In 1965 within a few days of completing five years as an indentured apprentice at Northern Australian Breweries, the newly qualified fitter and turner signed on as a crew member on the MV Baron Jedburgh.
If you haven't yet had the opportunity to read something of those five years, it's all here in my earlier post, The Apprentice.
I was the most junior of junior assistants with the official title of donkey-greaser whose job it was to assist the ship’s engineers as offsider and general factotum.
The ship was registered in Scotland in the west coast port of Ardrossan. She was just under 12,000 tons, built in South Shields in 1958. She was one of a fleet of cargo tramp ships owned and operated by H. Hogarth of Glasgow, known to all in the merchant service (as I was to later discover) as "Hungry Hogarths".
Her captain was a disagreeable and obese man, who smoked oval-shaped Passing Cloud cigarettes that looked as if he had been sitting on them. The whole time I was aboard Baron Jedburgh he spoke to me twice: the day I joined and the day I left, and I believe the only words he uttered to me on both occasions were, “Sign here.”
I had a tiny cabin in the fo’c’sle where the crew were separated from the officers. I was taken under the wing of a big fellow donkeyman named Dave Davies, who may have had Welsh ancestry but was a Londoner through and through. He was a generous, down to earth fellow, who used to wake me every morning with “Come on then, rise and shine, you’re not on your Daddy’s yacht now, y’know!”
There were three donkey-greasers including Big Dave, all of whom were watch-keepers. Dave shared the 4 to 8 with the second engineer. Yorkie (no guessing where he hailed from) had the 8 to 12 and Paddy (a hard-nosed Belfast catholic) was on the 12 to 4 which is always the third engineer’s watch. I was a day worker – 7.30 to 5 o’clock with half an hour for lunch.
We shared the Greasers’ Mess, a little room just across from the galley where we would eat our meals and meet for smoko during the day. This was where I learned to put condensed milk in my tea, not because it was particularly enjoyable or hygienic (the site of a punctured tin of milk, sitting on the mess room table for two or three days, with spilled sweet milk hardening on the surface was not exactly appetising) but because it's not easy finding fresh milk at sea and long-life milk was still at least five years away. The additional advantage of condensed milk of course was that it obviated the need for putting sugar in your tea. Fortunately, I am well and truly over this disgusting habit!
There were seven engineers on board – all of them Glaswegian. In charge was the Chief Engineer, who didn’t keep a watch and who seemed to spend most of his time in his cabin. I don’t think we exchanged more than a handful of words the whole time I was on the ship.
The second engineer was a portly middle-aged fellow, who had been in the merchant service since the war. Always shirtless when he was working, this softly spoken, genial man knew everything that I was ever going to need to know about marine engineering. The third engineer was his exact opposite - a sharp-tongued, sandy-headed former Clydeside ship builder named Gordon, whose most frequent expression seemed to be “och awa' 'n' keek”. When I became an engineer myself later in the voyage, I spent all my watch-keeping with Gordon on the 12 to 4 and I grew to like his company. The fourth engineer was another tough-talking Glaswegian. Always the first to lead the singing after a few bevvies, he would start with “I’m no awa’ tae bide awa’” followed by a host of other ditties most of which were completely incomprehensible, but oddly enjoyable.
There were three junior engineers, one of whom unfortunately suffered from delirium tremens if he was unwillingly sober for more than 24 hours. He frequently could be heard wailing at his demons in the confines of his quarters. At other times, Eddie was a seemingly capable and amusing fellow. It was Eddie who told me stories about the Amazon River and Booth Line which is another exciting part of my life and I am looking forward to sharing it through these pages.
We also had an electrical engineer – a mean-spirited, weaselly little man, who never seemed to have a nice word for anyone, and who seemed clearly resentful of my position on the ship. Perhaps he just didn't like Aussies!
Baron Jedburgh was a five-hatch tween-deck ship, one one of a fleet of similar general cargo ships with more than one deck in the cargo area allowing for storage of dry cargo as well as bulk cargo. Tween-deckers were close to the end of their reign as larger bulk carriers and container ships became more in demand by shippers. She would eventually be sold to a Liberian registered company within two years and was destined to remain in service for at least another ten years before being broken up. The ship was powered by an oil-fired Doxford diesel engine - big, slow moving and noisy in comparison to some engines I was to work with over the next few years, but it was reliable, relatively easy to maintain and considered a dependable heavy-duty marine engine.
The ship was in Cairns discharging fertiliser from Newcastle, NSW and was preparing to head back to Newcastle for another consignment to bring north, this time with a cargo of bulk sugar for the Pyrmont refinery in Sydney.
After 25 years of marriage, my parents had separated only a few months earlier and my mother was living in another town with the new man in her life, so it was that my Dad, and my brother and sister were there to wave goodbye as well as my two best mates, Mal and Ian. I was planning to catch up with them for New Years' Eve a few weeks later in Sydney during the ship's stay in Newcastle - more about that later.
It was an emotional event for me that late afternoon a few days before Christmas, as the hawsers were released and the vessel eased its way from the wharf, into Smith’s Creek, to Trinity Inlet and out into the Coral Sea. It would not be the last time I would watch the gap slowly widen as the ship I was on eased gently away from the wharf, but this was the first time for me - and although I'm sure I had a brave face, and I knew I was in for the adventure of a lifetime, I was still not much more than a scared schoolboy.
I had little idea this was the last time I would refer to Cairns as home. Of course, it would always be my home town – it still is, but it was no longer my home – and would never be again.
I enjoyed my first taste of ship board life and the trip south was relatively uneventful. I have been fortunate to have never suffered from sea sickness – obviously a blessing if you are planning a seagoing career; but I came to know many skilled and experienced sailors over the years, who put up with it throughout their lives at sea.
I hate to admit it but I was a smoker in those days, and the opportunity of being able to purchase cheap duty-free ciggies for what was the equivalent of about ten cents a packet was luxury.
At the time of my embarkation, it had been nearly a year since Baron Jedburgh had left her home port in Scotland and there had been a number of instances of drunkenness and misbehaviour. The cat-o-nine tails and other forms of flogging having been abolished some time in the nineteenth century, the skipper was reduced to imposing a ration of two cans of beer per day for each man which were opened in the presence of the chief steward so there was no hoarding. The only other form of recrimination for poor behaviour as I became aware, was having a highly undesired "DR" stamped in one's Seaman's Discharge Book, a document more valuable to a seafarer than any other, and one which carried a full record of one's career experience and certification. Each voyage was completed with two stamps, one for ability and one for general conduct, with the desired outcome and also the most common, being Very Good in each box. Occasionally, if there had been some serious questionable performance issues, a disgruntled ship's captain might replace Very Good with just Good -which was sure to raise an eyebrow the next time the seaman wanted to join a ship. But the least desirable of all, and one that threatened to confine the poor fellow to be on shore indefinitely was a DR (Declined to Report). So even on a ship like Baron Jedburgh, there was generally good behaviour - or at least as long as we were at sea, and not in port!
The deck crew were an interesting lot. Gnarled Highland fishermen speaking in a language so removed from anything I had heard before that it might well have been Russian; working alongside them, tattooed hard-faced lads from the Clyde-side streets of Govan and the Gorbals; and from south of the border, a sprinkling of Geordies saying, “ye knaa what ah mean, leik”.
Another of the ABs, a Liverpudlian known only and obviously as Scouse arrived back on board in handcuffs about an hour before we sailed. He had jumped ship on a previous voyage, and so to make sure he didn’t do it again, the immigration folk took him off to the local watch-house each time we entered an Australian port. He would remain there until we departed and was always so cheerful and happy to be back on board with his shipmates that I could never help wondering why it was that he had absconded in the first place. The bosun was a huge Yorkshireman with arms like a blacksmith. He had no patience with work-shy skivers and was not afraid to use the back of his hand against a recalcitrant slacker. Even the hard boys from the Gorbals kept out of his way. The bosun and Big Dave were good mates having shipped out together before.
It took a good deal longer to load and unload a ship in 1966 than it does today. The ship had loaded bulk sugar in Cairns, which was headed to Sydney and the CSR refinery at Pyrmont. Large clamshell grab claws attached to the derricks were used to unload the vessel by picking up the bulk cargo and transferring it to trucks waiting alongside on the quay. We were frequently in port for a week or more while this process of loading and unloading took place.
I don’t remember whether we spent Christmas in Sydney or at sea. If it was memorable, it clearly wasn’t to me. The ship had been in Sydney for a few days, when Mal, Ian and another former school-mate, Neville arrived in town, having driven the two thousand kilometres from Cairns. I was able to get some leave and would re-join the ship in Newcastle a few days later, where it was due to load more fertiliser for the return trip north.
We shared a couple of motel rooms somewhere near the centre of the city and the four of us found ourselves in Kings Cross on New Year’s Eve with every intention of having the sort of New Year that would do any four 20-year-olds from the far north proud.
It was an eventful evening. At some point during the night, in the small hours, two of our party seem to have misheard a police direction or more likely perhaps, found themselves between the police and some other miscreants. Whatever happened, along with several exuberant rabble-rousers they were bundled into a paddy-wagon and carted away to the lock-up. Not unusually, there was some alcohol-fuelled crowd trouble at the Cross that New Year. Well-lubricated revellers were everywhere. A group of idiots near us were climbing on parked cars and some were trying to overturn them. There was a lot of shouting and pushing and probably some fighting. Somehow Ian and Nev found themselves caught up in the action and before they knew it, they were on their way to the lock-up.
Mal was a 20 year old article clerk with a small firm of Cairns solicitors and was full of the self-assurance and confidence which would in later years stand him in such good stead in his career. That night, emboldened as he was by youth and alcohol, he said, "leave this to me" and strode off to Darlinghurst Police Station, where he presented himself to the desk sergeant saying, “I’m representing Mr Fraser and Mr Fry and I insist on seeing my clients.” It had been a long night for the boys in blue at Darlo nick and the big copper on the desk wasn’t taking any crap from a snivelling youth like Mal. He responded with a quick, “Piss off young fellow, or you’ll finish up with them, OK?”
Always a pragmatist, Mal immediately saw the logic of this argument, and letting discretion take over from his poorly timed sense of loyalty, he made himself scarce. We turned up the next morning and Nev and Ian were let out with nothing more than a sore head and a warning not to come back.
The next day, I returned to Baron Jedburgh by train and not long after that we left again for North Queensland where we loaded a cargo of sugar for Japan.
So it was that sometime in that January of 1966, while Harold Holt was taking over from Bob Menzies as the Australian Prime Minister, I made my first trip as an adult to a foreign destination. People do it all the time now, but in the summer of 1966, it was an accomplishment about which a Cairns boy could feel well pleased.
Our first port was Osaka, a contrast indeed from a hot northern Australian summer to a cold wintry Japan.
I made my first trip ashore with Big Dave and like sailors since the days of the Phoenicians, we headed for the nearest watering hole. A few weeks earlier, I had moved my living quarters from the fo’c’sle to the midships officers’ accommodation following a promotion to junior engineer after one of the other engineers had been hospitalised with appendicitis. I was the most junior of junior engineers sharing the watch with grumpy Gordon on the 12 to 4. All the same, I continued to have a good friendship with Dave, and it was with him and the other greasers that I spent much of my time while on shore leave – certainly in Japan at least.
What an eye-opener it was for a boy from a small country town in North Queensland. Osaka was a bustling, busy city with bright lights, bars and lots of distractions for young lads.
We were in Osaka and later Kobe an hours’ sailing across the bay for at least two weeks. I loved the excitement and the culture of this busy industrialised area with its rich food and strange smells and customs. It was here that I first experienced the pleasures of sushi and dumplings made with octopus.
One of the issues with alcohol rationing on board ship is that when the ship is in port many of the crew make up for their enforced abstinence in the worst possible way. This was a serious problem on Baron Jedburgh. We sailed from Osaka to Kobe with many of our crew missing, having decided that the attraction of the bright lights and the bars were much more appealing than putting up with fat Archie and his Passing Clouds and his bullying bosun.
From Kobe we sailed to Yokohama, still missing many of our deck crew. We later learned that the truants found their way to the shipping agent’s office not long after the ship left Kobe where they were all provided with rail warrants (at their expense) to our next port of call. In this case they were all put on the Tokaido Shinkansen express train to Tokyo with just one stop, at the inland city of Kyoto. Needless to say, they all disembarked at Kyoto, headed for the nearest bar, and subsequently missed the train’s departure for Tokyo – a unique case of desertion from a train. Although on reflection it probably wasn’t unique – I am sure it frequently happened whenever a gathering of seamen such as this lot, were left unescorted to find their way back to their vessel.
I thought Japan was a wonderful place, and although I have been back many times since, I am certain that I will never forget that first visit.
Stay tuned for the next instalment, Why Engineers are Never Tanned
No comments:
Post a Comment