Recollections of an Unsuccessful Seaman. Dave Creamer
to look no further than St. Pauli, a suburb of Hamburg that has been described as the resort for sailors and is, without doubt, the most gay or some might even call it the most wicked of all the continental ports, bar none.
St. Pauli is the centre of Hamburg’s underworld. The glittering open-all-night cafes are filled with hundreds of women of all ages, mostly pretty and some quite beautiful, but where one and all are members of the oldest profession in the world. Fine string orchestras play real music throughout the night; under one of the cafes is a barber’s shop splendidly fitted out with soft layback chairs for a livening head massage, and bathrooms where you can take a bath, or even a jolt of dope should you feel so inclined. London nightclubs are a miserable joke when compared with those of St. Pauli.
The German women who ply their trade in this quarter are unusual in that they appear most ‘homelike’ and clean, a trait not to be found elsewhere. Imagine being in the middle of your ‘early morning’ lobster supper, sober yet having had a few drinks, when your girl companion invites you round to visit her flat in the evening so she can do any mending that needs to be done, or darn any socks that need to be darned. And she means it as well! I hear that these women make very good wives and that most of them are saving up to get married.
A luxuriously upholstered Chinese café is the meeting place for the pick of the younger girls who have come from all over the world. Here you can see a dainty Brazilian lady dressed in the latest Paris fashion, dancing with a placid and dapper Chinese man. It is sad but true that the young and attractive ladies have not yet realised that when age overtakes them, the café will no longer welcome them. The oldest profession is a tough old business.
When you walk the streets during the early hours of the morning, you will see another and more terrible side to the nightlife that is no different to any other city, but probably more pronounced here. You will be gently and politely accosted by dozens of women who have been sheltering in some dark doorway from the bitter midwinter wind that is far colder than in England. There is no warmth in their imitation furs and thin stockings; ask one into a small café for an icebreaker, or hot grog as you may know it, and she will show you hands that are blue with cold without any gloves and her knees will be like ice, yet they must keep at it. I can hardly write here what I should like to say, but the position of some of these women is very wretched to say the least. Their fortitude and bodily strength amazes me.
Hamburg is the city where most of our ill-gotten gains from the native deck passengers’ ‘excessive luggage’ fees changed hands and for a short time our voyage to the ‘coast’ was completely forgotten. You’ll probably be thinking I’m a nice old rogue, but the truth of the matter is that even when I was that much younger my interest in Bacchus was far greater than Venus. A pity you might say, but there it is!
It is 1915 and we are at war with Germany. The British Transport ship is berthed in Cardiff docks in the pouring rain, lying close to the roaring coal hoists and the piles of pit props stacked on the quayside. The 100 or so horse tenders, or stablehands as we might call them, roughly in equal numbers of white and black men, come from the slums of New York, Chicago, and San Francisco, and they are making merry whilst they can for we will be sailing in the morning. They look after the horses we are shipping from the States and return on the westbound trip as passengers. All night long they sing, fight, and curse. Two drunken Negroes armed with razors slash vaguely at each other amidst the debris of beer cases looted from the steward’s store. The place stinks like a cesspool and their quarters are a complete shambles into which the dock police are not anxious to intrude.
Should this vessel be sunk by a torpedo or a mine, some of those on board will have their first bath for years, and probably their last. I hear these horse tenders are apt to be in a hurry to get to the boats, and we are very overcrowded. During the voyage across the Atlantic, a couple of drug addicts run short of supplies and end their misery by jumping over the side; otherwise, the two foremen manage to keep reasonable order. Tough merchants, these horse tender foremen. Sam, a professional hobo, has tramped England as well as the States and he has a grievance. He worked for a Herefordshire farmer, the meanest in the whole of Europe, who paid him only 12 shillings for a whole week’s hard work. The other foreman, who has been a sailor on a windjammer and a fisherman on the Great Banks, is quite a good fellow despite having spent some time in jail.
There is not a British seaman amongst our crew with the exception of the baker and the officers’ steward. We have Swedes, Greeks, Italians, a Mexican, a Malay, and the Turkish Empire is also represented; the bosun is a wizened old Maltese man and the bosun’s mate is a Russian Jew.
On arrival at Newport News, Virginia, the ship is warped under the coal tips ready for bunkering. Just outside the town 3,000 horses from all over the States and as far as Mexico have been collected together in big corrals at Buckroe Beach.i For days these poor creatures have been shut up in the sweltering heat of railroad cars; many died even in the ‘cool’ of the evening when the temperature remained over 90°F at midnight. The horses are brought down in fours to the quayside sheds where they are given a rest overnight before being hustled on board in the cooler early morning hours. The animals are of all shapes and sizes and vary from the big raw-boned Texas mustang that is sweating and kicking like fury to the docile old animal from some far away Kentucky farm that ambles patiently up the gangway. The Negro horse-handlers are very skilled and succeed in getting 700 horses plus all their fodder and utensils on board for a voyage to England in only three hours. Packed from stem to stern with horseflesh, the whining electric fans make little difference to the heat and stench below decks; the lucky ones are the animals and their tenders in the fresh air of the upper deck.
Our short stay in Virginia is not without incident. The assistant vet, a German living in Boston, aired his views on the war too freely and has been kicked ashore to find other work. There has also been trouble amongst the culinary staff. The horse tender’s cook, a fat oily Indian, insulted the Turkish ship’s cook and a fight ensued. Strong words passed before knives appeared and a fireman was stabbed when trying to separate them. A warrant was taken out for the Indian’s arrest, but he was nowhere to be found. Later in the evening, and much to everyone’s surprise, he appeared outside the chief officer’s cabin door and asked permission to go ashore for the evening to see his girlfriend. In the meantime, the Turk abandoned his job and ‘jumped ship’, never to be seen again. With time being too short to hire a replacement cook, the warrant was cancelled and the Indian promoted to being the ship’s chef. It’s a poor knife that doesn’t do anyone any good!
We are soon back at sea; on the second day out, I’m leaning over the bridge rail enjoying the cool breeze when I see a row of heads pop out of the horseboxes on deck. The animals also appear to be revelling in the fresh air until it dawns on me that the wreath of smoke curling up from the bows shouldn’t be there at all. A fire on a packed horse transport would be ghastly. We are lucky that this one is confined to the bosun’s store and is promptly extinguished; on the other side of the bulkhead and just a few feet away is hay, oats, and straw for 700 horses for three weeks.
In the two voyages we made across the Atlantic, we lost only four out of the 1,400 horses we transported, which I believe was a record. The Canadian vet had every right to feel proud and was always boasting ‘that there were no flies on him’; unfortunately that didn’t stop the flies from landing on everyone else on board!
As we near the danger zone of the Western Approaches, the lifeboats are swung out and their launching crews mustered. My lot consists of two wireless operators, the baker, a Swede, two Greeks and three Negro horse tenders from the southern states. The bridge is barricaded round with bales of hay to protect the steering position in case of shellfire. The horses are restless and continuously neigh as they scent the approaching land. The amount of good manure being dumped overboard during the passage worried me. If only I could have had that manure a little later in my career when I went ashore to take up farming!
No sooner are we safely