Recollections of an Unsuccessful Seaman. Dave Creamer
The second officer must also superintend the lowering of the ten-ton steam launch that is used for towing the boats to the edge of the surf. When the ship is rolling heavily, this can be very dangerous work.
The voyage continues into the Bight of Benin, heading towards the dreary and depressing town of Forçados before carrying on up the narrow and tortuous mangrove creeks to Wari, Benin, Sapele, and Abonnema. The creeks are evil smelling and alligator infested, with screaming parrots flying overhead and inquisitive monkeys peering out from the mangrove branches. Hanging from some of the branches an old kettle or bucket can be occasionally spotted; they have been hung there as symbols of the queer native ‘Ju-Ju’, or witchcraft, and will have their very own mysterious meanings.
Some of the carved ebony ‘Ju-Jus’ for sale in England are from Birmingham. In 1928, ‘Ju-Jus’ became all the rage in the drawing rooms of Paris and London. Artists produced them and call it ‘Exotic Art’, but whilst they carved some of the female shape, modesty prevented them from including all of it.
The water is deep yet in places the vessel brushes aside the mangrove trees growing from the riverbanks. The native pilots have a good memory for the twists and turns in the channel despite there being very many blind creeks. A wrinkled old man clad only in a broken bowler and a smile gives us a wave as he fishes from a frail dugout. It never was a health resort around here, but for the old timers it must have been pure hell.
A local magnate goes swiftly past in his big canoe, the paddles manned by his numerous wives and with the chief himself sitting aft drinking his gin under the shade of a large green umbrella. In these parts, although native wives only clean and do other light work, they will probably have less to do than in many houses back at home and their lives will be that much easier than the majority of the poor women I have met in merry England, much to the benefit of their figures:
Ladies, if you want that slim and upright figure, then copy these native women. A few simple exercises walking in a state of nature through some wood with a soft article such as a few pounds of rubber on your heads and, if you have babies, these can be lashed on your back whilst you exercise. This will do the trick.
Wherever a horrible climate and good business profits combine, the Scots make the best colonists. Anyone who can survive purely on porridge in the western highlands of Scotland in winter can stand anything in this world and maybe even the next. Macgregor Lairdv was reportedly one of the first of many intrepid explorers to enter the almost-impenetrable Niger Delta. Although the climate was frightful and the natives about as safe as a tiger with the toothache, he managed to reach the fat old local king and exchange a double of the real stuff and a spare kilt for a boatload of ivory. A fair exchange when profits are concerned!
Nigeria is not a country in which to linger and is of absolutely no use at all to the prohibitionist. Brigadier General Frank P. Croziervi CB, CMG, DSO, writing in the Sunday Express, said: ‘the drink was appalling when he was in Nigeria’. When I visited that salubrious country, the drink was whisky and there was plenty of it.
When we round Cape Formosa the climate becomes most depressing. This coastline is more or less one huge interminable swamp and, without exception, the most deadly part of the whole west coast of Africa. We anchor in the Rio del Rey under the shadow of mighty volcanic mountains before heading south to the little rocky islet of Fernando Poo that was named after one of the three navigators who discovered it and two other islands. Cameroon is wild. The natives are enthusiastic headhunters and skull worshippers and members of the hemp smoker’s fraternity; not nice people at all.
We reach the Gabon River in the rainy season and it pours down continuously; a musty-smelling white mist shrouds the mangrove swamps. The vast country of Cameroon lies to the north and the French Congo to the south. This is a sad, dismal, and fever-stricken coast that has no attractions apart from the opportunity for an individual to make a bit of money, but even that will be done away with.
Within 24 hours of our arrival our second engineer dies of malaria fever whilst the third and fourth engineers and I suffer from frequent attacks. It is surprising the difference in effect a stiff dose of the fever could have between a big hearty German such as our fourth engineer, who is left a miserable wreck, and a skinny individual like myself who experiences little or no change. The chief officer, whose brain is affected, has to remain in a hospital further up the coast, leaving me to act in his place. We hope to call for him on the way back. The natives are by no means immune from the fever, and I find myself having to give medicine to the Kroo boys as and when required, which is frequently. They relish black draught mixed with Epsom salts and sip castor oil as if it were liquor. There are many complaints requiring attention: yaws, which covers the body with running sores; elephantiasis; malaria; and syphilis.
The ship lies at anchor for some three weeks at the entrance to the Gabon River, taking on board the rafts of logs floated down from up country. The third officer tows the rafts alongside the steamer with the steam launch, but sometimes the grass rope lashings part and a dozen or so logs escape in all directions in the eddying current, giving the third officer the job of rounding them up.
Hoisting logs, which can weigh anything from four tons to eight tons, on our shaky derricks is dangerous work in the extreme. With the great baulk swinging from bulwark to bulwark with the roll of the ship, the winch boy has to wait for his chance to lower it with a run into the hold below. Sometimes the derrick or wire rope will carry away and should there be a native underneath when the log comes crashing down onto the deck, there is a nasty mess. The officer must nail a tin tally onto the log and record its number in a book before climbing into the hold below to superintend its stowage. This is no easy matter with logs from 20 to 50 feet long, and often it becomes like a giant jigsaw puzzle to load the full cargo. And all the time it rains! Getting wet, externally of course, and staying wet in this unhealthy and fever-ridden climate is to court disaster. With a deck-load of logs aft and some space left to fill up homeward bound, the Mango has, at long last, loaded most of her cargo.
Whilst loading the logs we bought an alligator in the hopes of selling it for a good profit in Hamburg. Unfortunately, the beast had other ideas, and after it had escaped and chased the cook, we helped it over the side. We still have a selection of melancholy-looking monkeys and some shrieking parrots that we plan to sell to animal dealers on the Continent.
We leave the Gabon River and steam across the Bight of Benin towards Cape Palmas off Liberia, crossing the point on the equator at the Greenwich Meridian where both the latitude and longitude read nothing at all. Had we more cargo space, we would stop off at other ports on the homeward passage to pick up a few of the great whitewashed puncheons of palm oil, or some sacks of kernels or cocoa, or some barrels of stinking raw rubber, or even some dingy ivory tusks.
It is refreshing to all on board to get the good salt breeze again, but a dangerous time for the fever patients. It is said the soundings of the ocean bottom from West Africa to Las Palmas will only show a trail of human bones and empty bottles. We hear of a vessel that was rendered helpless two days after leaving Dakar, in Senegal, when the entire crew was struck down with malaria fever. It is not a pleasant business, this malaria fever.
We call in to the Sierra Leone River to take bunkers and to land the Kroo boys, who are paid off after receiving their present of a barrel of rotten salt meat and a cask of rum between them. A few days after leaving Sierra Leone we anchor off Madeira to load wine. The cargo is delivered to the ship in lighters with the casks ranging from huge hogsheads to the tiniest of barrels. With the arrival of the bumboat man, the chief mate becomes occupied with his own private business; in a very short time the crew are as drunk as owls and the carpenter’s tally of the wine casks being loaded closely resembles Egyptian hieroglyphics. The captain returns on board with the last lighter. I’m not much of a wine drinker myself and being quite sober, I find myself being very bad tempered at having to steer the ship alone in the first watch after sailing from the island.
After a 10,000-mile voyage, the ship arrives in Hamburg to discharge her cargo. Long before the vessel is made fast, the local wine and spirit merchant is on board selling beer for a penny a bottle and a good Scotch whisky for two shillings and sixpence per bottle. We go ashore later, some in search of beauty