have made someone a good set of curtains. Cheers JS