Recollections of an Unsuccessful Seaman. Dave Creamer
the man with the protruding thigh bone now has a chance to die.
The third engineer, normally a cheerful soul but hurt about the feet after getting out of the engine room, has managed to procure a bottle of whisky from a steward aboard the hospital ship. I climb into an adjacent bunk and we make the best of what is left of an eventful night. The people on the hospital ship have little concern for ‘expenses’ and serve us brandy and Bovril to combat the cold and to soothe our nerves.
In the afternoon we make the cross-Channel crossing onboard a heavily escorted steamer that was blown in half and sunk on her return journey. There is some delay at Folkestone in examining us; we look like members of a raided nightclub after a fancy dress ball, with some of us in uniform and some in rags. The six-foot senior wireless operator is wearing a short flannel hospital coat with sky blue trousers, the junior operator is in uniform with my sea boots, and the third engineer has remained in his greasy boiler suit with a tasselled yachtsman’s cap. I look the most respectable with my bowler hat, as if I were some clerk going to work after a hectic night out. We are certainly a weird looking collection for a shipwrecked crew.
Outside the docks a gentleman offers to pay our tram fares to the station; God bless him and his family for a dozen generations, and the Canadian soldier who gave me a packet of cigarettes. Generally though, the people of Folkestone just stare and grin at us. I suppose they think we are some advertising stunt. On our arrival in London, the crew is sent to the Sailors’ Home for the night, but the place is so full with shipwrecked seamen that our lot have to sleep on the floor. I go home by the tube to North London. The ladies on the train eye me rather disdainfully, as if it were high time I was in khaki. I can’t say I can blame them entirely, for I don’t look like a shipwrecked mariner in the slightest.
The next day I drift into the shipping company’s office only to be asked by the manager with a fatuous smile whether I have come for my money; not one single word of congratulations at having got clear of their mouldy old packet. Perhaps I’m speaking out of turn, yet I cannot help but thank Germany for putting her under. Money with a capital ‘M’ is all these people can think about, and very sensible of them it is too!
I believe this company lost their entire fleet during the war, doubtless at a good profit for their shareholders. We are told by the press that the men of the mercantile marine are doing wonderful work and showing great heroism. I am so glad to be a hero, but my hat still fits! The mercantile marine is doing what it has always done, albeit with a few extra difficulties and a lot of unpaid extra work thrown in. It is our duty to swell the dividends first and feed the country second – this is called ‘patriotism’. Our only real compensation is that the ordinary pre-war monotony of sea life is relieved just a little.
When we got ashore after that torpedoing business, the old chief officer told me that he was finished with the sea and that he would sooner sweep the streets than go through all that again. You can imagine my surprise therefore when I joined another of the company’s vessels as second mate a fortnight later to find the old chief officer on board. It’s a great pity the poor chap didn’t stick to his decision, for he lost his life on the following voyage. British seamen being in short supply, we take on a deck crew of Malays and some Arab firemen.
To save money, our manager tries taking advantage of the shortage of certified mercantile marine officers by sailing without a third officer. He’s hoping the chief officer and I will do double the work for the same meagre wages, all in the name of patriotism, but I tell him I would see him in Hell first. It would be impossible for us to maintain the vigilant lookout that is absolutely necessary in wartime on board a 5,000-ton ship with a Malay deck crew, and with the mate and me working 12-hour watches every day. The manager would have sacked me on the spot if he had dared, but as it was he found a third officer, a young fellow 73 years of age, who was as strange a character as you would ever wish to meet.
Arriving from New York, where he had had some job in the Customs, he tried to ‘join up’, but was too drunk at the recruiting office to be favourably received, although he had four sons in France and was as hardy as any young soldier aged 20. He decided to stay at a hotel in Cardiff courting Mother Booze and the barmaid until his locker was empty. ‘I may be getting on in years,’ he said to me on joining the ship, ‘but there’s not so many who can stand on their heads when they’re over 70!’ He promptly stood on his head to prove the point and took five shillings off me before returning to the pub.
On this voyage to Halifax, Nova Scotia, we keep close to the Welsh and Irish shores and right under the shadow of the beautiful cliffs and caves around Mizen Head, where the sweet scent of the wet turf is wafted seaward. The third officer keeps himself busy in his spare time on the 12-day passage with his hobby of ‘laundry work’. His cabin is festooned with yellowish rags that were once his clothes, but are now too far gone and tatty for the poor old chap to expose to the public view. At sea he wears homemade white canvas trousers and socks upon which he has sewn patches.
We arrive at Halifax in the early morning and commence loading some of the few thousand tons of flour we are to take to France. As often happened, by the time evening came the old third mate, whose cabin is opposite mine, has had many imaginary visitors to see him.
‘Good evening, Captain!’
‘Oh good evening, do come in and have a drink,’ he would reply to himself. A glass would chink, and then he would ramble on to his imaginary old shipmates about strange happenings and past voyages when he had been master of Nova Scotia schooners and brigs in the Spanish and South American dried fish trade. He would speak of shipwrecks and mutinies in which his wife, who had borne him 11 children, had taken an active part. He remembered the schooners Rose Marie and the San Juan; the brig Modiste, abandoned at sea; and the Mystery, which was lost by fire. His body is scarred by make-believe wounds from bullet and knife. Poor old chap – I liked to listen to his stories because sometimes I imagined I might just be hearing the truth. He went ashore later that night; the police brought him back to the ship just before we sailed. He seemed quite unconcerned, smoking his vile old pipe and totally out of his mind.
The cargo being loaded and the hatches battened down, a gang of naval ratings work for a couple of days making chocks and then securing the four 80-foot motor launches we load on deck. These are the M. L. Boats,i ‘Joy Yachts’ or ‘Petrol Punishers’ as they are nicknamed. About 550 of these boats were built, mostly in Canada and Bayonne in New Brunswick, but they were not particularly successful because their petrol consumption was around 50 gallons per hour for a speed of 19 knots. Not only that, they were very costly to build, had insufficient beam for their length, and lacked any strength in a seaway. I know a little about their construction because I later lived on and looked after one of these launches that had been converted into a yacht.
We leave Halifax shortly before a terrific explosionii in the harbour. Our destroyer escort is picked up 200 miles west of the Scilly Isles but lost an hour later in thick fog, only to next be seen inside Portsmouth harbour. The French ports being too congested to receive more ships, we lie at anchor for ten days in the Solent before finally crossing the Channel and discharging our cargo of flour in Calais. We are then sent back to Cardiff for bunkers.
The shipping company manager hasn’t forgotten me. I am informed that an ‘older servant’ of the company is here to relieve me and that he has agreed to sail without a third officer. Good luck to him; unfortunately the ship was sunk on her next voyage, so I wasn’t too sorry to be out of it. The last I saw of the old third mate was in the pub shortly after he had discharged himself from the ship. ‘They may get an older man than me,’ he told me, ‘but by God they won’t find one tougher!’