India

[Ivan Cloherty]

Stages had to be rigged for them as latrines etc, but when we up anchored to leave , they had preferred to use the spurling pipe as a latrine !!, you can imagine our matelot language having to wash that lot down, India a literal crap hole ,kt

Spurling pipe, or hawse pipe Keith, hawse pipe wouldn't have been too bad, that was used in South America as well, didn't spurling pipe lead to the chain locker, at least the hawse pipe led straight to the sea, or with a bit of luck direct onto their own barges hanging around the bow,or have I got the pipes wrong way around

[j.sabourn]

Your right about the beer, think when I was in Bombay was 2 big bottles a night in the seamans club in Bombay, but the last time there about 1970 cant remember any restrictions, maybe I didn't bother going ashore. JS

[Keith Tindell]

You are quite right Ivan, meant hawsepipe, senility arriving here in large dollops!!!!, kt

[Ivan Cloherty]

You are quite right Ivan, meant hawsepipe, senility arriving here in large dollops!!!!, kt

When I was in India, senility wasn't the only thing arriving in large dollops!

[Captain Kong]

My first trip to sea was on a London Greek tramp, Commodore Grant, ex Fort Grant. in 1952.............. part of the story.........

Madras was hot stinking, sweaty and noisy. What a contrast to being at sea with the cool refreshing breeze and only the sound of the sea.
As soon as we were alongside the deck was swarming with hundreds of Indians shouting, screaming and stripping the hatches of tarps and throwing hatch boards and beams on deck and the clatter of the steam winches as they started discharging.
The deck was soon filthy with the spilt fertilizer and red betel juice spit all over. The Indians had no toilets and would just squat in the scuppers and crap filling the ship with their stink and millions of flies.
We had to keep the ports and doors locked or they would have stolen everything and made a stinking mess on the bathroom deck.
Every day the beggars would come down to the ship begging for food scraps, the saddest ones were the little kids who were like skeletons
pleading with squeaky voices, `No Mamma , No Poppa, dash me baksheesh.` I would give them any gash left over by the Sailors if they left any.
Dhobi Walla’s would come down and ask if they could do our dhobi.
The Sailors decided to hire one and made me in charge of him, I had to watch him all the time to make sure he didn’t steal anything.
He eventually did, stealing all the Sailors dungarees, shirts and our towels. We had to provide our towels in those days.
This resulted in me being beaten up again by all the Sailors.
On the first Saturday in Madras I heard there was a dance at the Anglo Indian Club in town. By the time I had scrubbed out both mess rooms and pumped up the water tank, showered and changed all hands were ashore and I went ashore on my own.
I didn’t know where this club was so I got a Rickshaw to take me. The rickshaw boy towed me around the City for a couple of hours and ended up at the gangway again saying he didn’t know where the club was. He was demanding 15 rupees, I only had a sub of 25 rupees and so I told him to get stuffed and gave him five and went to climb the gangway. He started to scream and grabbed my shirt and in an instant I was surrounded by a big crowd of screaming Indians.
I got a bit scared then so I gave him another ten and ran up the gangway. I thought what a lousy night out, first night ashore for over one month and it cost more than five days wages just to have a ride in a rickshaw.
On Sunday afternoon the galley boy, a lad called Keating from Wallasey, and I went to the beach a few hundred yards from the docks. It was a beautiful beach, completely deserted and stretch for miles with clean white sand and lined with palm trees, we spent a couple of happy hours swimming in the surf.
The following Saturday night there was another dance at the Anglo-Indian Club so this time I walked into the city and found it, no more rickshaws.
In the Club I saw an attractive young lady, I danced with her, she was the same age as I was and she told me her name was Elizabeth.
After the dance she took me over to the table where her mother was sitting and introduced me to her. Her mother, Mrs Thompson, was an Anglo-Indian and before she was widowed was married to a Liverpool man and they had lived there for many years before returning to Madras, where Mr Thompson had died. As I lived near to Liverpool they were quite interested and we got on quite well with each other.
At the end of a pleasant evening, dancing and talking, they invited me to dinner their home on Sunday evening.
They lived 30 minutes ride on a train south of Madras, so I finished work early and arrived at their house around 7pm.
They had a beautiful home built in Colonial style and surrounded by lush tropical gardens.
We had a fantastic dinner, waited on by Servants, it like something out of a movie for a young lad out of Bolton on his first trip.
Elizabeth introduced me to her brother, George, who was around 20 years old, he had been born in Liverpool and was easy to get along with.
All to soon the pleasant evening ended and I had to get the train back to Madras. Elizabeth and I wrote to each other for a while then it faded away and I never went back to Madras.
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42 years later, in June 1994, my elder brother Jim and I went to London to see the Liberty ship, JEREMIAH O`BRIEN that had sailed from San Francisco to London for the 50th Anniversary of D. Day. We had both sailed on Sam boats and so it brought us a few memories.
We stayed at the Merchant Navy Hotel in Lancaster Gate.
In the evening we went into the hotel bar which was empty except for one very attractive young barmaid. We got chatting to her and found that she was a Student from Liverpool who worked in the Hotel in her spare time.
I could see that she was part Indian and mentioned this to her. An incredible story unfolded. She told me her father was an Anglo-Indian who had lived in Madras for many years before returning to Liverpool where he got married.
I had a strange feeling, and said, “Is your name Thompson?”
She gasped in amazement. I told her that I knew a family by the name of Thompson who lived outside Madras and there was a pretty young girl called Elizabeth, way back in 1952.
I described the house and location and her brother George.
The barmaid confirmed that was right, George was indeed her father and incredibly Elizabeth still lived in the house, she had never married. I wondered if she was still waiting for me.
The barmaid had been to the house many times on holiday to stay with her aunt Elizabeth.
My brother, Jim, could not believe it, an incredible story, of all the Gin Joints in all the world we had to choose this one.
We went into the bar on the next two nights but she was not there, another barmaid had taken over. It was amazing to have found her that night.
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Meanwhile back in 1952 in Madras, we completed discharging, battened down the hatches and dropped the derricks, hosed down the decks to clear the filth away.
Then a little Indian fellow turned up, he was a tattooist, and said he would tattoo all hands if we would stow him away and take him to Vizagapatam a couple of hundred miles up the coast. After he had tattooed us all we stowed him down the dunnage hatch with a load of burlap bags to sleep on. I had to feed him now and again.
Two days later we docked in Vizagapatam where he disappeared into the jungle of a million shanties.
Vizagapatam was just a stinking port, the town just consisted of filthy hovels and shanties and what seemed to be millions of Indians screaming “Baksheesh, Baksheesh.”
I only walked ashore once and that was enough. No one went ashore there.
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LAST TIME IN India WAS IN 2005 .

We called into Goa on the way to Liverpool from Fremantle on a cruise ship, FUNCHAL.
India hadn't changed in over 50 years, another stinking hole, [ and people from here go there on holiday , are they MAD? ] full of beggars, we had a tour and had a meal in a hotel, and then I got the Delly Belly lasted for days , thought I was dying, lost two stones in weight.
Never ever again
Brian



Brian

[j.sabourn]

#24 Are you talking about those dollops the White cows used to drop Ivan. JS

[happy daze john in oz]

The amazing thing about India, it has allegedly more millionaires than any other country.

But there must be money in scrap ships no doubt, well for some that is.