Oil, water and sand

 

This is the thing about travelling to join a new ship. Nobody cares what time it is when you arrive, or for how long you have been travelling. You’re here now, you are part of the ship’s crew, welcome aboard, the engine room’s that way.

This principal applies even more when the vessel is in drydock and there is a shipload of stuff to be quickly done so we can get back to making money instead of spending it. I’m referring here to the owners, but it applies equally to everyone on board.

Here I am in Singapore. Behind me, an eight hour flight from Sydney to an aging and not the least bit air-conditioned Paya Lebar Airport; an interminable wait for baggage; another still longer wait while everyone shuffles through customs and immigration; and finally a wet and sweaty hour’s drive in a foul-smelling taxi (not enhanced by my personal fragrance) to the Keppel shipyard at Tanjong Pagar.

Ahead of me, the rest of the afternoon meeting my new engine room crewmates while crawling around inside the ship’s hideous and ill-tempered Swedish eight cylinder main engine which I would later come to regard with the same affection as I have for root canal surgery.

If I have given the impression that dry-dock is a pleasant respite from the day to day tedium of life at sea, then I have failed miserably. There is nothing enjoyable about life on board under these conditions. Washing and toilet facilities are not available for a start, meaning a trek ashore to communal shower and other amenities. The galley can only prepare the most basic meals. Most of the crew eat ashore and there is no such thing as a quiet night on board since round the clock activity takes place throughout the ship.

 

At last all external blasting and cleaning is complete, sacrificial anodes on the hull have been replaced, propellor and rudder inspection is finished, sea valves have been overhauled, and the seaworthy survey has been completed to the insurers satisfaction. We’re almost ready.

The watertight caissons are opened, and the dock begins to flood. The vessel gradually rises as the level in the dock approaches that of the outside seawater. As we become buoyant we gently tilt about a half a degree to starboard; a situation which is soon corrected as water is transferred between ballast tanks bringing us back to an even keel – not of course before some wag on the after deck calls out, “I feel seasick”.

We need fuel. From the drydock wharf to the quay where the bunkering barge is standing by is about a hundred metres. After a final inspection below deck, we are satisfied that the engine is ready. The second engineer stands at the controls, next to him is the fifth engineer, standing by the ship’s telegraph for orders from the bridge where the skipper and his pilot will take us out of the dock.

Brrring-ring! The big brass needle at the centre of the telegraph moves from “Finished with Engines” to “Stand By” which means gentlemen start your engine.

The telegraph’s answering ring has a softer tone as the fiver acknowledges the command moving the brass handle to line up with its counterpart from the Bridge. He makes a note in the engine room log “0700 Started Main Engine”.

The second engineer releases a handle shaped like a large brass handbrake and compressed air is introduced into the engine cylinders forcing the pistons to turn the crankshaft. He pulls on another lever with a small brass plaque beneath it with the simple phrase – START MAIN ENGINE. The fuel injectors open and fuel sprays into the chamber and the engine coughs into life.

He places his hands on the handles of a large wheel, like a steering wheel on a truck but with handles which make it easier to turn ahead or astern. He waits for the next command, his eyes scanning a half a dozen dials indicating fuel temperature, boiler pressure, engine and shaft speeds.

Brrring-ring! The telegraph dial moves 90 degrees from the Stand By position into the red quadrant of the dial – “Dead Slow Astern”.

Brrring! – the command is acknowledged – “Dead Slow Astern”. The fiver writes another entry in the log “0707 – DSA”

The second engineer turns the wheel a few degrees to his right, the gears engage and the main propellor shaft begins to turn in an anticlockwise direction. The ship shudders briefly and we feel motion as we slowly slip backwards out of the dock.

In front of him, at eye level a little cylinder turns inside a small box. The cylinder is painted with slanted red and white stripes like a barber pole and as it spins it clearly shows our direction, ahead or astern as the red stripes appear to move towards the direction of travel.

On deck, the second mate and his team are on the poop deck at the after end of the ship; the chief mate is on the fo’c’sle, and the third mate is on the bridge with the skipper.

We’re on our way. After a while the telegraph orders, “Slow Astern”. We slide out of the dock and reverse into the main waterway. The ship slowly reverses its way down Keppel Harbour towards the vacant berth where we will tie up for a few more hours as we take on fuel from the large bunker barge which is right now sitting in the middle of the channel, a tough looking little tugboat alongside it waiting for us to manoeuvre into place. We have nothing in any of our tanks except a few tonnes of ballast water. Our cargo tanks were emptied and degassed before we entered the shipyard. There hadn’t been any welding in dock, but no one wants the slightest spark in these confined spaces nor any concerns regarding toxic fumes.

Like a elegant hippopotamus, the ship starts to pirouette as she enters the open channel. There are more “Slow Ahead”, “Slow Astern” commands while she turns through 180 degrees to allow her to come alongside the wharf “starboard side to” meaning the right hand side of the ship is tied up against the wharf. The bunkering barge will tie up to our port side, as near as possible to the fuel tank connection.

Throughout this whole process the fifth engineer meticulously records ever manoeuvre including the final little jolt as the ship under the influence of an offshore wind makes enthusiastic contact with the wharf. This is recorded simple as “0734 – Bump”. Followed shortly after by “0745 – FWE” and we are indeed for the next few hours at least, Finished with Engine.

 

We will be alongside the wharf for at least six hours as we take on the 1,400 tonnes of diesel fuel that we need for our journey. As fourth engineer, bunkering is my job. Having familiarised myself with the appropriate valves and pumps, all I have to do is make sure that each of the bunker tanks is filled to its maximum operating level, and that we don’t have any spills. No one wants to be responsible for an oil slick – especially in Singapore where polluters are heavily fined. We have no sophisticated gauges telling us how much fuel is in the tank. The process involves dropping a weighted measuring tape down the dipping tube every half hour or so to keep an eye on the level and the speed of fill – not much different to checking the oil level in the car except for the consequences of a spill.

Spill-free bunkering completed and all provisions on board, we finally leave Singapore for our Persian Gulf destination about 3,500 miles to the north west. We are light ship (that is, no cargo) and weather permitting we should be able to average 12 knots, so we will be at sea for about two weeks. Plenty of time to get that drydock torpor out of our system and to relax into a sea-going routine.

There are two fourth engineers on Marion Sleigh, myself and Reg, a friendly and easy-going Sydneysider who has been on board for several weeks longer than me. Reg has the 8 to 12 watch and I for my sins am back “enjoying” the 12 to 4. There is one junior engineer, a bright Singaporean lad who shares the 4 to 8 watch with our newly promoted second engineer, David. David (never Dave) is a relatively young ginger haired fellow from the south of England. He’s a bit of a loner and throughout my six months on Maid Marion, we are never in any danger of becoming close friends.

According to the data, about half the male population in Australia were smokers in the 1960s. At sea, I would speculate that this is more likely to be over 70%. Smoking on tankers comes with its own particular rules. There is absolutely no smoking allowed anywhere on deck. Within the ship’s accommodation smoking is permitted in certain areas, but no lighters are allowed and all ashtrays must be sealed. There are certain times, such as loading and discharging cargo when smoking is not permitted anywhere on the ship – stressful times for someone with a 20 or 30 a day Peter Stuyvesant habit. Maybe I should have considered giving up.

I share the 12 to 4 watch with the 2^nd mate, a cheerful Dubliner who will frequently call me on the phone from the bridge about 15 minutes before the end of the middle watch, suggesting a wee nightcap before we retire. When this happens we meet in his cabin where we share a glass or two of his favourite Irish whiskey while listening to the folk music of Ronnie Drew and Paddy Moloney cranking out from his state of the art Philips record player. Paddy (yes I know, I know), is not a heavy drinker when judged against the standards set by a few other shipmates I have sailed with, but he has his moments. We might for example, be at anchor for a day or two awaiting a berth, and Reg and I will have joined him for a wee dram. He has been known to remove the cork from a fresh bottle of Tullamore, open the porthole and throw it through saying, “we’ll not be needing that again will we, boys?”

Unlike the passenger ships in the fleet, the obligation regarding the wearing of uniform is nothing like as severe. This does not mean that we can dress as we please. It is for example a condition that uniform be worn at all time when in the ship’s dining room or the officer’s common room. The skipper has a particular issue with engineers in scruffy boiler suits tramping around the accommodation. My first experience of this was while on my way from the engine room to my cabin at the completion of an afternoon watch. The weather was atrocious as we ploughed north through the Laccadive Sea off the coast of Sri Lanka into a nasty post-monsoon depression. The normal route from engine room to cabin would be to walk around the upper deck, just above the boat deck passing by the dining room on the outside. Not wishing to risk getting waylaid by a sudden wave, and to avoid the driving rain, which was lashing the ship, I chose to stick to the inside route and managed to pick a time, just as the ship’s captain, in full uniform came down the stairs from the bridge on his way to the dining room. He was a sharp-featured Scot who had previously spent many years on BP Tankers and until this moment we had barely exchanged a word. “Mr Williamson, is there a reason why yer oot of uniform in this place?” Nice touch, he knows my name.

“Sorry, skipper” I said, “just on my way to get changed, only it’s a bit damp on deck.” Pathetic eh?

“Away back the way ye came and get changed before coming here,” he said without the slightest hint of interest in my welfare, “This is no’ yer daddy’s yacht, laddie” .

God, how many more times am I going to hear that expression. So back I went, out on to the deck, around the front of the dining room, and back into the accommodation area on the other side of the ship.

“It would serve you right”, I muttered to myself as the rain drenched my admittedly grubby overalls, “if I was washed overboard. How would you explain that to my family?”

Aside from the unpleasant weather in the Arabian Sea, we eventually arrive at the Straits of Hormuz and are soon in the warm waters of the Persian Gulf where even this late in the year the sea water temperature is around 30 degrees Celsius.

Our destination is Bandar Mahshahr, about as far north as you can journey in the Gulf. We travel 40 miles inland along a natural tidal channel (Khor Musa). The oil terminal is remote from any obvious signs of habitation serving the sole purpose of providing an outlet for refined product from Iran’s Abadan Refinery, one of the world’s largest oil refineries and the source of our cargo for this trip.

There appears to be room for about half a dozen ships at the slender wharfs which stick out into the channel like giant bony fingers. The first berth we arrive at is free. This is also the furthest from the terminal, but we won’t be here for long – no one is planning a run ashore.

It will take about eight hours to deliver the full cargo of aviation fuel, and no one will want to hang about here. It’s hot, dusty and about as welcoming to visiting seafarers as the surface of Mars. Loading fuel almost always requires use of the terminal’s own pumping facilities, unlike discharging when we use our own high capacity unloading pumps. Less work for us to do, but there is still a need for constant vigilance and supervision – this is when the process is at its most intense.

We also need to take on more bunker fuel for the next leg of our trip. No bunker barge is required this time, we connect to the diesel discharge line from the terminal, and the fuel is pumped on board at the same time as the cargo fuelling takes place.

There will be times on subsequent trips to the Gulf, at places like Kuwait and Kharg Island for example, where we will venture forth for a few hours at local recreation facilities which provide an opportunity for a game of pool and a cold non-alcoholic beverage, but not this time.

Before the day is out, we are disconnected from the terminal and backing our way out into Khor Musa on our way to our next destination.

There are generally two kinds of merchant ships – tramps and liners. Not quite as disparaging as it sounds, tramps do not have a fixed schedule or a fixed route, whereas liners do. By this definition, with the exception of Francis Drake most of the ships that I served on during my time at sea were at some level cargo tramps. The most significant difference, particularly when serving on a genuine “go anywhere” cargo tramp is that you never know where you are going from one journey to the next.

Sometimes this is because the owners’ agents are continuing to negotiate the best source of supply, other times it may be for security reasons.

With this in mind, one can understand therefore that there had been much speculation on the voyage north from Singapore. We knew we were en route to collect a full cargo of refined product, but for much of the trip north we had no idea where our final destination would be. It could have been Melbourne, Africa or ports in Asia. It is not until we are in the Gulf a few hours from the terminal that we learn of our destination.

Eight thousand tons of jet fuel for South Vietnam – Da Nang, Cam Ranh Bay and Saigon - not everyone’s favourite destination in 1968.