Recollections of an Unsuccessful Seaman. Dave Creamer
as does the writing of his recollections during a time when he quite clearly knew he was terminally ill.
As with all professions where the breadwinner has to spend lengthy periods away from his or her family, there is a fine line to be drawn between abandonment and support. In this respect, Len had difficult and heart-rending decisions to make, but his later work on coasting vessels, where he was closer to home, suggest his young family was never too far away from his immediate thoughts. It must be remembered that voyages of between six and 12 months were considered the norm in the period of his writing. His claims not to have been a ‘Bolshie’ ring a little untrue; his opinion of ship owners borders upon outright vilification. The last chapter in his book suggests he retained his fervent attitudes and militancy to the very end.
I would have considered it an immense honour to have met Len, my great-uncle. Editing and researching his memoirs has given me a very clear insight into his distinctive humour, and also an appreciation of his cheerful personality and resolute character. I find it hard to believe that he should be so demeaning as to think of himself as an ‘unsuccessful seaman’.
THE EDITOR
Little did my mother realise that returning home sometime in the 1990s, after visiting her first cousin Anitra, with a leather-bound book written by my great-uncle would start a project that has kept me occupied, on and off, for many years. As a master mariner myself, I was fascinated by the book. Here was an unpublished account of seafaring life in the early 1900s that included enthralling stories of foreign ports, of being torpedoed during the First World War, and of the hardships and suffering experienced by the men of the mercantile marine during the worldwide shipping depression of the 1920s. I felt it almost my duty to make the book available to a readership far wider than our immediate family and friends. Over the next few months, I transcribed the entire manuscript, word for word, spelling mistake for spelling mistake, into a file in my computer, where it remained unopened but not completely forgotten for a considerable period of time.
In 2005, I belatedly made my acquaintance with Anitra and her own family in Lewes. During my visit, I sought Anitra’s permission to try to publish her father’s work. She was enthusiastic, delighted that someone else was appreciating and recognising her father’s efforts. She insisted upon me taking the water-damaged book back home so that I would be able to work on it at my leisure. It was with a greatest sadness that I learnt of her passing in April 2007.
The original manuscript had little hope of being accepted for publication; political correctness and changes in the English language over nearly 90 years have rendered some of the original manuscript unprintable. I was reassured by publishers that by editing my great-uncle’s work, I would not be detracting from his literary efforts, and that the original unpublished and unedited manuscript would remain in the family’s possession as a priceless heirloom of sentimental value.
Editing and researching Len’s fascinating recollections has not been easy. Every effort has been made to portray and reproduce the original manuscript as it was written, but in many instances it has been necessary to shuffle words and sentences to enable the story to flow in a more logical sequence. I will also admit to having used ‘editor’s licence’ in making my own very occasional interpretation of what I think Len intended to write when some of his sentences were found to be totally confused or disjointed. It is for this reason that some original paragraphs and the final chapter, set out for easy identification, have been included within the manuscript to allow the reader to understand the author’s style of writing. It is difficult to comprehend how someone so very ill and weak could sit behind a typewriter and, from memory and possibly a journal, write and illustrate a story of such compelling interest and detail.
My research into his career and the names of the ships in which he served would not have been possible without the Liverpool Maritime Museum, Southampton City Council Archives, and the Toronto University, which accepted responsibility for the safekeeping of our national maritime archives when, a few years ago, the British Government inexplicably decided to dispose of most of the country’s seafaring records.
David Creamer, 2017
In memory of both my great uncle, George Leonard Noake (d.1929), who wrote this work in 1928/29, and also his daughter, Anitra (d.2007), who shared my desire to see her father’s work published.
To all those at Whittles Publishing, who have made it possible for me to honour my promise to Anitra.
To my wife, Hilary, for enduring many hours of loneliness, to all those at Liverpool Maritime Museum, Southampton City Council and Toronto University for assisting me in my research a few years ago, and to Lindsay, the proprietor of Bookbane in north Wales, for painstakingly restoring the original manuscript and rebinding it in a new leather cover.
Man that is born of woman has but a short time to live,
He comes in like a maintops staysail, and goes out like a flying jib.
R. F. W. Rees, The Second Matei
Here I am, admitted to a public sanatorium and hospital with all the symptoms of an excessive intake of liquid refreshments and with consumption of the lungs. This is my reward for spending the last 20 years being one of those misguided persons going down to the sea in ships to occupy their ‘labahs’ upon the great ‘watahs’.
This Swandean Hospitalii in Worthing for incurable consumptives is about as cheerful as the mouth of the Elbe in a north-east gale on a winter’s night. I have lain in bed for months not feeling very well; they have been expecting me to die for some time, but one cannot keep all one’s appointments, not to time anyway. I feel sorry for some of the poor chaps here; those who are not actually dying seem, for the most part, to be far too ill to have a good yarn. I should have died a long time ago, several times in fact. Whilst sailing as an apprentice I fell 40 feet from aloft, and followed this up with rheumatic fever and scurvy. When I left the West African trade, a kindly German doctor gave me just 12 months to live. Then there was the ship I failed to join, which was lost with all hands, and the big tramp steamer that disappeared the voyage after I had been paid off. I also came very close to bleeding to death from head injuries after being attacked by some robbers in a lonely part of the docks in a French port. Yes, I am sure you will be sorry for me when you learn that I have been a great sufferer from bad heads, despite them generally occurring after either imbibing too much internal liniment or incurring severe financial cramp.
They seem woefully behind the times in this public sanatorium and hospital, with the doctors appearing to know no more than I do about treating tuberculosis. The young nurses don’t like being told they couldn’t cure a kipper, never mind a patient, and yet the old saying goes that all the nice girls love a sailor! There is no modern apparatus, no X-rays, artificial sunrays, or any other rays for that matter. They do have an excellent stock of fresh air, a bottle of cough mixture, and a flask of cascara sagrada, but that just about sums up their stock in trade. Instead of giving oxygen to a man on his last gasp, they should give him Sanatogeniii much earlier and then the deaths might be fewer. You hear far too much of this ‘fresh air’ business; no one could get much more of it than I have by sailing across the North Sea for a couple of years, but it hasn’t done me any good.
I am now able to sit on a deckchair on the lawn and keep a lookout on the high fence that shuts us off very completely from the outside world. I can walk up and down the narrow strip of grass as if it were an imaginary ship’s bridge and even talk to an imaginary helmsman, but I am tired of these occupations. I’ve read every book in the place, even The Constant Nymphiv which shows just how desperate one can become. I have found scientific books about atoms and electrons to