I caught up with an old fishing friend the other day who happened to be in town. A lovely fellow, he endeared himself to me even further by making complimentary remarks about this blogsite saying how he liked the writing style and one or two of the anecdotes. However (there is always an however), knowing how opinionated I can be when among friends, he wondered whether I was ever intending to make use of this apparently newly discovered talent to voice a few opinions of my own.
The problem here friends, is that I do have a few strongly held views, and am not above sharing them over a glass of quality red, but some of them may not always be the same as those held by colleagues and business associates; and opinions, contentious or otherwise, once aired in a forum such as this, have a habit of staying around for a long time. OK, maybe I am being just a bit theatrical and pompous, but there it is.
So you are unlikely to hear me sounding off about my political proclivities, or my views on abortion and gay marriage (ok, I'll give you that one - I'm with Clint Eastwood on the gay marriage bit) - nor am I likely to enter into a debate on religious convictions.
However, there is one issue which has been bugging me for a long time, which I need to get off my chest - and that concerns this whole Australian-owned thing.
Recently I changed address, and in so doing decided it was a good time to combine our supply of gas and electricity under the one provider. Now there are no doubt many providers of these services in the town where I live, but of the two suppliers who seem to have most of the market, one is an Australian company listed on the Australian Stock Exchange and employing about 2,000 staff. The other is owned by a Chinese public company and of its 6,000 employees, about 1,000 of them are in Australia.
The argument, subsequently placed before me, was to question why, all others things being equal (which of course they never are), I would choose as my service provider a company which was foreign owned and which would thus export all of their profits off shore - to China no less.
Now here's my point. Why does it matter, whether the shareholders of these companies acquired their stock in Hong Kong or Australia. I have no way of knowing where they actually call home. The Australian company's top twenty shareholders (about 40% to 50% of all the shares in the company) include HSBC Nominees, Citibank Nominees and several other overseas owned shareholder funds. As an aside, it is worth noting that our big four Australian banks also number several overseas owned shareholder funds among their top shareholders - and why shouldn't they? Our Aussie banks are established, well regulated, sound conservative investments and contribute a lot to why Australia has such a solid and stable economy. If I were an overseas investor, looking for a safe haven for my money, and were given the choice of an American, a Scottish or an Australian banking institution, I don't think I would have to go to Robert Gottliebsen or Alan Kohler to help me decide!
No my real point, is that both of these organisations employ significant Australian workforces - and that, to me is what is important.
When I hear this buy Australian-owned winge, my mind goes back about fifteen or twenty years to when French and British companies first began to take an interest in Australian water infrastructure projects and waste management operations. I was working for an Australian owned engineering company at the time, which has since been acquired by a large US group, and continues to thrive as a global business with Australian managers from that business now working on major projects all around the world. I attended a presentation at the offices of one of the major municipal water authorities. The briefing was being held for companies interested in participating in the building and operating of water treatment plants which would meet the State's objective of enhancing the quality of drinking water in its major city. Most of the major construction companies were there: Leighton, Transfield, Concrete Construction, Lend Lease and many others. There were also many international water groups present, including Thames Water, Yorkshire Water, and the French companies of Veolia and Suez (although they were known by different names then). During the briefing, one of the local Australian manufacturers asked the question, "Why do we need to buy from the British and the French when we have perfectly good local technology here in Australia?" I will never forget, the impromptu response from the fellow who was there on behalf of one of the major international companies. He was (and is) a well known Australian engineering manager, who had been on the construction contracting scene for many years. He leaned back in his seat, looked back over his shoulder at the questioner and said in the strongest Aussie accent, "Do you mean Frenchmen like me?"
This is what is at the heart of the issue. It was of course, a perfectly reasonable question for the local manufacturer to ask, but if we are going to continue to participate as a global economy (and we clearly have little choice in this unless we revert to the old ways of restrictive, mind-numbing protectionist trade practices), then we must recognise that the best option is to participate and share our innovation and ingenuity with the world.
A few years ago, I was one of about 3,000 local employees working for a French-owned waste management company and there is absolutely no doubt that our ability to provide a high quality sustainable resource recovery and management service was enhanced by our access to global resources and technology, and global research budgets.
So I don't support the hypocrisy of "Australian owned", particularly while we are so keen to export our own products and innovative ideas, and sell our own resources into the global market place. I will support local manufacture, (why would we want to buy our cheese or our wine from anywhere else - except perhaps New Zealand occasionally), but please don't send anyone knocking on my door, asking me to buy Australian owned products because I'm not sure that I will believe it anyway.
Thursday, 7 June 2012
Sunday, 3 June 2012
The Perfect Cuba Libre
On that first trip south from New York, en-route to Brazil we meandered through the Caribbean, through the gentle Leeward and Windward Islands of St Kitts, Dominica, Guadeloupe, Martinique, St Lucia, St Vincent and Grenada. Sometimes we stopped for no more than two or three hours, other times it was a couple of days. Each island had its own special flavour and atmosphere. The docks were often right in the centre of the main town, and contrasted from sleepy little colonial towns sitting between the hills and the bay like Basseterre at St Kitts to the bustling French-Creole atmosphere of Point-à-Pitre in Guadeloupe.
Soon we were all singing God Bless Bim and wearing shirts in the colours of the flag. Our second engineer, Frank Stinchcombe, known to all as the Saint was in his element – and it was here that I was to see him at his best when it came to creating the perfect Cuba Libre.
After a day working below, on whatever tasks needed doing while in port, Geoff and I would meet in the Saint’s cabin at about 4 PM. “Come in, m’dears,” he would say in his rich west country accent.
Tall and bony he would be seated bare-chested at his desk in his second engineer’s cabin with Emile Straker and The Merrymen invariably cranking out Archie from his HMV turntable. He would swivel towards us in his grubby khaki shorts, train driver’s peaked cap perched on the back of his head and peering at us through his National Health spectacles he would say, "you're just in time for some liquid refreshment".
Geoff would be in an equally grubby white t-shirt and shorts, with me a shorter and smaller version of the same. Having left our engine room shoes at the top of the hatchway, we would enter in our socks and sit opposite him on his day-bed sofa taking care not to soil his furniture any more than it already was.
He kept a fine silver ice bucket on his desk from which he would delicately select one or two cubes of ice using fine tongs set aside specifically for the purpose. He would carefully drop each cube into crystal Old Fashioned glasses, always kept for such occasions. Next, he would open his desk drawer and reverently take out a bottle of the very finest Mt Gay Eclipse Rum which he would open and generously splash over the ice. He followed this by taking a lime from a fruit bowl on his desk and using a sharp paring knife would cut it into three segments which would be dropped into each glass. This was followed by a liberal measure of Coca Cola poured from a freshly opened can.
Finally with a flourish he would pull a ten inch screwdriver from his pocket, wipe it down with a piece of grubby cotton waste which had been sticking out of his back pocket all day and gently stir the contents of each glass as though he were at the Rivoli Bar in the Ritz.
Nothing before, or since, has ever tasted so good. Cheers to you Frank!
Saturday, 2 June 2012
Cruising down to Rio (Devis 1966)
I will try not to start each posting like a Vivian Stanshall radio flash, but I need to do it at least once.
The story so far...In previous stories I talked about my first trip to sea (A Ship of My Own and Why Engineers are Never Tanned). Now read on...
The story so far...In previous stories I talked about my first trip to sea (A Ship of My Own and Why Engineers are Never Tanned). Now read on...
After leaving Baron Jedburgh in Glasgow, I spent a few weeks in England with friends and relatives before heading to Liverpool in search of my next job. One or two shipmates had previously entertained me with tales of the Amazon, and I was determined to see it for myself. Thus it was, that after emerging from Lime Street Station, and walking the half mile or so west towards Pier Head, I arrived at the headquarters of the Booth Steamship Company in the Royal Liver Building on a rainy Merseyside morning in late summer of 1966.
Booth and its sister companies, Lamport and Holt and Blue Star Line were a small part of Lord Vestey's vast empire of cattle stations and ranches extending from Brazil and Venezuela to Australia and New Zealand. Vestey founded the shipping company over fifty years earlier to transport meat from their properties back to the UK, so it's no surprise that the company's speciality was refrigeration ships. Of more appeal to me however, were the dry cargo vessels that sailed from Britain to South America and from the east coast of the United States to the Caribbean and ports along the Amazon.
The Royal Liver Building is a great landmark, and its impression on me then is as clear now as it was on that day. A large dark Gothic structure, dwarfing its otherwise imposing neighbours with two monstrous green copper Liver Birds spreading their wings above domed turrets: one stares to sea, the other guards the city. Once inside, an ornate elevator conveyed me to an oak-panelled antechamber containing scale models of ships of the fleet, each housed in a glass case with the vessel's name and building date on a brass plaque below the case.
The Royal Liver Building is a great landmark, and its impression on me then is as clear now as it was on that day. A large dark Gothic structure, dwarfing its otherwise imposing neighbours with two monstrous green copper Liver Birds spreading their wings above domed turrets: one stares to sea, the other guards the city. Once inside, an ornate elevator conveyed me to an oak-panelled antechamber containing scale models of ships of the fleet, each housed in a glass case with the vessel's name and building date on a brass plaque below the case.
The Marine Superintendent was Thomas Clatworthy, an engaging bespectacled Lancastrian engineer, and it was to Mr Clatworthy that I presented myself that morning in search of my Amazon adventure. Sadly, there were no vacancies for ships on the Amazon trade at that time, but he was pleased to welcome me to the company and after a few formalities I was soon dispatched to one of the company's ship, MV Ronsard which like many others at the time was standing idle at Liverpool docks.
The British Seamen’s strike had started several weeks earlier. This was the first national strike by seamen for over fifty years and as a consequence shipping was being disrupted throughout the United Kingdom. No ships were leaving port and those that arrived tied up alongside and became idle as their crew walked off. Ronsard was one of these vessels impacted by the action. She had been tied alongside Alexandra Dock in Bootle for over two weeks when I joined a small crew of engineers and deck officers whose task it was to keep the generators running and the lights on.
So here I was in Liverpool.
Where else in the world would a 20 year old from a small town in North Queensland want to be than the home of the Beatles and Mersey music in the summer of 1966. Each night we would make our way to one of the many bars, clubs and pubs that surrounded the area. The Elm House and the Bootle Arms were clear favourites (being both no more than 100 yards from the dock gate), but we visited numerous other places in the area, drank warm beer and cold lagers and sang Reach Out I’ll Be There and Sunny Afternoon. Once or twice we went to The Cavern Club, a couple of minutes' walk from Lime Street, but it was always crowded to the point of overflowing and there were more accessible venues within reach of us.
Although it was against company regulations, there were frequent occasions when locals joined us for social gatherings on board and we could often be found after chucking out time, struggling back on board bearing cartons of beer on our shoulders, ascending the steep gangway and making our way to someone's cabin (thankfully usually one larger than my tiny quarters) where the merrymaking would continue.
Although it was against company regulations, there were frequent occasions when locals joined us for social gatherings on board and we could often be found after chucking out time, struggling back on board bearing cartons of beer on our shoulders, ascending the steep gangway and making our way to someone's cabin (thankfully usually one larger than my tiny quarters) where the merrymaking would continue.
Of course, we worked as well - but in all honesty, there is only so much stocktaking of spares and record-keeping that can be done while the ship remains in port, with no immediate plans for manoeuvring.
She was old and ugly as sin and her main engine was one of the most cantankerous awful things I had come across, but she was one of the happiest ships I sailed on, and after Baron Jedburgh and several weeks of alcohol poisoning while on Ronsard, it was great to actually have a deck moving underneath my feet again – even if the best we could ever do was about 10 knots. During our little coast trip to Glasgow and back, I had the pleasure of listening to England win the Football World Cup by beating Germany 4-2 in extra time. I struggle to imagine that happening again, at least not in my lifetime.
Devis set sail from Liverpool for South America in mid-July 1966 and I was back on the 12 to 4 watch with another Scottish third engineer, a taciturn Edinburghian named Ted Kinnaird. Our first destination was Las Palmas in the Canary Islands where after a brief stop for bunker fuel we continued on our way south and west across the Atlantic Ocean.
The engine was a bad-tempered old beast – a ten cylinder Burmeister and Wain heavy fuel burner which had three pistons in each cylinder and eighty fuel valves. These fuel valves were large dirty things that would frequently foul and require replacing. The fuel oil would harden into a bituminous black cake and it was my job to keep a healthy supply of spare fuel valves on hand. I spent many hours cleaning and maintaining these damn things, and I can say without rancour that it was an awful bloody job!
The crud from the heavy oil didn't only build up on the burners. It would also accumulate in the exhaust system. By a process known as "scavenging" the exhaust gases are removed through scavenger ports to allow a fresh air and fuel mixture to be introduced ready for the combustion stroke. Scavenger fires occur when the exhaust gases overheat and the caked particles on the exhaust stack and the scavengers catch fire. Whenever this happened, we could only slow the engine right down, turn off the fuel to the offending cylinder and lumber along at a much reduced speed until the fire extinguished itself - a monotonous, tiresome and if not well-managed, a dangerous activity.
One thing I learned during my years at sea was the importance of being able to find one’s way around an engine room. Underneath the foot plates are hundreds of pipes carrying diesel oil, heavy fuel oil, lubricating oil, bilge water, ballast water, drinking water, steam, compressed air and more. Drawings providing details of such layouts were seldom if ever to be found, and if they existed at all were frequently wrong. The only solution, on joining a ship for the first time, was to remove the floor plates, get into the bilge area with a flash light and meticulously follow each pipe to its destination. Not the most pleasant way to spend a Sunday afternoon, but a lot better than having a pipe burst and not knowing how to turn off the supply. Grumpy Gordon, my old third engineer on Baron Jedburgh demonstrated this to me on several occasions.
All things do eventually come to an end, and in due course the strike ended, and the seaman went back to work. I knew that it was a good thing that the strike was over, but I was enjoying life and getting paid for doing very little - and I was only 20 years old!
I would have liked to stay with Ronsard. She was of a similar age and size to Baron Jedburgh, with a six-cylinder Doxford main engine, an engine I was growing rather fond of - but sadly would not see again during my seagoing career. I gathered my few belongings and made my way a few hundred yards up the dock road where I soon found MV Devis waiting for me, preparing to leave for a little coastal trip from Liverpool to Glasgow before heading out across the Atlantic. About 20 years older than Ronsard, built in 1938 at Harland and Wolff Yard in Belfast, she had seen out the war as the troop ship and supply vessel, Empire Haig. She was bound for Buenos Aires and ports along the Brazilian coast and I joined her as junior engineer.
Devis set sail from Liverpool for South America in mid-July 1966 and I was back on the 12 to 4 watch with another Scottish third engineer, a taciturn Edinburghian named Ted Kinnaird. Our first destination was Las Palmas in the Canary Islands where after a brief stop for bunker fuel we continued on our way south and west across the Atlantic Ocean.
The engine was a bad-tempered old beast – a ten cylinder Burmeister and Wain heavy fuel burner which had three pistons in each cylinder and eighty fuel valves. These fuel valves were large dirty things that would frequently foul and require replacing. The fuel oil would harden into a bituminous black cake and it was my job to keep a healthy supply of spare fuel valves on hand. I spent many hours cleaning and maintaining these damn things, and I can say without rancour that it was an awful bloody job!
The crud from the heavy oil didn't only build up on the burners. It would also accumulate in the exhaust system. By a process known as "scavenging" the exhaust gases are removed through scavenger ports to allow a fresh air and fuel mixture to be introduced ready for the combustion stroke. Scavenger fires occur when the exhaust gases overheat and the caked particles on the exhaust stack and the scavengers catch fire. Whenever this happened, we could only slow the engine right down, turn off the fuel to the offending cylinder and lumber along at a much reduced speed until the fire extinguished itself - a monotonous, tiresome and if not well-managed, a dangerous activity.
One thing I learned during my years at sea was the importance of being able to find one’s way around an engine room. Underneath the foot plates are hundreds of pipes carrying diesel oil, heavy fuel oil, lubricating oil, bilge water, ballast water, drinking water, steam, compressed air and more. Drawings providing details of such layouts were seldom if ever to be found, and if they existed at all were frequently wrong. The only solution, on joining a ship for the first time, was to remove the floor plates, get into the bilge area with a flash light and meticulously follow each pipe to its destination. Not the most pleasant way to spend a Sunday afternoon, but a lot better than having a pipe burst and not knowing how to turn off the supply. Grumpy Gordon, my old third engineer on Baron Jedburgh demonstrated this to me on several occasions.
We were a week from our destination of Buenos Aires when the old monster reached a stage where running repairs were no longer solving her problems. After a lengthy scavenge fire, it was decided to decommission a number of the engine cylinders and remove the fuel valves to reduce compression. Then like an old car with faulty sparkplugs we limped along on three or four cylinders, slowly make our way to the nearest port at little more than walking speed. We needed serious shore based repairs. There is of course, always a silver lining. Our nearest port was Rio de Janeiro and thus it was that our vessel's poor health and age provided the only opportunity I have had of visiting this glorious city. Not that we had much chance for sight-seeing. We had some serious repair work to do once we were finally tied up in Rio. A couple of brief trips to a local bar, a walk around Centro and more memorably along the beach at Flamengo and back to the endless task of cleaning fuel valves.
After 48 hours in Rio, repairs completed, we travelled south to Buenos Aires, an exciting city whose avenues and streets are so wide that the simple act of crossing the road, becomes a journey itself. One main thoroughfares is Calle 25 de mayo and not far away is the massive Avenida 9 de Julio honouring Argentina’s Independence Day in 1816. There had been a military revolution only a few weeks before we arrived and as a consequence the streets were full of armed military who frequently stopped us to inspect our papers. Despite this, we never really took these disruptions seriously (we probably should have based on later reports of student unrest, police violence and laws against long hair on young men and mini-skirts on the girls), but we felt immune and I fell in love with this beautiful city with its amazing Spanish colonial architecture so far removed from the Victorian and Edwardian buildings of Liverpool and Glasgow. Many of the cafés and bars were open air and it here that I first sampled the real Latin American culture. Until that time, I had not heard any Spanish other than Speedy Gonzales, but it quickly became a language I loved to hear and I made up my mind to learn it.
We spent two weeks in BA and I was sad to leave. We sailed across the other side of Rio de la Plata to the Uruguayan capital of Montevideo – another exciting city with similar amounts of open space and public areas and more soldiers patrolling the streets.
After a couple of days here, we sailed north along the Brazilian coast to Rio Grande (the second busiest port in Brazil); Santos the main port for São Paulo; Recife and finally Fortaleza. It was in Santos that I had for the first time, the opportunity to see some of the real squalor that was behind much of the façade of Brazil’s society. People in Santos were living in some of the most appalling conditions I had ever seen, and it made me remember, not for the first time, how lucky I was to have been born into a privileged position of always having a roof over my head, and a meal on the table.
The Devis adventure lasted about three months, and she was, without doubt one of the happiest ships I have sailed on. In the engine room the working conditions were appalling - grimy, noisy, asbestos-laden and hot - and if I never saw another of those f**ckin' fuel valves again, it was going to be too soon. But the companionship, the food and the general good nature of all on board, was such a far cry from Baron Jedburgh that I was glad I had made the decision to go to sea.
I returned to the UK in time for my 21st birthday - a splendid evening shared with my aunt and uncle at the Trent Bridge Inn in Nottingham. I received news on arrival in Liverpool that there was a spot for me on a Booth Line ship on the Amazon run and I signed a 12 month contract which would see me join MV Viajero in New York in November of that year and I would receive my Welcome to Brooklyn.
After 48 hours in Rio, repairs completed, we travelled south to Buenos Aires, an exciting city whose avenues and streets are so wide that the simple act of crossing the road, becomes a journey itself. One main thoroughfares is Calle 25 de mayo and not far away is the massive Avenida 9 de Julio honouring Argentina’s Independence Day in 1816. There had been a military revolution only a few weeks before we arrived and as a consequence the streets were full of armed military who frequently stopped us to inspect our papers. Despite this, we never really took these disruptions seriously (we probably should have based on later reports of student unrest, police violence and laws against long hair on young men and mini-skirts on the girls), but we felt immune and I fell in love with this beautiful city with its amazing Spanish colonial architecture so far removed from the Victorian and Edwardian buildings of Liverpool and Glasgow. Many of the cafés and bars were open air and it here that I first sampled the real Latin American culture. Until that time, I had not heard any Spanish other than Speedy Gonzales, but it quickly became a language I loved to hear and I made up my mind to learn it.
We spent two weeks in BA and I was sad to leave. We sailed across the other side of Rio de la Plata to the Uruguayan capital of Montevideo – another exciting city with similar amounts of open space and public areas and more soldiers patrolling the streets.
After a couple of days here, we sailed north along the Brazilian coast to Rio Grande (the second busiest port in Brazil); Santos the main port for São Paulo; Recife and finally Fortaleza. It was in Santos that I had for the first time, the opportunity to see some of the real squalor that was behind much of the façade of Brazil’s society. People in Santos were living in some of the most appalling conditions I had ever seen, and it made me remember, not for the first time, how lucky I was to have been born into a privileged position of always having a roof over my head, and a meal on the table.
The Devis adventure lasted about three months, and she was, without doubt one of the happiest ships I have sailed on. In the engine room the working conditions were appalling - grimy, noisy, asbestos-laden and hot - and if I never saw another of those f**ckin' fuel valves again, it was going to be too soon. But the companionship, the food and the general good nature of all on board, was such a far cry from Baron Jedburgh that I was glad I had made the decision to go to sea.
I returned to the UK in time for my 21st birthday - a splendid evening shared with my aunt and uncle at the Trent Bridge Inn in Nottingham. I received news on arrival in Liverpool that there was a spot for me on a Booth Line ship on the Amazon run and I signed a 12 month contract which would see me join MV Viajero in New York in November of that year and I would receive my Welcome to Brooklyn.
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