Chapter Twenty-five
LANDS OF CHERRY BLOSSUM AND JADE
Karatsu is on the Island of Kyushu, the southernmost of the main islands of Japan. It is not far from the great port of Nagasaki which, twenty-five years later, was to become the target for the Earth's second atomic bomb. In the spring of the year 1919 Karatau was indeed a place of great loveliness and peace. After the crude horror we had left a few days ago it seemed idyllic. As CARMARTHENSHIRE steamed in early one morning the sun was already warming the cheeks though the waters of the bay, locked in a mirror calm, still held the blue of the night in their depths. So still was the air that the spoken words "let go the anchor, Captain” from the little Japanese pilot on the bridge were loud enough to reach the forecastle head. The Carpenter raised his tommy-bar and the silence was shattered by the roar of steel-chain cable as it rattled out over the windlass gypsy.
Karatsu, in 1919, seemed to casual viewer from the sea to be a typical little Japanese village on the seashore. It looked as if the low, pleasant little hills in the background had playfully tried to slide it down into the bay. There were charming little temples dotted about on those hills, for no apparent reason as far as I could see except that it was obvious that a temple should be exactly in the position chosen in order to change a mere bit of scenery into a lovely picture. Small boats lay about the bay. It was hard to bring oneself to believe that their crews were engaged in the prosaic profession of catching fish in order to sustain life. They too, seemed to have been set right in those positions for some painter to come along and immortalize in two dimensions.
Karatsu Castle
But Karatsu was a coaling port, Karatsu, that lovely picture stolen from a Japanese teacup, enhanced its revenue by loading coal into hungry bunkers of big steamers. They didn’t do it the European way in Karatsu. The method here was yet another example of fitting industry into a scenic background without messing it up. As we lay on the still waters of the bay a little tug boat put off from the waterfront towing a couple of barges alongside heaped high with coal. Nor were these barges the vulgar steel tanks common to our harbours, with dented plates and festooned with tatty, bedraggled rope fenders. These two barges were gracefully shaped things as most native crafts are, timber built and as clean as if they had been freshly scrubbed. Conical heaps of black diamonds rose up from the open holds of the crafts and grouped round the low bulwarks were groups of tiny figures dressed in light coloured flowing dresses, their black hair piled on their heads and done in a bun behind. Their soprano chatter floated across the slowly narrowing strip of sea told us that we were about to be coaled by women.
I had heard of women doing such work before, in fact the female stokers at the Sassnitz ferry were classical examples. But these Japanese women were different. Mostly they were young and attractive. When they got alongside, heavy stages were rigged by some men from the tug and on these the women stationed themselves. The coal was passed from hand to hand in little wicker baskets. As the girls stood on those stages passing up the shallow baskets of coal to be tipped into the bunker hatch their actions were more reminiscent of some strange and fascinating dance full of lithe and lissom grace - and fascination - which is what holds the memory. The fact that a Japanese girl coaling can quite unconsciously exude charm of a very disturbing nature gives some hint of the devastating attraction these women can turn on when the occasion serves. Their quick passing motion with the little baskets of coal was accompanied by a sibilant hissing sound which seemed to have an almost hypnotic effect and was probably a psychological factor in disguising physical weariness.
At a shout from their tubby little overseer - gentleman who handled his women with the bonhomie of a director handling a bunch of film stars - the coal passing ceased immediately, the rhythmic noise burgeoned into a chorus of feminine chatter and the girls descended to the lighters like a cloud of rather grimy sparrows. One on the lighters, and with a quick twist of their bodies and a flurry of arms their light clothing fell around them and there they stood, a couple of dozen slim, honey-coloured bodies, glistening in the sunlight. But only for a second. Still chattering they stepped on the gun’l of the boat and with up flung arms dived cleanly overside into the sea.
Before we astonished onlookers had quite recovered our poise the girls were being helped aboard again by their avuncular overseer. They produced clean kimonos from some hiding place. free from coal dust and flung them on, still twittering like a crowd of sparrows. Then they performed some magic oriental rites with their coal-black hair and in a very few moments were presentable enough to take tea with the Vicar. Then they asked permission to come aboard.
Permission was granted. But it seemed very evident in a short space of time that such an invitation in Japan is tantamount to handing over the entire establishment to the guests. The girls swarmed aboard and broke up into little groups of two or three. They invaded the most sacred recesses of the ship. They invited themselves into our cabin and inspected our most sacred belongings with frank and sometimes most obviously unflattering criticism. They even surged into the inner temple of "Pongo'" Hannam's cabin - and he didn't like it at all. But he was obviously more embarrassed than really angry and the evicted ladies left him with squeals of laughter.
Promptly on the whistle they scuttled back to their lighters once more and clad again in their coal stained light cotton frocks the coaling went on monotonously without a break. They knocked off about six o'clock and as the empty lighters were towed away to the shore their merry chattering came back to us softly across the water. It could not have been an ideal way of earning a living but apparently nobody had filled their charming heads with ideas on the rights of women. So they had no disturbing thoughts to mar their simple happiness but just got on with the job and liked it.
Next morning we weighed anchor and left for Shanghai. To be quite frank about our ship’s status in the mercantile marine’s social scale this juncture it must be admitted that the CARMARTHENSHIRE had fallen from the high estate of a cargo liner into the humble ( but often lucrative level of a tramp steamer. Except that she was not run on "tramp” lines.
That sort of thing usually was synonymous with poor food, under-manning, and lack of stores and gear. CARMARTHENSHIRE was not like that. She was well found, well feed and apprentices were taught their job, working as a team, both in navigation subjects and ordinary seamanship.
But nevertheless CARMARTHENSHIRE was looking for cargo. Nothing offered at Vladivostok, of course and Japan had still not got down to exports after the First World War. China however, was bursting to trade. So in a short time after leaving the blue sea of Karatsu the hull of the CARMARTHENSHIRE, flying light, was pushing aside the yellow waters of the Wo Sung river. While the agents were rounding up some freight they put us into dry-dock – a highly economical move considering the relative cost of the job when compared with British charges. In Britain the Dockyard Matey, like the majority of us, wanted a life of ease and luxury. In the China of those days it was recognised as part of the immutable social law that only the bosses can have ease and luxury.
Although the Chinaman has a reputation for honesty there are some things which break down his conscience and one of these is brass. Not the brass referred to by a Yorkshireman when they use the term but common-or-garden commercial objects made of the metal. Our Skipper and Officers were not really Eastern traders and had not run up against this peculiar kink in the Oriental mind. Neither had they experienced his utter cunning when it came to confiscating any brass object to himself. Brass hinges on moveable sections of taffrail began to disappear although there were six large screws to remove before any such object could be ‘palmed’. Brass screw plugs which fitted into the tank sounding pipes at deck level vanished without a trace. Not until our carpenter found himself one day standing near a bland Chinaman who was slowly revolving in an anti-clockwise direction did it dawn on the Europeans aboard just what was going on. The Chinaman was gazing with complete lack of expression common to his race at the distant scene and softly humming a minor mode Chinese ditty. Not until our amazed carpenter’s eyes had travelled down the slowly revolving oriental gentleman’s body did he realise that the said gentleman’s toes were gripping a brass sound-pipe plug in the deck. His slow and nonchalant gyrations were steadily unscrewing it. A minute more and a quick flick of the foot and another piece of British brass would have been on its way to the melting pot. Nothing was done to the Chinaman. Although he was hauled before the agent I rather think that official thought we were a trifle gauche not to have removed all moveable brass before entering Shanghai.
Shanghai at this period was outwardly a prosperous city. Divided into Concessions held by various European nations and the United States of America it had the atmosphere of an occupied country. Not that the Chinese seemed to resent the presence of the ‘foreign devils’ on their land but the resentment was there and was being fostered by ambitious war lords, mostly for personal ends. This was a period of political uncertainty in China. The old dynasties had been swept away. The Government, masquerading as a sample of democracy, was corrupt and unstable. China was not ready for democracy. Within a few years, Soviet Russia, having consolidated her regime from the Baltic to the Pacific, could and did turn to educating the communist intelligentsia of the New China in the science of what, for a better term, could be called democratic totalitarianism. But in 1919 all was gay in Shanghai – at least for the ‘haves’. Some of the gaiety was pretty forced. Mostly it was shockingly garish and a crude imitation of that sort of hard worked joi-de-vivre which the American nation has exported to world markets with quite astonishing success. The foreigners were the bosses of Shanghai and if the wealthy Chinese of the native city resented it they were adequately equipped by nature for keeping their feelings to themselves.
After the horrors of Vladivostok and the lovely city of Karatsu, Shanghai seemed brash, noisy and busy, with a night life which left little to be desired if you liked that sort of thing. I have a vague memory of an orchestra of Chinese girls in a night club playing American jazz with excruciating inexactitude, while a bunch of trousered hostesses with flowers in their hair, loaded us with expensive and highly intoxicating liquor. I also remember an afternoon’s rickshaw ride along the Bubbling well Road with the sunshine glistening on the bare back of the collie in the shafts, and the soft pad of his bare feet in the dust and the colours and shapes of old China all around me. And that is a much pleasanter memory, not from any moral angle but simply because the whole picture belonged to its setting. The night club did not.
But my chief interest was in the dry-dock. This was the first time I had seen CARMARTHENSHIRE out of the water and we cadets spent a lot of time down in the dock examining her hull structure. To walk, half stooping, under the flat, steel roof which was the ship’s bottom held a weird fascination for me. From the bright sunlight my imagination climbed through the darkness of her double-bottom tanks into the engine room where, at that moment, the shining crankshaft and connecting rods lay partly dismantled with busy Chinese fitters working on them. High above them were the blue-steel cylinder tops and the Engineers’ cabins and further up still the boat deck and the big funnel. Thousands of tons of steel lay there above me, pressing on the single line of keel blocks, the great hull held upright by rows of massive timber shores along each side of it. To walk under a ship in dry-dock is to realise how man has progressed in his urge to overcome nature in his desire for exploration. To think how that vast hull can be thrown around, broken and utterly destroyed by nature’s forces is to realise how far we still had to go. To stand below the big, bronze-bladed propeller and to appreciate the power of steam which churns it round, fully submerged, in a tumbling sea at a relentless sixty-five to seventy revolutions per minute is to understand the tensile strength which man has built into his ships. Yet when you are in the engine room of a ship under way the shining steel rods and crankshafts seem almost languid in their graceful unceasing gyrations. The high speed, high pressure turbines of later years is doubtless far more efficient than the reciprocating engine. The marine diesel has saved crew costs. But for sheer beauty and as an object lesson in visible power the triple expansion steam reciprocating engine is unbeaten. It is also still the most reliable.
While CARMARTHENSHIRE was in Shanghai dry-dock both anchors were lowered to the bottom and gangs of collies with long hooks, flaked down the heavy steel chain cables until they lay in long, straight fleets along the bottom of the dock. From the dockside they looked like oversized Victorian watch chains. It was the carpenter’s job to see that all shackle pins were drifted out, examined and replaced, securely locked in place by hardwood pins driven through the eye of the shackle and the pin heads. This sounds a routine sort of job requiring no great skill. Neither does it, but it requires meticulous care and checking. Sloppy work cannot be countenanced in anything connected with the sea. Lack of skill or carelessness is never forgiven by a hard gale and tumultuous ocean. Anchors and cables are designed to hold a ship fast and safe at her moorings. A carelessly driven pin can wreck a ship and cast away her company. So the carpenter, whose job it is to tend all ground tackle and windlass, is responsible for seeing that cable shackles are safe, that links are sound and that the great cables are properly restowed back in the murk of the chain lockers.
That process completed, and with a new coat of pink anti-fouling paint on her bottom and sundry mysterious things done to her stern gland through which the propeller shaft passes, the CARMARTHENSHIRE left dry-dock. By that time the agents had managed to find a cargo of bagged Soya beans and frozen eggs. The ship had several ‘freezer’ chambers and about five hundred tons of little Chinese eggs were stowed away in them consigned to Britain. The Soya bean seems to make its appearance in large quantities after a major war. Looking rather like a haricot bean it is supposed to possess all those things necessary for people suffering from the state of malnutrition which war inevitably brings with it. The Soya beans were consigned to Trieste. As we lay alongside the jetty I could watch slings of ten bags each being snatched aloft to our derrick heads and swung in and out of the hatches. By the constant rattle and roar of winches one could tell that an equal amount was being whipped aboard from lighteers lying on the other side of the ship. Five hatches working both sides – they were mighty cargo workers, those old ‘Shire’ boats – and that represented a mighty lot of beans.
Meanwhile the Chief Officer was chasing his deck Serang and that venerable gentleman was hounding his long-suffering dependants to greater feats of labour in a masterly attempt to get the ship back into her peacetime colours. The salmon-pink anti-fouling was slowly being immersed in the yellow swirl of the Wu Sung river by thousands of tons weight of Soya beans but above it the dazzle paint of Kaiser’s war was being laid over by a coat of glistening black. Aloft on the funnel four men lowered themselves slowly down on their staging, the sweep of their paint brushes clothing the drab grey smoke stack with a coat of smooth sunshine buff. Soya beans needed little attention from us so we cadets busied ourselves on the bridge, cleaning, scraping, oiling and varnishing the teakwood rails and wheelhouse till they gleamed with that lovely translucent brown which only teakwood shows. The Sucunnies and Chokras worked away at the brass until it shone again; engine room telegraphs and speaker tubes and telephones and binnacle tops, glinting and flashing with a warmth and light which chromium plating can never know. Although it was against policy to work together on the same job, we youngsters both British and Indian, vied with each other to produce that level of immaculate perfection only to be found on the bridge of a liner or the quarterdeck of a warship.
The there were the sew-sew women. One of the many strange things about Shanghai which rather startled me was the air of calm possessiveness which these women assumed. Giller and I were in the cabin one morning with Fenwick-Stowe when I became aware of a quiet sound in the doorway. I can only describe it so; I didn’t patently hear anything and as I was looking out of the pothole at the time I certainly didn’t see anything, but suddenly I was aware of someone behind me. The Chinese have an uncanny knack of claiming attention with the least possible disturbance. The three of us turned together and saw a little yellow woman framed in the doorway. The skin of her face was a tawny yellow and was stretched tight over her cheekbones, but she smiled and her eyes were not so completely devoid of expression as most of the eyes I had seen around Shanghai. She was wearing black silk trousers, loose fitting, and a brilliant yellow silk jacket. Her voice was quiet and had the liquid tones characteristic of the Chinese.
‘You want sew-sew woman?"
Put as a question; yet it was not so much a question as a bald statement of fact. Obviously we wanted a sew-sew woman. This placid, motherly woman knew from years of experience that the white officers must have lots of clothes to repair and socks to darn.. She made no allowances for our youth and inexperience. She was completely unaware of that proper English upbringing which suggests that there is something vaguely immoral attached to letting a woman - other than Mother, sister or wife - look after your personal things. Giller, reacting violently against such an outrage to the social code, was about to send her packing but Fenwick-Stowe butted in.
"You sew-sew woman, you mend my clothes," he said. ‘This drawer here." he lapsed into pidgin English of his own devising as he pointed to his bottom drawer. ‘You makee plenty good, me give you one dollah Shanghai. Al’ li’?’
Evidently it was ‘Al’ li' and I weighed in with a similar proposal. Anybody who saves me darning socks or sewing on buttons has always been ‘Al’ li’ with me. The sew-sew woman of Shanghai or any other eastern port for that matter have always been worth their weight in gold - or Shanghai dollars - to the mariners of England. Every officer's cabin - even the Old Man's - had its sew-sew woman getting busy on the wear and tear of months. Nobody ever denied them the right to ransack the drawers and cupboards in search of mendable garments and so far as I know their confidence was never betrayed by the sew-sew women.
With only a few inches of that salmon pink boat topping showing above the yellow water the CARMARTHENSHIRE dropped down the Wu Sung river. The bustling international city of Shanghai faded astern and the low banks of the river tipped as we passed into the estuary. It was not till then that I missed the two Russian princesses. Looking astern, almost as if I expected to see them waving good-bye to us from the horizon, I realised that these two had joined the great homeless, stateless and often hopeless colony of outcasts in the hidden recesses of Shanghai. I have often wondered what happened to them; often wondered what happened to anybody when they lose their home and their own people and their own way of life. It must indeed be the very ultimate test of character. The many who can have this tragedy happen to them and come struggling up to make good again are, to my mind, so greatly to be admired. Those who go under, even seeking death itself are so greatly to be pitied. An eastern city like Shanghai in the year of confusion one thousand nine hundred and nineteen, unstable of governance, run by a cabal of European nations having within itself an undercurrent of oriental political chicanery, was no place for a European to be submerged in, destitute , friendless and alone.
I saw the steward step out on deck and heard the encouraging clangour of the dinner bell and, the ‘princesses’ faded from my mind as other peoples' troubles do so easily.
Dinner on the first night out of port is always a delight. The raucous and foreign shore noises are gone. The decks have been washed down and are clear of the rubbish which cargo always brings in its wake. Derricks are housed and ropes coiled away. Lights come up in cabins and the soft ‘plop’ of a cork is muffled by the rush and chuckle of the sea past the ship's side. Nothing is so conducive to good cheer and that feeling of peace with all men as a drink before dinner on the first night out – homeward bound. And the shore noises have given place to the soft, mystical voice of the wind blowing across miles of open sea.
We found two lady passengers at the Captain’s table when we assembled for dinner. It is remarkable how two passengers can alter the atmosphere of a ship's meal times by their presence. When they happen to be women the metamorphosis is rather more accentuated. Miss Whittaker was a dusty blonde of uncertain years with that washed out complexion which the tropics leave on women who have to live there too long. Miss Pilgrim was a school-marmish brunette, not much of a mixer, but with hidden depths, I thought, not usually associated with the true prude.
Miss Whittaker hailed originally from Lewisham. I often wondered how a young lady of Lewisham came to that distant part of the Earth. Did she answer an advertisement? Did she go out on the off chance of marrying some fabulously wealth nabob? Where was the connection between that ordinary looking woman from the labyrinthine streets of Lewisham and the queer-scented mystery of an oriental city? Both she and "the Pilgrim" spoke Chinese fluently and, I suspect, carried on their little bits of ship-board scandal in that elusive language. But Miss Whittaker was a good mixer and had that incredible facility of being able to get a party going with the most unlikely ingredients. Anybody who could reconcile the Old Man to singing choruses with the Chief Engineer to the accompaniment of the lady on the piano and one of his cadets on the violin was undoubtedly something of a miracle worker. "The Pilgrim" had her conquests too. They were rather more concentrated and the Chief Radio Officer was the target. Not, by any means, an unwilling target.
So with a song in our hearts we dropped south through the China Sea and round Singapore into the Indian Ocean. One morning there was no need for us to take sights, a dull grey cloud on the horizon ahead showed where the island of Ceylon lay waiting for us.
There was a lumpy sea running and from the 'bridge the long foc'sle head curtsied to meet the oncoming seas. Spangles of spray glittered in the sunlight as the plunging anchor flukes smashed into the swell. I watched the carpenter go forward to clear away the anchors in preparation for anchoring in Colombo harbour. As the petty Officer cast off the claws which held the cables I saw the long line of breakwater just breaking the horizon ahead. Then there came from forward the most appalling roar and rattle, and the ship shook. On the bridge the Third leapt to the engine room telegraph and rang down "stop”; the Old Man fairly flew up the bridge ladder. I saw the Carpenter running aft along the foc'sle head, his arms folded round his head as if to ward off a blow. Then came a rip-roaring ‘bang’ and something snaked up over the windlass, tore out the siderails like bits of putty and disappeared down the hawse pipes. The Indian Ocean seemed to be hushed in an awful silence. The Old Man,, his naturally thin lips pressed to a tight line, walked over to the telegraph and rang "full ahead". The mate came up the bridge ladder, mopping his brow.
"Port anchor and cable, sir,’ he remarked ruefully,” we’ve lost the lot.’
The Old Man peered into the bridge compass to see that the Sucunny was getting the ship back on her course before turning to the Mate. "How the hell did he come to do it?" he queried.
“Damned if I know, sir. Beastly carelessness. Must have eased the brake too much. I’ll go down and see him. Looks as it he’d seen a ghost.”
Captain Hannam said nothing, unless "Hrmph’ can be counted as something. It certainly conveyed a wealth of feeling and may have left the Mate with some doubt as to his own popularity.
So when CARMARTHENSHIRE passed into the smooth water of Colombo harbour she only had one mud hook dangling from her bows. The Pilot slewed her into position and ordered ‘Let go the anchor". Once again came the roar from for'ard, but short lived this time as the anchor found bottom in shallow water. Then came the usual manoeuvres of "bringing up".
More cable was paid out until the Pilot called to the Mate on the foc'sle "hold on!". But something was wrong. By taking two shore marks in line I could see that the ship was not "bringing up" but was still drifting ‘Slow ahead," snapped the Pilot and turned to the Captain. "We’ll break the anchor out and try again," he said. “Never known this to happen in this sort of weather.” He picked up a megaphone and hailed the foc'ale head, It "heave away Mister Mate".
The windlass clanked as the big links came in dripping over the gypsies. The backs of the Chief Officer and Serang leaning over the rail to watch the cable come slowly out of the water seemed to convey alarm and despondency. The Mate straightened himself and pointing his megaphone aft remarked conversationally, "Cables parted at fifteen fathoms, sir. Starboard anchor's gone."
For a mild mannered man the Old Man's language was expressively violent.
The Pilot looked as if someone had asked him a question to which be had long ago forgotten the answer - a question which he considered in rather doubtful taste. ‘Slow ahead", ordered Captain Hannam. "Hard a-port". The Sucunny rattled the wheel over and slowly the ship swung towards the harbour mouth and out to sea again.
Even as an apprentice I sensed the atmosphere of professional horror which hung over the ship at that moment. It was bad enough to have lost one anchor and cable, but within the hour to lose the other remaining piece of ground tackle was the very nadir of professional behaviour. On the bridge the Captain and Pilot consulted together while on the forecastle the Chief Officer set his men about getting the chain lashings off the spare bower anchor secured against the break of the forecastle. Not that we could wait for the ponderous thing to be worked for'ard and shackled on to the remaining cable. The Agent's launch came alongside and the Pilot roared for a tug and a mooring party so that we could make fast to buoys. Then, shamefacedly it seemed, we turned and re-entered Colombo Harbour and soon were make fast fore and aft to buoys.
Then came the search for the missing anchor. A British cruiser was in port and a request was made for a driving party. A diving launch and crew were provided and guided to the spot where our anchor had gone down. It was within a hundred feet of our port bow as we lay at the buoys.
We left it to the navy to find our anchor and ourselves got on with the dull routine of loading about two hundred tons of tea. But during the day we cadets from time to time managed to slip up to the fo'csle head to see how things were going. The diving crew also seemed to have settled down to a monotonous routine. Sometimes the diver would be sitting on the gun’l of his boat, his rubber diving suit on but his copper helmet on the thwart by his side as he smoked a cigarette with the calculated ease of a man who had a job to do and knew just how long he could take to do it. Then the pump men would get to work on the air pump handles and the diver's mate would screw on the helmet again. The diver would climb ponderously overboard, pause for a moment at water level and then disappear in a cloud of bubbles. I am led to suspect that when he got to the bottom he sat down again. He couldn't very well have smoked a cigarette but he must have just indulged in some form of introspective meditation. Anyway he didn’t find the anchor. Our old Serang spat derisively as the diver settled down again to another cigarette after one of his unprofitable excursions to the bottom of Colombo Harbour. The old Serang had the answer to our problem and somebody, probably the Mate, had the sense to put it to the Captain.
The naval diver was paid off and his elaborate equipment and highly qualified colleagues towed away by a picket boat. Then the agent appeared with a lithe, brown little native - almost naked - who smilingly answered that he knew what was wanted - knew where to look for it too. The agent smiled, the Mate smiled and the Old Man’s face cracked a little. The brown man hurried down the gangway to his boat and paddled away.
We fled back to the forecastle head and found most of the ship’s company already there for the game of "hunt the anchor" had almost taken on the excitement of a parlour game. Away on our port bow we saw the little brown man slip quietly overboard leaving his boat bobbing unattended to show where he had dived. he seemed to be under water for ages, until I began to think that he had got into some kind of trouble down below. Then be bobbed up suddenly beside his boat and hailed us. He wanted a light line. He climbed aboard his boat and paddled over to us and the end of a heaving line was thrown down to him.
As he paddled away we paid out the line and bent on another. The Serang sent some of his juniors scampering away to bring more lines. Reaching his diving place the Cingalese stopped his boat and made the line fast round his waist. With a hail to us to pay out he was gone. The line slipped through the fairlead as the swimmer surged downwards into the green depths of the harbour. Our Serang flogged his men into chattering activity with his caustic tongue, bending on more lines with lighting movements. The brown tarred rope stopped running out and hung in a bight as the diver broke surface again. Once again he paddled under our curving steel bows and this time it was the eye of the "salvage" wire which was lowered down to him in his boat. With a few deft twists he made fest his end of the heaving line to the eye of the tough steel wire rope from which hung a great screw shackle. The brown man paddled away to his position over our unseen anchor on the harbour bottom. At the Mate's order the Carpenter started up the windlass with infinite care and the dripping line, with a few turns round the windlass end, came in dripping through the fairlead. The Serang’s boys paid out the big wire as if their lives depended on the success of the operation. The eye of the wire disappeared under the water about fifty feet ahead of us and presently the heaving line began to slip on the windlass end. The Carpenter shut off steam and the Chief Officer hailed the Singhalese to dive and see if the wire had reached the anchor. This time the brown man was gone for what seemed an incredible time. I became aware of people talking in whispers all around me - Hindustani and English - but with one thought in mind. Where was that ruddy diver? Then suddenly he was on the surface, his tooth flashing in a grin. ‘Heave ‘way wire, Mister mate. OK now’ He shouted across the water. ‘Heave ‘way!’
It took three men to get the turns of the big wire over the windlass end. Then more to get it round the winch at the break of the forecastle as an added precaution. Slowly the Carpenter opened the winclass stop-valve. The lascar donkeyman at the winch took up the slack. The turns of wire groaned as they tightened and ground against each other on the windlass bollard and reaching ahead like a steel bar the thing began to come in. We held our breaths. Beside me the Serang was muttering what might have been Moslem prayers but were more likely Hindustani nautical swear words. The Mate’s knuckles showed white as he gripped the rail, watching - and sweating. Once the wire slipped on the windlass with a shuddering jar and the Serang damned the man on the winch to the third and fourth generation. Then it began to creep in again.
I looked aft along tile ship's side and found that all the cargo hooks were hanging idly overside. The lightermen were crowded on the bows of their craft intent only on the rod-like wire which crept in over our bows. I looked at the ship in the next tier of moorings and saw her company likewise engaged. Truly the CARMARTHENSHIRE’s starboard anchor was making history that day - or at least a yarn over a pint that night. As if I had been guilty of a moment’s inattention my eyes swung back to the dripping wire coming steadily over the leads now. After a fair sized millennium we were brought back to life by a straggling cheer from the next ship in the tier. Our wire now hung vertically downwards in the water, swinging gently like a heavily weighted pendulum. Then the anchor shackle broke surface, with its fifteen fathoms of chain still hanging from it. Slowly the black shank and muddied flukes came in sight.
"Vast heaving,” the Mate turned to the Serang. "Stopper her off, and make it good. Take plenty turns on the bollards. O.K.?"
"Hatcha Sahib!” the old Serang was grinning with delight and his relations jumped to secure the kicking wire. The naked and simple native had done what the naval diver had failed to do. But then the simple native had not the advantage of a naval education and knew nothing whatever of swinging the lead.
That night, under the blue glare of sizzling arc lamps, all hands turned to and roused out the port cable and divided it in half - a nail-breaking chore, handling the rusty great links. The newly recovered anchor was shackled on to one half and the other half flaked away down the starboard chain locker. Then the spare bower anchor was passed forward by derrick and tackle and shackled on to the starboard cable. As dawn stole the brilliance from the arc-lights CARMARTHENSHIRE headed quietly out of the harbour. Everybody was dog- tired and red eyed. The forecastle head was filthy from hours of cable work, grey mud tinged with red flaked rust, but the rules of the sea forbade that the dirt should be allowed to stay. Before the watch was piped below all hands got to work with hoses and scrubbers and removed the offending filth from the teakwood, sweeping it into the Indian Ocean.
As the ship dipped again to the monsoon swell the “Finished Stand By” tinkled from the bridge telegraphs and those of us on the watch below headed for a quick breakfast and a “stretch off the land” before noon sights brought us on deck again.
Chapter Twenty-six
TRIESTE. THE PROBLEMS OF A NO MAN’S LAND
We came up the Adriatic with the otters out. That sea still harboured an unknown quantity of mines. The otters were torpedo-like things towed by wires from a davit hinged to the stern. Theoretically the mine mooring wires of any mines in our course would foul the towing wires and the cutting jaws of the otters break the mine adrift at a safe distance from the ship. Whereupon it would rise to the surface to be sunk by rifle fire from the ship. Theoretically.
It was pleasant weather as the mountains round the head of the Adriatic began to close in on us until we raised the tall buildings of Trieste ahead. The voyage had been uneventful; even the Red Sea had been bearable. We spent a quiet night in Suez taking in fuel oil having worked out the Japanese coal. It was evidently the sort of night on which the deck officer of the watch relaxed a bit, leaving most of the worry to the engineer in charge of the fuelling operations. Not that anyone wanted to go ashore - not in Port Teafik and after dark.
The voyage from Port Said and up the Adriatic had been delightful but very little shipping was encountered. As we entered Trieste harbour the place had the same deserted, down at heel appearance as Vladivostok but the ravages in the European port were due to war. Trieste had been on the wrong side.
Before the First World War Trieste had been a busy sea port and manufacturing town. Of considerable antiquity, it came under Austrian sovereignty in 1382 and remained so until it was ceded to Italy in 1918 under the Treaty of S. Germain. It lies on a magnificent bay at the end of the Gulf of Trieste and behind it ride the hills of the Corso. The old town was, in fact. a series of narrow, terraced streets on the lower slopes of the hills while the modern city, with streets laid out on the gridiron pattern, occupied flat ground on the sea shore. Much of this land has been' reclaimed by Austrian engineering. Towards the end of the 1914-1918 war Trieste was cut off and heavily shelled from the hills. When CARMARTHENSHIRE steamed in past the break- water its big stones were ruptured and splintered by the bombardment. As we slipped quietly alongside the quay CARMARTHENSHIRE seemed the only vessel in the port. No lordly Austrian Lloyd liners populated the harbour; the great shipbuilding yards were silent and deserted. Trieste seemed a city of ghosts.
Trieste Harbour, 1802 by Louis-Francois Cassas
We had no trouble with stevedores; they came aboard in droves to get the precious cargo of food unloaded.
In the evening I went ashore with Giller and we found our way to the wide, tree-lined Via del Corso.
0nly a few electric street lamps were burning to light up the fine buildings. Most of the cafes sold little but beer, cigarettes and ersatz coffee. But there is always the clever caterer who can provide anything for the foreigner with the right kind of money in his pocket. We soon found one such place. It was well lit and after the gloom of the streets looked infinitely attractive. We were tired of trying to see what Trieste looked like from the outside. The few people who were about seemed to move around like zombies, not of this world, unaware of each others presence, seemingly not even able to communicate on a common wave length. So we turned into the welcoming light of the restaurant where foreigners (with money to spend) were welcome.
No sooner had we found a table - and the choice was easy since the place was practically empty - than we were joined by two young ladies. Wearing black frocks of a somewhat daring cut, they evidently sought to produce the femme fatale effect slinkily immortalised by the contemporary British artist Fisher. For the record these two little Austrian failed singularly to produce any such effect. They ordered coffee and produced cigarettes which they stuck in long holders with the precision of a musical comedy turn. Then they turned to us and asked for a light.
For Giller and I that topped off a series of developments which culminated in as priceless an anti-climax as anyone could have thought out. We sat back in our chairs and laughed and laughed. We didn't mean to be rude and we stopped as suddenly as we had begun for we realised that it was rather like laughing in the presence of the dead. We apologised most numbly and explained that neither of us smoked and we had no matches. But it broke the ice. We had been a little afraid of these wicked, predatory females. A waiter hastened to supply the light for the ladies' cigarettes and we made amends by inviting them to share our meal. Which, of course was what we had been intended to do anyway.
The meal was of no consequence but the girls tucked in. Conversation was difficult as they spoke little German - not our sort anyway - and we no Italian. However Giller managed with the incomparable aplomb of a “natural mixer" to keep the party going and by the end of the evening the girls realised that they had hooked that quite impossible type, the perfect English gentleman. So we put them on a tram for the Old Town - I remember no taxis - adequately compensated by their standards, with liras and fortified by good food and wine.
Trieste harbour is a magnificent sheet of water. Soya beans are a cargo from which little can be learned to further the education of the young gentlemen of the half deck. So some of us got together to ask the Chief Officer for the use of a lifeboat to sail. At first the idea was not popular in official circles. The regrettable series of mishaps up to date had no doubt made the Chief a little hesitant about tempting fate by putting one of his lifeboats at the tender mercies of his cadets. None of the officers seemed keen to go and no doubt the Old Man was already thinking of the report he would have to make should anything unfortunate happen to his precious indentured apprentices. But help came from an unexpected source. The Lady from Lewisham, our Miss Whittaker, came out with an impassioned plea to the Captain to let us have a boat - cos she’d love to go sailing with us! She turned on a flow of feminine cloying sweetness from which the Old Man escaped only by ordering us away in a boat.
Fenwick-Stowe was put in charge and the junior radio operator came along besides Miss Whittaker and myself. Having overcome the skipper with her devastating coyness she had switched the barrage to the Chief Steward who gave in ,without a battle and victualled us royally with sandwiches and beer.
We shoved off and the moderate breeze soon had the tubby craft heeling over gently under dipping lug and jib. Boat sailing to me has always been a delight. To feel the tug of the mainsheet and the weight of water as it gurgles past the rudder with a little helm on to keep her off the wind is one of the real joys of this world. There is no doubt in my mind that with all its dangers and discomforts, to have served in a square rigged windjammer must bring with it that sense of supreme satisfaction which trundling around on a power driven ship can never supply. A wind ship belongs to and is part of the elements; a steam boat is simply a hull being pushed around by man-made machinery. But there's no denying that the modern power driven ship is a lot safer and a sight more comfortable than the most beautiful clipper. Taken in conjunction with my confessed admiration for square- riggers I think it only goes to show that a belief in a life of dolce-far-niente being the right and proper life for the labouring man, is not very good psychology. But it would take a bit of courage to preach that apocalyptic doctrine and it would be political suicide. Nevertheless, if in these days adventure was not stifled by the cramping legislation of professional bureaucrats and less made of the sanctity of a high standard of living, many more young people would be able to find themselves in battling against the things of nature instead of battling against the boss as a Trade Union official.
I don’t remember whether the conversation in the lifeboat on Trieste harbour was on like philosophical vein but I doubt it. Anyway we certainly had no suspicion of what nature had in store for us. The sun shone and made the wavelets sparkle in the breeze as they danced and slapped against the boat's side. Astern of us lay the ship, far off now so that we could no longer distinguish the details of her and behind her rose the towers of Trieste and the Corso hills. Then quite suddenly the sun was blotted out by hurrying stratus clouds. The sea turned grey and within minutes the wind had freshened to a moderate gale.
We luffed up, lowered the jib and reefed the lugsail. Then we tacked ship - assisted by oars, a lubberly proceeding - and attempted to bear away from the island breakwater which was about half a mile down to lee’ard. By now a full gale was blowing and all hands were soaked with spray. Luckily it was warm, for the Lady from Lewisham had on the lightest of clothes which now clung to her in attractive but saturated folds. Her hair had taken charge somewhat but I noticed that she was smiling as she braced her foot against the lee side and hung on.
Fenwick- Stowe at the tiller gave her a quick glance and yelled,
"You all right, Miss Whittaker?"
“Yes, I’m grand. This is the life. Yoiks, tally-ho!” cried the irrepressible one from Lewisham and Shanghai.
"Never mind about ‘yoiks , tally-ho’” spluttered Stowe as a dollop of spray smacked him in the teeth. “You hang on or one or these gusts will have you in the drink!”
Almost immediately followed the father and mother of all squalls. We saw it coming, black and howling across from the mountains, whipping the troubled water into flying scud. Stowe shook her up into the wind and we tried to strike sail but the squall got there first and laid us on our beam ends. There was a sharp "crack" and the mast and lugsail went over the side. Relieved of the pressure the boat righted herself and we clawed the wreckage back on board. It was not till then that we realised that the shell-torn stone breakwater was close under our lee. And we had no anchor.
Then to our relief the wind took off as quickly as it had begun. We got the oars out and started to pull away from the breakwater. We could see the water, still very rough from the violent weather, breaking nastily over hidden masses of broken concrete beneath the surface and gurgling noisily up into the fissure in the breakwater wall. After about an hour of backbreaking work we realised that the squall must have set up a current and that in fact the breakwater was just as close. The wind had taken off to a light breeze and the sun shone again. We had had enough rowing and our palms were blistered with the rough looms of the oars. So were our seats. We lay on our oars and slowly the lifeboat dropped down towards the breakwater. We managed to find a part of the wall which seemed rather less damaged than most of it and let the boat fall gently alongside - or so we thought. She came alongside with a bump, and we realised that we had sat on a lump of submerged concrete. Shoving off and using oars we managed to find a quieter berth.
We sat back for a moment and took stock. It very soon became evident that we had started a plank or two as water was bubbling into the bottom of the boat. We began to bale. taking it in turns. Then we realised that we were terribly hungry end thirsty. The lady from Lewisham (or Shanghai) took over that part of the arrangements with the seal of her sex when good deeds are to be done in a naughty world. We scoffed the lot, looking across the harbour towards Trieste and our ship to see whether anyone had spotted our plight. But at that distance we realised that it was doubtful if anyone could see the boat against the ten foot stone wall of the breakwater. We were very wet ~but the sun which had chased away the storm was warming and drying as we sat in the boat. And anyway we had to bale.
Although we saw no signs of ever being rescued from our extremely desert island we were cheerful enough. We examined the mast and mast step and found that neither was in the first flush of youth, the step being quite rotten. So we had a clear conscious that the loss of the mast, and the root cause of our predicament, was not due to bad seamanship. We talked and we looked toward the quay and after an hour or so Miss Whittaker came out with that essentially feminine plea that she wanted to be fed. "You can say what you like," she proclaimed, but it's hours since we had those pretty-pretty sandwiches and I’m darned hungry. Where's the nearest grub?"
Stowe absent-mindedly kicked the boat’s biscuit tank with his foot.
“In there,” he grunted. “Hard tack. Damned hard. Got good teeth?"
Sparks reached for the spanner. “Good enough, “ he said “and we can always bust ‘em on a thwart.” He gave the spanner a wrench and the round, steel tank lid spun on its threads and fell into the bilges with a splash. The radio man thrust his hand into the tank and took it out again slowly. His mouth opened as he eyed his prize with vacant scepticism, I peered over his shoulder and saw that his fingers held a square, yellow thing. But it wasn’t a ship’s biscuit. It was a packet of Egyptian cigarettes.
For a second we were paralysed, then four pairs of hands made a dive at the circular opening of the biscuit tank. Then we sat back again quite stupefied at what we saw. The tank was crammed full of packets of Egyptian cigarettes. There was another tank under the forward thwart. This too, was empty of biscuits and loaded with cigarettes. Then somebody remembered to take a look to see if we had been spotted from the ship. About a quarter of a mile away a black hulled tug with a pillow of white water under her bows was bearing down to tow us off.
I suppose that could be one of the few occasions when a non-smoker was genuinely glad to have a load of cigarettes to crack on about. We could see that they were going to afford a nice little diversion when we got back and had to report to the Old Man. The little matter of a couple of stove-in bottom planks and a broken mast were quite lost sight of. I was even allowed to say that the mast was rotten or it wouldn’t have carried away. The Old Man was far more concerned about the discovery that there was aboard some ruthless individual who, besides being in the smuggling business to the tune of a good many hundred pounds, was not averse to risking the lives of his shipmates by emptying the biscuits tanks. Further research revealed in fact that several other boats had been used for the same nasty business. I have often wondered since whether in fact they were innocent cigarettes at all.
The Middle East is just the place to load up with a cargo of hashish. The authorities 'were informed and the cigarettes removed.
There seemed no doubt that the job of loading them must have been done during the night at Suez. There also seems little doubt that several people must have been in the know. Rumours began to circulate and "Chippy" was on the mat again, this time accompanied by the gunner. It was generally known that when we were out east, chips had landed, himself a nice job with the Shanghai Drydock Company but the Old Man had refused to sign him off and let him go. This, no doubt, made the Carpenter more than a bit disgruntled and the episode of the anchor was probably due to some lack of supervision or maybe a little bit of highly decorative oriental double-crossing. Whether the tradesman hoped to offset the financial calamity of a bad report at the end of the voyage by running a few hundred pounds worth of cigarettes is not known. He must have had some pretty efficient scheme of getting rid of them and I have no doubt that Trieste was to have been the port of discharge. It was, but not the way it was meant to be. The cigarettes were confiscated into bond. The Lady from Lewisham thought it was all great fun.
The CARMARTHENSHIRE, showing a lot of pink boottopping after the removal of the Soya beans, thrashed her way homeward with her Chinese eggs to an egg-hungry Britain. We were ordered to Leith. There our passengers took their leave of us, sadly, I think, for they had enjoyed themselves hugely on the way home. Being alone the objects of the attention of so many had assured for them a far better time than they could have hoped to have enjoyed on a crowded luxury liner.
Personally the parting had little impact on me, but it was the first of many. Some of them have been more poignant, more sweetly poignant. All of them marked a break in a story, or were perhaps a series of stories, each with its characters playing their parts on the stage of a ship’s decks against the same background of blue skies, hovering upstage was always the same ship characters, stewards, sailors, officers, little noticed but noticing most things and kindly disposed to let them be.
Giller and I left the CARMARTHENSHIRE at Leith and after a short leave met again at Euston station on the Liverpool train. It looked as if our seafaring was to be based either on Liverpool or Leith.
Chapter Twenty-seven
TREASURE ISLANDS
Quilpue, May 1907
The QUILPUE was one of those square pegs which war at sea had thrust hurriedly into a round hole. Her owners were the Pacific Steam Navigation Company and she had been built a good many years previously for service on the west coast of South America. She was, in fact, a rather large coaster and not built for the somewhat inhospitable coast of the British Isles either but for the more tranquil water of Peru and Chile. But wars have a distressing habit of jerking ships as well as people well away from their usual vocations. The QUILPUE as she lay in Canada Dock, Liverpool, was an excellent example of matter in the wrong place.
Giller and, I found that we were to be the only Cadets. We also found that the ship was a passenger boat, which two facts, taken conjointly, made us feel that we were getting on in the social scale of the apprentices caste, for few passenger ships in the Royal Mail carried Cadets. It was supposed in a vague sort of way, to be bad for their morals.
The QUILPUE mystified us. The usual ‘three island’ steamer we could understand and find our way around but this queer looking craft had us guessing. She was flush decked and built on the awning deck principle carried rather to extremes. We climbed to the bridge and looking over the for'ard dodger, found ourselves gazing down at the windlass immediately below us. The stem head was only a few feet away. I looked at Giller and said, “Eric, we’ve landed ourselves on a Great Lakes steamer this trip. I wonder how often we get washed off the bridge in a head sea!”
"Looks like as if it might be fairly frequently,” my tall colleague remarked ruefully. He looked aloft instinctively for the foremast head, but it wasn't there.
“Look aft, laddie,” I suggested. “We’re sailing before the mast this time and no mistake."
And so it was. The navigating bridge topped off a block of deckhouses containing the Captain's and Officers' accommodation. Immediately behind this came the tall, raking foremast from which swung four huge pole derricks over the main hatch. The forestay sloped down to the stem, just clearing the fore part of the wheel house. Abaft the main hatch came the first class passengers' accommodation and saloons. Another hatch came just abaft the midship accommodation over which raked the tall mainmast, and the deck then continued to the stern in a clear run of white planking uninhibited by winches or any such clutter. The QUILPUE was the only merchant ship I have ever served on which could be said to have had a real quarter deck. Right aft was a huge, double hand steering wheel working through the old fashioned worm gear direct on to the rudder head. I have mentioned only two cargo hatches and these were small, not like the great gaping holds of the CARMARTHENSHIRE, but there were in fact four more hatches. These were part of the ship's peculiarities and were even smaller. Moreover they were sited at the side of the deck, two for’ard and two aft. The opening was just about big enough to taka one sling of cargo and was closed by a steel trapdoor in place of the usual wooden hatch covers of that day. One derrick served each hatch, powered by a quick acting winch which frightened the pants off the Liverpool stevedores. The idea may have been good for the Chilean coast but we didn't think much of it. Neither, I suspect, did the shippers whose cargo was ripped about by the said quick acting winches.
Giller and I having exhausted the wonders of the QUILPUE’s tophalf, rattled down a ladder into the shelter deck. The companion way had the easy slope and comfortable hand rails which are provided for passengers but not for sailors. It was obvious then, that on her usual coasting job the ship carried a load of deck passengers on the shelter deck but when we descended from the upper deck that afternoon in Canada Dock the shelter deck was a dank and dark cavern stretching from the forecastle bulkhead to the steering engine flat in the stern. Amidships stood the fidley and engine room casing and cabins for the petty officers. In its original state the shelter deck was open at the sides for most of its length except right for’ard and right aft, thus the ‘deck’ passengers could have an uninterrupted view of the ocean or be sick over the side without interfering unduly with the comfort of their first class brethren on the upper deck. During the war, however the open sides had been boarded up completely, the seams of the planks thrummed with oakum and pitched and the whole lined with canvas. But it was a slipshod job and caused us much anxiety when in the troubled seas of northern latitudes. Moreover the scuppers were still open and what with the water which seeped or squirted in at the badly caulked seams and that which sometimes gurgled up the scuppers, life for the denizens of the shelter deck cabins must have been damp, cold and unhealthy. But nobody succumbed as far as I remember.
The final secret which this queer craft disgorged for Giller and I that Afternoon was a pair of quadruple expansion engines. In spite of coal fired boilers the engine room was spotless. We were rather surprised at such a small craft having twin screws but assumed that, being a bit full in the lines, she probably needed two propellers to steer with at times. Unfortunately her designer had carried the ship's funnyosity to the last degree by giving her in-turning screws, a thing common in the navy at one time but unusual in the merchant service. I have said that this ship had two long masts. She had a funnel nearly as long and when she rolled, which she did with considerable violence, to watch the wild gyrations of that smoke-stack against a flying, grey cloud wrack was simply inviting ones stomach to render unto Neptune that which was - until recently - a perfectly good meal.
The QUILPUE had been chartered by the Government to repatriate ex-service Officers, their wives and families to the West Indies. We had a full passenger list of about one hundred and twenty people when we slipped down the Mersey in August 1919 en route for Barbados. I don’t recollect whether it was the usual middle watch undocking but I feel it must have been.
The Chilean coaster loaded to her marks with Lancashire cotton goods wallowed and banged her way southwards. We had two Marconi operators but the antique installation which passed for radio made their job a sinecure - if you were a casual sort of individual - or a constant worry if you happened to be the conscientious type. It would have been out of date when the BRECKNOCKSHIRE was launched. The transmitter was a ‘fixed gap’ museum piece which could send a rude-sounding signal just about as far as the horizon. The receiver was an even more intriguing instrument known as a magnetic detector and multiple tuner. Basically it consisted of a metal ribbon drawn by clockwork between two terminal blocks which, when affected by the tiny current of an incoming signal and by some alchemy of good fortune, caused the signal to be heard in the operator’s earphones. It had one great drawback and that was the fact that the clockwork had to be wound at frequent intervals. No wind - no signal. Many a quiet watch was spent only to find with a shock of apprehension that the clockwork had run down. With such equipment therefore, it is not surprising that "Sparks" spent a sleepless night before we made Barbados trying to get off the Old Man’s ‘expected time of arrival’ message to the Agents. Proudly he managed to clear it an hour or two before we raised the low hills of that island next morning.
We lost a few passengers at Barbados. Trinidad robbed us of many more and the remainder left us at Jamaica. Our stay was so brief in those parts that the real spell of the West Indies passed me by. One realised that one was voyaging in waters which, for seaman, were charged with historical stories set against a background of gun smoke and grimed with black powder and blacker deeds, but we had no time to pluck these stories from cold print and bring them alive against their actual settings. Only when we had started loading alongside the timber wharf at Kingston, Jamaica did the smells of pimento and rum and molasses bring with them a reminder of buccaneers and slaves and fabulously wealthy but unscrupulous planters and merchants and Colonial governors. But there were no signs of such things during our short stay and we had no time to go ashore looking for them. Giller and I spent our day down in the red-leaded belly of the QUILPUE watching fat puncheons of molasses come swinging down from the sky framed in the square of the hatch. It seemed as if the old ship’s asthmatic winches could hardly hold the great things but no doubt the unexpected speed of descent caused the winchman and gangwayman as much terror as it did us, unused as they were to those quick running winches. Giller and I were supposed to see that the stevedores stowed the casks ‘bung up and bilge free’. That part of our responsibility was all rather stupid for the hefty, sweating negroes had been handling casks all their lives and could almost make them sit up and beg. In fact the loading of the QUILPUE at Jamaica and Barbados gave us the finest possible education in barrel stowage - a tricky and dangerous business in the hands of inexperienced stevedores. West Indians have been handling barrel cargoes for centuries. Being island people makes them necessarily dependant on the sea for their communications and a great part of their food so they have become the finest seamen you can hope to find. Those two facts taken conjointly confirm and illustrate the excellence of the West Indian stevedore at stowing away those great barrels so that they arrive with their precious contents intact to liberate sunshine in our dull northern land.
Lots of contradictory things have been said about the West Indian. In recent years the flow of education has given them to expect things which they seem to have little prospect of ever getting. This not unnaturally causes a certain amount of doubt as to the rightness of things which leads logically to "leftward" political tendencies,. I am not going to indulge in a survey of West Indian political thought and action at this juncture but I would wish to say that my experience of the West Indian started with the working class type and to a large extend was confined to that type. Moreover when I speak of the West Indian I mean the true African type and not the Indian emigrant, or the Chinese emigrant or any of their cross breeds. From my first meeting with them I grew to delight in and understand the basic simplicity of the West Indian Island negro - nor do I mean by that, their stupidity, for they are far from stupid people - I have said that they are fine seamen and I would add that by and large they are quite delightful people to work with. There is one thing which white people often forget when dealing with the West Indian, and that is that they have been emancipated for a long time now.
We had a few passengers homeward bound. Passenger transport was none too plentiful in those years immediately after the First World War but although our - homeward bounders were glad of a lift, when they had taken a look at the QUILPUE I don't think they were all that glad. We left the lovely Caribbean behind and pushed our way homeward, rolling like a round bottomed tub. As we got up to the nastiness which sometimes hangs about the Azores we picked up with a lumpy beam sea which slapped heavily against the planked-up opening running three quarters the length of the ship only a few feet above normal water level. A good deal of the Atlantic squirted through the poorly caulked seams making the awning deck a place of damp gloom. But up the ventilators as we rolled along under grey hurrying skies came the delicious scents of the West Indies.
We docked in the West India Dock, London. The crew paid off as usual, leaving behind a few officers to see the cargo out. With the going of the crew a queer spirit of uncertainty seemed to pervade the ship and to infect the few remaining members of her company. We all knew the QUILPUE didn’t ‘belong’. The seniors assured us that she’d be no earthly use on the regular Royal Mail routes. Yet although we didn't feel very happy about this queer craft, nobody wanted to lose her. The old nineteenth century saying that there were more ships than parish churches was greeted by the post-war sailor with a good deal of doubt. A ship was a job, and if she was taken away from us it meant a bit more backwards promotion for the officers and the dole for the crew. Finally when the last puncheon swung ashore we heard a ‘buzz’ from a usually reliable source - the night watchman - that the ship was to be handed back to her rightful owners the Pacific Steam Navigation Company.
Giller and I were sent on leave, but not before we had been privileged to see a couple of the ‘shore gang' who had been detailed to clean out the hold bilges, brought up completely unconscious from the fumes of ‘proof’ rum,- which had leaked from barrels into the bilges during the passage.