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A SEADOG’S TAIL
Or The tale of a seafarer |
I had decided to go to sea on a whim. One of the lads I was an apprentice with came to me one day and said that he was going to sea, earlier on in my apprenticeship others had gone so it wasn’t as if it was a new sort of thing to do. The difference now was that I was old enough and qualified. I wrote my letter that same evening, a Thursday, early the next week I received a reply and an invitation to go to London for a three day extended interview. B.I. were going to pay for the train, the hotel and out of pocket expenses, I had nothing to lose.
I don’t think that my mother was too keen and I got the ‘I won’t stand in your way if that’s what you want to do, just remember that you’re a catholic’ lecture.
The interview, medical etc all went very well. On the second day we were taken to one of the B.I. ships for lunch, the ‘Bulimba.’ We all thought that the silver service, the seven-course lunch, the superb steward service, the low cost drinks (gin was so cheap there was no charge) was all done to impress us. It wasn’t, this was the standard of life we could expect if B.I. offered us a job. The reason we were taken there was for another test, they wanted to know who could sit at a table and know which knife and fork to use, and to see if we had the necessary ‘social graces’. I must have fitted the bill because the following week they made me a formal offer.
I joined the British India Steam Navigation Company on the 19th October 1970 at the ripe old age of 21 years and 6 months. I had served my time as an apprentice, been to night school and day release and was a fully qualified engineer, or so I thought. The next few months taught me how much I didn’t know.
The first few weeks were spent buying uniform, boiler suits, suitcases, having injections, saying farewell and listening to my mother tell me of the dangers of being a young man away from home –I couldn’t wait.
Eventually the letter came, it was very brief, it said that I was to travel to Bristol on Sunday 15th November 1970, to go to the ‘Grand Hotel’ for the night and that I would be met on Monday morning and taken to the M.S. ‘Juna,’ a travel pass was included and the ships agent would pay for the hotel.
Sunday was a day of tears and goodbyes, sadness and excitement. My parents and Margaret Elliott (an old friend) saw me off at Manchester Piccadilly and the adventure started.
M. R. Dippy.
Built: 1951 by Alexander Stephen & Sons Ltd., Govan.
Tonnage: 7,583 g, 4,198 n, 9,417 dwt.
Engines: Single screw, 2 x 8 cylinder 2S.C.S.A. Sulzer’s by Builder, 8,500 BHP, single reduction geared through electro magnetic coupling, 18 knots on trials. Bunkers. 1,950 tons.
Refrigerated Space: 66,000 cu ft.
Launched on the 21st Of June 1951, completed 22nd February 1952 as Cornwall for Federal Steam Navigation Co., Ltd, Yard No 627.
Juna is a village in Mayurbhanj District, Orissa.
Joined 16th November 1970, Avonmouth. Discharged 8th December 1970, London.
She had been bought by B.I. in 1967 for £250,000 and re-named ‘Juna.’
When I joined her on a cold, wet November day she had just returned from the Persian Gulf and the India to Australia run, and all the officers had ‘paid off’ and gone home, to be replaced by officers who would take her round the UK coast. Only the Indian crew and Chinese petty officers remained with the ship.
To say that I was ‘green’ is an understatement, and my very first visit to the engine room did nothing to inspire me with confidence. The second electrician was checking the switchboard, he leaned over to flick a piece of paper away with a screwdriver, there was an almighty flash and bang and the lights went out. When somebody put the alternator back on line the lights came back on and there was the second electrician, on the deck looking like a large piece of cinder. He wasn’t dead but he didn’t look too good either. When I visited him some time later, in Bristol Infirmary, he still didn’t look very nice but what struck me as funny was the sign on the ward, ‘Burns Unit, no smoking’. I saw him some years later and there wasn’t a mark on him, he had made a full recovery.
After a day to settle in and unpack my bags I was told that I would be doing the ‘port watches’ with the other assistant engineers, there were normally three or four assistant engineers on a ship. In port we worked 6 hours on watch, 12 hours off. My first ever watch started at 2am, the lad I was taking over from was in a hurry to get to the bar for a beer and just said that everything was OK. I asked him what I was supposed to do. He said, “just get your head down but make sure the logs filled in before 8am”. I took him at his word and went back to my cabin and went to bed. Some hours later the oilman awakened me, obviously in a panic about something; my Urdu was very limited i.e. none existent, and his English wasn’t much better. I went down the engine room to find that one of the compressors had been left running and was about to blow up, or seize up or do something equally undesirable. My knowledge of the machinery was just about enough to turn it off. When I told the second engineer what had happened I was naïve enough to tell him that I had been in bed when it had started to go wrong. He would have been perfectly within his rights to go berserk at the idea of the watch keeper not only being asleep but in bed asleep, but he didn’t, the ‘gentlemen of B.I.’ don’t do that sort of thing.
Two valuable lessons, the first, about not sleeping on watch, and the second – and in some ways the much more important – that as an engineer and officer with B.I. I was expected to be one of the ‘crème de la crème’ of engineers and a gentleman at all times. People use the expression ‘men of the Merchant Navy’, P&O refer to the ‘officers of P&O’ but we were always referred to as the ‘gentlemen of B.I.’.
After a few days I got a chance to ‘go ashore’ with some of the lads, this meant a trip into Bristol. My only experience of Bristol had been the previous Sunday night when the company had put me up in a very nice hotel, the Grand, prior to joining the ship and I had met the 3rd engineer who was also joining the ‘Juna.’ He was a bit of a rum turkey, what was known as a professional 3rd and spent his life coasting ships, rarely going deep sea. Like many of his breed he liked a drink and needless to say he led me astray – residents bar and gin & tonic, nothing smutty.
Back to the run ashore with the lads, my first, there was nothing special other than it was the first time in a new city. Some of the other lads had been to Bristol before and knew where to go so a good time was had by all. What I remember most about the evening is the long wait at the station for the train back to the ship at Avonmouth. I’d started to feel a bit melancholy and was wondering if going to sea was the right decision to make, I suppose I was also a little homesick. There was an announcement; “The train leaving from platform 2 for Manchester, stopping at…” I could be on that train and home in the morning. However, the train leaving from platform 1 was going to Avonmouth and I was on it, the train for Manchester went and with it the moment of doubt, never to return.
Within the week we left Avonmouth.
Leaving any port is always an event and most people who are not involved with the process would be on deck, usually with a drink to hand. You wave farewell to loved ones, to friends recently made, to a favourite city or town and some times with a sigh of relief. Time spent in port is time spent burning the candle at both ends because there’s always a lot of work to be done and a lot of socialising to be done. So as you sail away you are saying to yourself, ‘tonight I can get some sleep, tomorrow I might be sober’. Fat chance.
That first time I sailed I thought this is it, this is what it’s all about, I’m off to sea. All the preparation, the interviews, the medical, the difficult letter to my girlfriend of two and a half years, the leaving do’s, the family farewells, all that was over with, I was off to sea. How long would it be before I saw England again? How long before I saw my family and friends again?
When I joined B.I. I signed two contracts, Home Line and Foreign Service. If you sailed Home Line you sailed from and returned to the UK each voyage, never being away more than about six months (it could be longer, it could be shorter). Foreign Service was another thing altogether; the minimum was two and a half years from leaving the UK to returning. The reason for this was income tax. At the time it was 30% and the agreement was that if an officer remained out of the UK for two and a half years he would be exempt from tax. In addition we were paid a 20% bonus. That meant that my salary of £1200 was worth £1440 in my pocket on Foreign Service rather than £840 on Home Line, quite a big difference.
All these thoughts were running through my mind as we sailed down the Bristol Channel then west, into the sunset. It was one of those sunsets with large patches of clear sky with the high Cirrus, or mare’s tail, clouds turning pink and looking quite beautiful, but lower down the towering great Cumulonimbus, thunder clouds, turning black and threatening as the sun set. The sea too looked dark and moody, but then I saw some seals, probably from the not too distant Lundy and they cheered things up. I remained on deck until the land had disappeared over the horizon and the sun finally set. The sky and clouds truly reflecting my emotions on that first departure from the UK. But where were we going? Somewhere warm and exotic? Not quite, we were on our way to the Emerald Isle, to Dublin. The crossing of the Irish Sea was quite rough, it can be as rough there as anywhere in the world, and I was a little apprehensive about being seasick. One of the older hands advised me to eat and drink plenty and I would never be seasick. He was right; to this day I have never been seasick or even felt a little queasy, no matter how bad the weather has been.
Now that we were at sea the pattern of life changed. In port the senior watchkeeping officers’ work a more or less normal day and the junior officers, like I was, kept port watches. Once we sail the senior and junior officers go onto sea watches.
The senior officers are the 3rd and 4th Engineers; the junior officers are referred to as junior engineers, assistant engineers or 5th engineers. 5th engineer is probably the best description because we were all qualified engineers and being called an assistant or junior didn’t quite fit the bill.
Anyway, back to sea watches. The ship’s day is divided into six, four-hour watches. Starting at midnight they are Middle (12-4), Morning (4-8), Forenoon (8-12), Afternoon (12-4), Evening (4-8) and First (8-12). The Royal Navy splits the Afternoon watch into two ‘dog’ watches. I read somewhere that this name comes from the fact that the watch had been shortened or ‘cur-tailed’ The best watch was considered to be the 4-8 because it was the most sociable, the least popular was the 12-4, particularly the Middle or ‘graveyard’ watch.
With me being the most junior of the 5th engineers I was put on the 12-4 with the 4th engineer. Being at sea and running an engine room was a very steep learning experience. I had expected that the senior engineer on the watch would be running things and that I would help him, how wrong could I be. The senior engineer was in charge, responsible for everything that went on and signed the log books at the end of the watch, but it was the poor 5th engineer who did all the running about and ran the watch and woe betide the 5th engineer who didn’t do it right or complete all his jobs before the end of the watch. If there was anything undone at the end of the watch you stopped on until it was done. If anything broke down on your watch you fixed it; you never handed it over to the next watch.
A ship’s engine room at sea is something to behold. When you open the engine room door you are almost knocked over by the force of noise and heat, it’s almost as if you are being assaulted, battered. The temperature on the ‘bottom plates’, the control station in November in the Irish Sea was 110oF! The noise, the heat, the smells, I thought that I had walked into a scene from Dante’s Inferno. It doesn’t take long to become acclimatised to the conditions and it does work up a good thirst. Engine rooms are very ‘vertical’ places; they extend from the bilges at the bottom of the ship all the way up to the funnel, hundreds of feet, and one sort of machinery or another occupies just about every square foot. A ship is like a small town and the engine room provides the entire essential needs, electricity, heat, water and waste disposal, power to drive the ship, power to run the machinery on deck. The engine room is what puts life into a ship and when you hear the expression ‘dead in the water’ it’s a reference to there being no power on the ship, a potentially terrifying experience.
At the end of that first watch, 4am, I was introduced to ‘after watch beers’. I had expected that at that time in the morning there would be nothing to do other then go to bed, no chance. I was told to get a quick shower, put my mess room boiler suit on and be in the bar before 4.10am. After watch beers are a way of life and very necessary after four hours working at 100 degrees plus temperatures, imagine how hot it gets when the ambient temperature is over a 100 degrees. So, the 4th Engineer, the 2nd Mate and I repaired to the bar. The 2nd Mate had been keeping the same watch as us but on the bridge. We then sat and talked and had a few beers and talked and had a few more beers.
At sea you tend to spend all your waking moments with the same few people and become very close in quite a short length of time. When you move on the tie is broken and new friendships and bonds made. Whenever two or more of the company ships are in port at the same time there is a lot of ship visiting and that helps to keep track of where people are, it’s also a very good reason for a party.
Back to the Juna, the crossing to Dublin was only quite short and in almost no time we were tied up alongside in Dublin. I was back on port watches, but thinking back I mustn’t have slept very much. We went ashore and sampled the Guinness on O’Connell Street, went to a pop concert – I don’t remember if that was what we called them in those days’ – to see a group called Pickety Witch. Nobody remembers them now but at the time they were top of the pops. There was also the story leading up to the demise of my suede coat, but that is better to be left for another time. We left Dublin and sailed for London, not much longer than the trip from Bristol to Dublin. When we arrived in London what did they do, they signed me off and told me to go home until I heard from them?
So, three weeks and a day after I had left home ‘to see the world’ I was back home, much to the astonishment of family and friends. I wasn’t home long. I arrived on Tuesday, Wednesday I received new orders to go back to London on Thursday, to join my next ship the Chindwara. No fond farewells at the station this time, just a kiss goodbye at the front door and my old friend and best buddy, Brian, loaded me into his yellow Ford Anglia to take me to the station in Manchester. We almost didn’t make it because Brian managed to run into the back of a car as we drove down Oldham Road in Manchester. Brian doesn’t do things by halves; the car he had rammed was a nice, new, expensive Jaguar. The conversation between Brian and the driver of the Jaguar was something like this;
Other driver “It’s not your lucky day mate”
Brian “It never is when some clown stops suddenly and makes me run into them”
Other driver “If you run into the back of me that’s your fault, not mine”
Brian “Who are you, some kind of expert on traffic law”
Other driver “You could say that, I’m a police officer”
Brian “Oh, and how come a police officer is in a car like that”
Other driver “It’s a police car”
Brian Stunned silence, the penny is starting to drop.
Passenger in police car “I’ve got just ten minutes to catch that London train”
Me “I want that train as well, let’s leave them to sort it out and get a taxi”
So that’s what happened, I shared a taxi with some senior police officer on his way to the Home Office and Brian remained on Oldham Road sorting the bump out. The other chap even paid for the taxi. Brian has a slightly different version, but I did send him a cheque for the damage and he didn’t get prosecuted for his driving without due care and attention. He never cashed the cheque, the last time I saw it it was in a frame with some derogatory comment about me putting my hand in my pocket.
Thursday 10th December 1970 saw me back in the Port of London to join the Chindwara.
F. W. Perry Collection.
Built: 1950 by Swan, Hunter & Wigham Richardson Ltd., Newcastle.
Tonnage: 7,340 g, 3,722 n, 9,574 dwt.
Engine: Single screw, 6 cylinder 2S.C.S.A. Doxford, 6,800 BHP, 16.71 knots at trials, by Shipbuilder.
Passengers: 12 until 1959.
Refrigerated space: 13,000 cu ft.
Launched 12th May 1949, completed 24th January 1950, Yard No. 1870.
Chindwara is a town and district near Nagpur, Central Provinces.
Joined 10th December 1970, London. Discharged 1st January 1971, Sunderland.
The Chindwara was one of two B.I. cadet ships; these ships were always subject to intense rivalry and the Company went to great lengths to ensure that they were never in port together. The spit and polish on this ship was something to behold; everything was polished or varnished. Everything had to be better than the Chantala, the other cadet ship. Brian came to visit while the ship was in London because by this time he had started to think that going to sea was a good idea for him as well. In the officer’s bar there was a pair of crossed oars (varnished), a tribute to some race won by the officers. Brian made the comment, “You wouldn’t think that whores (oars) would be allowed on a cadet ship”, I saw the humour in the remark but it just went over the heads of some of the others.
One particularly pleasant thing about the Chindwara was the size of my cabin. Because of the shape of the ship, fat in the middle and pointed at the front – these are not the nautical terms – my cabin, being amidships, was quite large, the largest of the 5th Engineers in fact. On the Saturday after I had joined her I had worked 2pm-8pm then gone ashore. I returned shortly after 11pm, to find my cabin full of people. There was about five of the lads and a similar number of females, from the local telephone exchange, having a ‘cabin party’.
Cabin parties tend to be spontaneous things that start when you are having a quiet drink by your self and somebody comes along for a chat, drawn no doubt by the ‘hiss’ made when you open a can of beer. Before you know it the cabin can be full and the steward is being sent for another case of beer. I’ve known occasions when I’ve had to find another cabin to sleep in when the party in my cabin has been going to well to break up.
But this doesn’t explain a party in my cabin when I wasn’t there. It seemed that something was going on in the bar, probably a film show, and some of the lads had invited these girls down and didn’t want to disturb the people in the bar, my cabin was the biggest to hand, so my cabin it was. It was also pointed out that we would be starting sea watches at 6am the following morning, prior to sailing in the afternoon. This being the case I would not be on watch until noon the following day rather then at 8am if we had been still on port watches, I could party all night and still have a good sleep. So, my introduction to cabin parties went off with a bang! There’s another story that could be told at this point, some other time perhaps.
The following day we sailed. As mentioned the Chindwara had a Doxford engine, this was a different kettle of fish to the Sulzer engines on the Juna. The Doxford had opposed pistons in each cylinder. The top pistons and con rods being on the outside of the entablature. The top speed of these engines was about 110 rpm. The pistons were about three feet in diameter so perhaps you can imagine that there was a lot of engine moving about. Doxfords are not only unique in design, they make a quite unique sound when running, they actually talk to you – some would say sing to you.
Running the engine room on the Chindwara was rather different to the Juna. The Juna was a diesel engined ship, same as the Chindwara, but whereas on the Juna we produced AC electricity and all the pumps and auxiliaries were electrically driven (with certain exceptions) on the Chindwara we produced DC electricity and all the pumps and auxiliaries were steam driven. This meant that in addition to the engine room we had a boiler room. There was a boiler on the Juna, but it was nothing compared to the boilers on the Chindwara, dirty great big ‘Scotch’ boilers. I was going to have some fun with them in later years, but for the time being boilers and steam was something else I had to ‘take on board’.
From London we sailed up to Sunderland. This was another short trip and I was still on a steep learning curve. Sunderland is like Mecca for marine engineers because a very large proportion of marine engineers are either from the Tyneside area or from Scotland. At the time I’m talking about we still had a thriving ship building industry. The Chindwara had been built on the Tyne and when the engine talked to you it did so in a ‘Geordie’ accent.
The days up to Christmas were filled with hard work, runs ashore in Newcastle, Sunderland and South Shields. Female company was usually from the local telephone exchange or the local hospitals. If ever a B.I. ship arrived at a new port, almost anywhere in the world, a call to the local nurse’s home or the telephone exchange would guarantee enough female company for a party. Ports where a ship visited regularly had more or less permanent relationships with local girls. For the most part these were perfectly normal, respectable girls who you could ‘take home to mother’, there were exceptions though, but we had standards to maintain and any female on board was expected to behave in a ‘lady like manner’. Many of the more senior officers, in length of service as well as rank, had their wives on board, and children, therefore any untoward behaviour witnessed by them could bring the Captain down on us like a ton of bricks and all visitors could be banned and shore leave stopped.
This just about brings me up to Christmas; my first Christmas away from home, and the strange thing is that at this time I have no recollection of what happened. If other Christmases were anything to go by it would have been superb.
Immediately after Christmas I was given orders to fly out to Durban, South Africa. I left the ship on New Years day 1971, spent New Years day night at home and on the 2nd January went to London on the train, again, and on to Heathrow to fly to South Africa.
This is where it really begins.
I had flown only once before, an Air Lingus flight from Manchester to Switzerland. This time I was flying on a 747, a ‘Jumbo jet’. I had been told that there was another 5EO (5th Engineer officer) on the flight, we met at the airport and had adjoining seats. We quickly ascertained that we were going to the same ship and that I was in fact senior to him. This was to be his first ship; my six weeks or so experience had me feeling quite the ‘old salt’.
So there we were, about to fly half way round the world, unbelievable for two ordinary lads. Remember this is before long haul holidays, most people in the UK thought that they were doing well to be flying off to Spain for two weeks in the sun and here we were off to South Africa. We set off, first stop Luanda in Angola- where was that? Geography was not my strong point. I found out before very long because we had to get off the plane when we landed there.
Can you imagine being in the kitchen, baking, you open the oven door and the blast of heat makes you step back. When we landed the aeroplane door was opened and I felt the heat blast but instead of being able to step back I had to walk forward, into the oven. Nowadays when you arrive at an airport an air-conditioned tunnel connects to the plane and you are protected from the extremes of the environment. Nothing like that in Angola in the early 1970’s.
Luanda is the national capitol but it didn’t have a lot to offer by western standards, it was very hot, being only about 8o south of the Equator, and very dusty. Fortunately our stop there was only to refuel and we were soon off again. The only other thing I remember about Luanda is the castle of St Michael, built by the Portuguese, and is still a landmark.
The next ‘hop’ was from Luanda to Johannesburg. This section of the flight was in daylight and we were flying overland (most of the first leg was in darkness over the Atlantic Ocean). We were flying at a great height, of course, but the air was clear and we had unbelievable views of the African continent, vast mountains and great rivers, areas of desert and areas of vast jungles. The flight took us over Angola and Botswana then onto South Africa itself. The descent to Johannesburg took us quite low over bush lands and gold mines and it looked like a scene from hell, everything was a brownish, reddish colour. I was glad that this wasn’t to be our final destination. To be fair Johannesburg is a modern city that had grown up from a mining camp less than a hundred years previously to the largest city in the country. The vast black township of Soweto provided almost the only place to live for the thousands of black Africans who work in Johannesburg. The name comes from an abbreviated form of the words SOuth WEst TOwnships. Things are very different now.
We didn’t stop long in Johannesburg, just long enough for some passengers to get off.
Onward we then flew to our final destination, Durban. We arrived late in the afternoon and when the door was opened it wasn’t the oven blast of equatorial Africa that assaulted us, rather, we were caressed by gentle breezes of the Indian Ocean and the lush bouquet that is unique to Africa. The company’s agent met us at the airport and took us to a hotel, the Grand (my second ‘Grand Hotel’, did BI only use Grand Hotels?). All the weariness of the long journey fell off us, the hotel was superb, there was a fridge full of drinks, and we could just about see the beach from our 7th floor room. Durban was in the middle of the Christmas holiday, the main summer holiday in that part of the world, and Durban is very ‘English’ so we felt perfectly at home. The agent couldn’t tell us when our ship was due in port, but it would probably be within the week. We both thought that our ‘ship had come in’ as it were, a week or so like this would do us very well indeed.
Durban was formally Port Natal and is the main seaport for South Africa and is located on Natal Bay. European settlement began with a band of Cape Colony traders in 1824. Land was ceded to them by Shaka, the Zulu king, and the Old Fort (now a museum) was built. Durban was founded in 1835 on the site of Port Natal and named for Sir Benjamin D’Urban, the governor of Cape Colony. Durban grew and by the start of World War One was a prosperous, if rather prim and proper ‘Victorian’ town. This changed after the war and now Durban has its fair share of skyscrapers and modern buildings. Durban became a city in 1935 and continued to prosper. There are parks and botanical gardens, rose gardens and orchid houses, an esplanade and oceanarium. Durban is close to Natal’s nature reserves and game parks, we would have loved to go on a safari but because our ship was due at any time we were unable to go. We did, however, have a coach tour to Kwazulu Natal, a Zulu homeland to the north of Durban where we saw some of the most beautiful country I have ever seen. We also saw quite a lot of the coast, miles and miles of unspoilt white beaches. Of all the places I was to visit very few came anywhere near the paradise of this part of South Africa, if only the politics could match the landscape.
At the time apartheid was the law that governed most people’s lives. Nelson Mandela was considered to be a terrorist; and the ANC was an outlawed organisation. ‘White is right’ was the rule of the day. It seemed very strange to see signs on park benches or over shop doors saying, ‘whites only’. Parts of the town were for coloureds only; other parts were for blacks only. Coloureds were people of mixed race and Asians; blacks were the indigenous black population. At that time there wasn’t any TV in South Africa because it was thought that if the non-whites saw the sort of TV programs we were seeing at the time it would give them ‘ideas’. There was a lot of censorship in the papers and the cinema. The cinema was very popular, as it was in this country before we had TV, but certain films were for whites only and even when the non-whites were allowed there was a segregated area for them to sit. Unless you have experienced apartheid it is very difficult to explain, it’s a big subject and I am not going to dwell on it.
Was there any romance while we were in Durban? Yes, a little, and romance is probably the correct word. We met a couple of girls who were in Durban on holiday, they were staying in an apartment somewhere near the hotel and we met them in the hotel bar. We must have been something of a novelty because our complexions were very pale, having just left the UK winter, our dress was different (the height of fashion?), we were obviously English and a bit on the young side to be at an establishment like the Grand Hotel. Anyway, we chatted and had a few drinks, then, when the bar shut we went for a moonlight walk on the beach. We walked and talked the night away, watched the sunrise then went our separate ways, never to meet again. My seductive powers had yet to be honed. But it was a romantic night.
We saw two or three sun rises on the beach, beer in hand. We would then go back to the hotel for breakfast and a little nap. It couldn’t last forever and one day we were on the beach when we saw a ship with that familiar black and white funnel approaching. We returned to the hotel and sure enough there was a message that we would be picked up after lunch and taken to the Jelunga. Our only worry was about our bar bill, we had emptied the mini bar in our room every day and wondered if we would have to pay. Groundless worries, BI picked up the bill, we were still a bit innocent when it came to knowing what we could get away with.
M. R. Dippy.
Built: 1953 by Alexander Stephen & Sons Ltd., Govan.
Tonnage: 7,432 g, 4,032 n, 10,134 dwt.
Engines: Single screw, 2 x 10 cylinder Sulzers, single reduction geared through electro magnetic coupling, 4,000 BHP, 16 knots, one engine by Builder, the other by Sulzer Bros. Ltd., of Winterthur.
Refrigerated space: 84,444 cu ft.
Launched as Middlesex for Federal Steam Navigation Co. Ltd., on the 22nd September 1952, completed 9th April 1953, Yard No. 631.
Jelunga is a river in the Nuddea District of Bengal.
Joined 7th January 1971, Durban. Discharged 9th February 1971, Sydney.
She was slightly larger then the Juna and had a greater refrigerated capacity. The engine room was basically the same but the engines were twin 10cyl rather than twin 8cyl. An interesting thing was that the prototype engine fitted was built by Sulzer at Winterthur, near Zurich in Switzerland whereas it’s companion was built under licence by Stephens under licence.
She passed to BI on 1st November 1968 and continued on much the same trade route as she had with Federal, that is Persian Gulf ports to Australia and New Zealand.
When I joined her she had just made a one off voyage from Australia to South America and was returning to Australia. The main reason for calling at Durban was for bunkers (fuel) and mail. Two of the 5EO’s also left to return to the UK, being replaced by us. We sailed within eight hours of the ship arriving in port.
Next stop Sydney. It was probably about ten or twelve days steaming to Sydney and I found myself on the 4-8 watch with the 3EO, Mike Smith. Mike is one of the few people I have managed to keep track of. I was to sail with his brother, Ken Smith, some time later and I am still in regular contact with Ken. Mike introduced me to breakfast beers and egg butties. Coming off watch at 8am we would have a quick shower then take our beers on deck to be served with our egg butties. The rest of the morning would be spent chatting, soaking up the sun and having a few more beers.
It wasn’t beer and butties every day; we were just as likely to get dressed and go to the saloon for a more formal breakfast. A typical breakfast would be fruit juice, stewed fruit, a fish dish, cereal, cooked English breakfast, toast, tea, coffee etc. After a breakfast like that the last thing I wanted was a beer so I would take a book and have a quiet read; or perhaps write some letters but letter writing never was one of my strong points.
If we had been having a few beers we had to make sure that we had finished our beers before anybody started arriving for pre-lunch beers, getting caught by them, or even worse, the 8-12 watch was fatal. We would normally aim to be crashed out by 11am, and then it was back on watch at 4pm. 8pm saw us off watch, showered, uniform on and in the bar with the day workers. I don’t think that I have ever been on a ship that wasn’t lively and entertaining and this was no exception.
Because our voyage to Australia was almost exactly due east across the lower part of the Indian Ocean we could be guaranteed sensational sunrises over the bow of the ship each morning and even more spectacular sunsets each evening. One of my duties, every watch, was to go and check the steering gear. This meant a walk on deck to the stern of the ship at sometime during the watch; I always tried to ensure that it was at sunrise and sunset. I’m sure that you have all seen pictures and films of ships with people standing at the stern rail watching the sun setting in the ships wake, the sky turning from blue through all the shades of pink and red ‘till it sinks below the western horizon. I had seen the pictures and films too but nothing had prepared me for the unimaginable beauty of the real thing. I don’t think there was ever a day at sea, in ten years, that I didn’t watch the sunset, weather and work permitting, and it wasn’t only me who was affected. It didn’t matter what was happening in the bar, we could be about to discover the secrets of the gods or start World War III, somebody would say, “I’m just going to have a beer on deck” and we would all go on deck, lean over the rail and watch the sunset. For a while it is almost as if we have all been stunned, your thoughts go over the horizon with the sun, to your home, to your loved ones; the majestic beauty of nature humbles you, brings you to your knees. Very few seafarers doubt the existence of God.
Then it’s gone, there’s very little twilight in those latitudes, and the blanket of night is cast over you. Back to the bar because it’s too early for philosophising under the stars, that’s best done after midnight.
So, here we are on my first real voyage, the sweat, the hard work and the equally hard socialising. I had a lot to learn. Like most young engineers of 21 I felt reasonably confident in my general engineering knowledge and ability, but Mike Smith brought me down to earth one evening. He asked me if I knew how a toilet worked. Of course I did, you pull the chain and the water flushes the bowl. But Mike was asking me about the mechanism that was behind the chain. I had been flushing toilets several times a day for 21 years, I claimed to be a professional engineer and I couldn’t tell him how it worked; was there any hope for me? It taught me a valuable lesson because from then on any pump, engine or piece of machinery or anything that had a mechanism that I came across I wanted to know how it worked. Mike was my first mentor. The only advise Mike gave me that I didn’t follow was to join the Freemasons, he spent an entire evening in my cabin pointing out that if I was going to get anywhere in B.I. it was necessary to join the Masons. I don’t know if there was any truth in what he told me because it was never mentioned again, by anybody, and I have scant evidence of it being a major facet of life in the B.I.
This voyage provided me with another ‘first’; some people can be at sea for a lifetime and never see an albatross, we saw them almost every day. Because the route from Durban to Sydney is not a normal shipping route there were very few ships in the area, in fact we didn’t see any once we were away from the main land mass, so we would attract albatross and they would follow us for days on end. They never seemed to flap their wings, they just glided over the sea or up on a level with the deck. Sometimes so close you could almost touch them. Beautiful creatures, thousands of miles from land and so big. It’s no wonder seafarers of old had suspicions about them.
And so we sailed on and at about 1150 West we left the Indian Ocean and entered the Southern Ocean, Australia was now to the North of us as we sailed towards the Bass Strait between Australia and Tasmania. We entered the Bass Strait between King Island and Cape Grim on the Northwest point of Tasmania.
There was nothing ‘grim’ about life on the Jelunga, quite the opposite, and it was soon to get even better. There was a very definite change of mood on the ship now that we were through the Bass Strait; we were sailing up the coast to Sydney. Sydney was the Jelunga’s ‘home’ port and most of the lads had girlfriends in Sydney (and every other port) and because the ship had been away longer the usual and because of the trip to South America, some of the lads were almost foaming at the mouth and busting at the gills at the prospect of female company.
B.I. ships were always immaculate inside and out but special efforts are made for arrival in a homeport; not least in the officer’s bar. We had to make sure the bar was stocked to capacity, the party music sorted and the decks ‘cleared for action’. The same applied to our cabins and the stewards gave them an extra coat of polish - on the Jelunga all the cabins were panelled in ‘light oak’- any vestige of previous female visitors had to be removed or hidden, the light above the bunk altered from a reading light to something more suitable for a romantic interlude. The ship was geared up for one thing and one thing only, seduction. The owners of the ship and the captain might have had thoughts of cargo and making a profit, the chief engineer probably had thoughts about maintenance of his engines and machinery and the purser probably wanted to take on fresh provisions and water but the rest of us just wanted to party.
Of all the ways to enter Australia the way I entered that first time must be the best, sailing into Sydney Harbour on a beautiful summer morning, seeing Sydney Harbour Bridge and the Opera House. Sydney Harbour is commonly referred too as the most beautiful natural harbour in the world and seeing it that day, the water a vibrant blue, dotted with hundreds of small craft I could believe it.
The Opera House wasn’t to open for another two years but they had been building it since 1959 so it was still a splendid sight. The site of the Opera House was known as Bennelong Point, named after the first Aborigine to speak English, who was born on the site. The cost of the building was $102 million. Sydney Harbour Bridge, the Coat Hanger, was completed in 1932; it cost $13.5 million and took eight years to build. The rivets were made in Rochdale, or very near to Rochdale, I can’t remember where exactly it’s just one of those snippets of information I have picked up. Paul Hogan, of Crocodile Dundee fame, was a Sydney Harbour Bridge painter before he became famous. He was probably up there when I sailed under it helping to apply some of the 21,000 gallons of paint it takes for each coat.
Back to the Jelunga, we eventually berthed alongside in Sydney. The first thing to come on board was the telephone (it always is) and as soon as it was connected up it was ringing. As I have said most of the other officers had been to Sydney before and had girls eagerly awaiting our arrival. They all wanted to know what time could they come down to the ship, what time did the party start, should they bring a friend. First nights in port are always a bit on the wild side, there is a lot of steam to be let off because while at sea on watches there isn’t an opportunity to have a really good drink and let your hair down. Some people don’t drink at all while at sea; saving themselves for the final ring of the telegraph signalling ‘finished with engines.’ The ‘Old Man’, (the captain) and the Chief Engineer both being reasonable men enabled us to ‘let off steam’ in the time honoured way. This was my first experience of arriving in port after a long voyage and this was a particularly no holds barred celebration. Everybody else on the ship had been at sea over Christmas and New Year so there had been no serious drinking and no sex whatsoever for months and all of a sudden there we were in Sydney, a city overflowing with good beer and beautiful women.
Before I go any further I should say a little bit about Australian men and women.
The Australian men at that time were interested in beer, football (Australian rules), beer, cricket, the pet dog, beer, rugby, their mates at work, beer and somewhere further down the list women (I’m sure they have changed) everything was a ‘man thing’ and being with your mates was the most important thing in the world. So, what is the effect on your average Australian woman when she meets your well mannered, not too interested in sport (because he spends his life at sea), attentive, fit, possibly good looking, money to burn, out and out romantic British Officer whose prime interest is to get into her knickers. On top of that you have got to remember that whatever happens on the ship nobody ashore will know about it; there will be nobody to point a finger, nobody who can gossip about them, because the ship will be sailing away in a few days time. Any liaison with a seafarer is like a holiday romance, it has to blossom very quickly because in a few days time it will have to end or at least be put on hold for several months. There can only be one outcome; there was no contest.
I wouldn’t like you to think that Sydney was all partying, after so long at sea there was a lot of work to be done. Pistons had to be pulled; on these large marine engines you can’t overhaul the entire engine at one time, it would take too long, so you do one unit at a time, one unit consisting of one piston and cylinder. It took about three days to do a unit under normal circumstances. There was all the other machinery and boilers to do as well. The rule was work hard then play hard.
Sydney has a lot of other attractions, apart from its beautiful women, there was Bondi Beach to visit, Botany Bay to see, a lot had changed since 1770 when Capt. James Cook first passed that way. There was Fort Denison, the Royal Botanical Gardens, ‘The Rocks’ – The Rocks is the foundation place of Sydney and of Australia and is of enormous historical significance, often described as Sydney’s outdoor museum and is the oldest area of Sydney. Of all the places that used to be on the list of places to visit was Kings Cross, the ‘Cross’. This is an area very much like Soho in London and has, or at least had, the same sort of reputation.
No prizes for guessing where my first trip ashore was, it wasn’t the Royal Botanical Gardens. Swimming on Bondi Beach, an ice box full of beer followed by an evening ‘down the Cross’ was the order of the day, with a few of the lads and our female companions, whose sole aim in life seemed to be to grant our every desire. I had by this time realised that the decision to go to sea had been a very good move. I’m not sure that my mother would have entirely approved of my new life but as the infamous bandit, Ned Kelly, said when asked if he had any last words before the hung him, “Such is life”.
Nothing is constant at sea and after less than two weeks in Sydney the Jelunga had new orders and these new orders would take her back to the UK. Because I was now ‘foreign service’ rather than ‘home line’ a new ship had to be found for me. The company could have let me stay on the Jelunga and taken me off in the Persian Gulf on the way back to the UK, that’s what happened to the lad who flew out to Durban with me. But that didn’t happen, they took me off in Sydney, on the 9th February, and flew me all the way across Australia to Freemantle to join a ship that was just arriving on the coast from the Persian Gulf, that ship was the Carpentaria.