Sailing Close to the Wind

by Ray Simes

These are the random recollections of an old man, the events that I describe all happened a life-time ago, back in the 60's.  And they happened at sea. This is no biography, that would take a volume, these are just snippets to accompany my photographs. The photographs are mostly of ships and scenes. I wouldn't like to “name names” or show photographs of any person without their knowledge and consent.

I wear no rose-coloured spectacles when I look back at those years, I bear no recriminations against the sinners, and I cherish the memory of the saints and the wonderful souls that I also sailed with. Life was like the ocean waves, with high crests and low troughs and I cannot appreciate the highs without acknowledging the lows. However, I have deleted three sections in case anybody reading this may be upset by them. (The un-edited version on request from my email address at the end).

I was always going to go to sea. I was born in Liverpool, on the banks of the great River Mersey, before parts of it became a pond for small pleasure craft and the rest a berth for tankers and container ships. As a small boy I stared with wonder from the landing stage at the great vessels that paraded there. After my mother died I was deposited into a charitable orphanage. I escaped regularly to the river. I could walk the seven miles of docks from the Herculaneum in the south end to the Gladstone in the north. I knew all the docks' names and all the ships berths. I knew the ships' names and their colours and their owners and their trade routes. Trespassing the Liverpool docks was difficult, because each entrance on the dock road was guarded by the police, the best way was to use the landing stage to enter the docks from the sea wall. Birkenhead was much better, the docks were open and criss-crossed by the seven bridges. The only policeman was on trafiic duty at Duke Street. It was easy to evade the negligent gangway men and I would walk the alleyways of Clan boats and see the lascars asleep four to a cabin which they shared with their bicycles. I breathed in the heady heavy oil fumes from the engine-rooms and savoured the smells of exotic spices and foreign cargoes.

I was 15, in my last year at the school and it was the annual sports day. We were all kitted out in our PE gear – rough shirt, baggy shorts, and running shoes, nothing else. I was delegated to escort a prominent member of the board of governors. I was naive but not stupid and it was quickly apparent that he was more interested in me than he was in the sports field. He asked me what I wanted to do when I left school at the end of the term.

“Go to sea” was my reply.

This prominent member of the board of governors was acquainted with other directors of commerce in the city and as a result he took me to Riversdale Technical college in south Liverpool and introduced me to an Alfred Holt director. He was a dapper, bespectacled character with a staccato voice and an intermittent stutter. It was like being barked at by a dog, or quacked at by a duck.

I had thought that I might apply to Marconi in Rumford Street (I had no aptitude for the engine room and my eye-sight precluded me from deck duty) but as a result of my interview I found myself instead being kitted out at Greenbergs in the uniform of an Elder Dempster purser cadet. 

I was lodging in Speke, a stone's throw from the airport, when I was told to report to the steps of India Building in Water Street with my kit, at 7am one fine summer's morning. I was told nothing else. I managed to get a lift and left Speke at 6am, travelled out through Garston, Aigburth, and into town. I joined a group of total strangers (officers and crew) in Water Street and we all boarded a coach. The coach turned around, headed out of town, through Aigburth, Garston and back to Speke (airport)! I could have walked there. Apart from Pwhelli (Butlins) in North Wales, and a trip on the steamer “St Tudno” to the Great Orme (Llandudno) I had never been anywhere. When the charter DC3 Dakota of Dan-Air took off, I was trembling as much as the plane's old wings were.

Rotterdam, where we seemed to fill the whole ship with Heineken. Antwerp, Dunkirk, Rouen. I should have lost what innocence I had to a harlot in Hamburg, but lost it instead to the Chief Steward in his cabin a few days later....  I had just turned 16.

In my own company I was bold, resourceful and artful, but in the company of others I was painfully shy, nervous and literally out of my depth. I kept getting lost onboard and missed meals rather than admit that I couldn't find the dining room. I was vulnerable and an easy target, but that all soon changed.

The actual transition from school to sea was a natural one for me; I just swapped one uniform for another, one set of rules for another set, I certainly wasn't used to going home every night and so I didn't have to suffer the trauma of homesickness. (It upset me to hear first-trippers crying themselves to sleep with homesickness).  Seasickness was something else that luckily did not effect me.

 It was the silence that woke me up. After the constant throbbing of the Doxford engines, day and night, the ship was quiet and rolling on a swell. Dazzling sunlight was pouring through the porthole. I quickly dressed and ran out on deck. The horizon was empty and shimmering. I ran to the port-side and there was the mountain of Freetown, Sierra Leone. My heart was bursting with excitement. I never lost that sense of wonderment or privilege.

At the end of the voyage we berthed back in Rotterdam. Nobody explained to me about “signing off”, so as it was a crisp Autumn morning, I took myself off for a walk around the neighbourhood. I returned around lunchtime to find the ship deserted with only a Dutch gangwayman for company. I was not very popular by the time I got signed off and caught up with everyone else waiting at the airport.

The only way to approach New York is from the sea. I was 17 and on the “Sherbro”. It was dusk and on the horizon the skyscrapers stuck up like distant telegraph poles. I recognised immediately the silhouette of the  liner “France” as it sailed outward. We sailed under the Verrazano Bridge which was still missing its final central section. We berthed in Brooklyn. The Beatles were causing hysteria in the country and in a club in Greenwich Village I watched a young man named 'Bob Dylan' perform.

On our last day in New York myself and two other cadets were walking back to the ship. A big yank-tank drew alongside and a slick salesman claimed he was a rep for “Crown Colony” and could let us have a couple of their famous shirts cheap. I had no dollars left but the other two handed over their money and the car accelerated away in a cloud of dust. Back onboard the opened boxes revealed their contents to be 'collars and cuffs' only, dummies for display.

I always loved thunderstorms, but I loved storms at sea better. On the mailship APAPA in 1963 we hit a storm in the Bay of Biscay that held the ship almost static for 48 hours, and you can appreciate the size of the waves from the photographs. The force of the waves buckled bow plates, tore the tarpaulins from the life-boats and smashed the glasses from the deck lights. The passengers stayed hidden below decks.

I loved it and had hysterics as potted palms and aspidistras slid the length of the alleyways and smashed into bulkheads. In the deck pantry, plates crashed to the deck and cups fell from cup-hooks.

I was always fascinated when we were in a storm with a following sea, how the giant waves would lift the screw clear of the water, and then part and overtake the ship on either side. One of the photos was taken from the afterdeck and shows one of those big, black horrors pass us by. The big waves were never blue, or green – they were always coal black and just as hard.

I still believe that every seventh wave is the biggest. On this particular occasion I was on the “Diplomat” and there was a fierce storm running. I took my camera and ran from the accomodation block and up the foredeck and then hid in the lee of the fo'csle. Then I peered over the bulwark ready to photo the next big wave.  I glimpsed over the bulwark and saw that the wave was a monster. The ship was teetering on the brink and ready to crash into the trough.  My nerve gave way. I turned and sprinted for the safety of the accomodation. The ship plunged into the trough and the wave swamped the foredeck. The wave caught me from behind and swept me off my feet and sent me flat on my back toward the superstructure. Three feet to my left and it would have smashed me into face of the accomodation. Three feet to my right and it would have swept me over the side and out to sea. As it was, it sent me straight down the outside alleyway and I was able to grab hold of the railing and save myself.

The ship was my home, and my best friends were my cabin and my bunk. It didn't matter where you were in the world, how bad it was, at the end of the day the ship always sailed away. The ship was never 'dead' – it was always warm and lit and welcoming.

In 1963 I had the misfortune to be in Matadi and Boma when the Congolese war was developing as the nationalists tried to expel the Belgians, and witnessed victims of the atrocties being evacuated by ship.

Capetown is like New York – best approached by sea. The first sight of Capetown, whether the Table mountain is covered by its tablecloth or not, is breathtaking. Anchored off and awaiting our berth, the ship rolled in the swell to a greater degree than it had in the storms in the Biscay. I stood atop the mountain and looked down on the city clustered below. The “Custodian” was suspected of having grounded in Lobito and we spent ten days in dry-dock in Capetown. Marvellous!

In 1968 during the Biafran war in Nigeria, the “Oranyan” was requisitioned by the government (General Gowan) for war service against the Ibos (Colonel Ojukwu). The decks were swamped with troops and we set off for Port Harcourt. Hapless conscripts who thought that without weapons they would be excused from the fighting threw their guns over the side. Colonel “the Scorpion” Adekunle threw those soldiers overboard as well. We kept ourselves locked in our cabins for the duration.

During one of those all-too-frequent dockers' strikes in Liverpool, office staff were asked to volunteer to help berth a ship on a Sunday morning. I was back off leave and working by in the office. A dozen of us turned out, including a Personnel Manager. As the ship slipped into the lock and mooring lines were cast onto the quay, the Manager saw that the vessel was going to make contact with the lock wall and quickly lowered his brief-case on the handle of his umbrella to act as a fender. 6000 ton of “Herbert Macaulay” ground his case and cane to a pulp.

My first five Christmas's in the Merch' were spent at sea. In 1963 on the “Apapa” we were passing the Canaries and heard how the Greek cruise ship “Lakonia” was on  fire (and subsequently sank there).  In 1964 on the “Swedru” we spent Christmas day homeward bound in the English Channel but were confident of being ashore for New Year. But a strike by dockers in Tilbury meant that we spent New Year's Day anchored in the Thames, and could only watch the distant firework displays.

(Everybody got the “Channels” - that contagious excitement that took hold once you had passed the Canaries northbound, had gone back into “blues” and could feel the pinch of cold weather. The race to raise a UK radio station. I recall shinning up a samson post with an aerial wire gripped in my teeth to attach it to the highest place to try and get Radio Caroline – in a force 10 gale! On the “Swedru” supplies of booze and tobacco were already running low when we spent Christmas Day in the Channel. But when we had to anchor in the Thames due to the strike, supplies had run out. The tension and frustration manifested itself in various ways. The “sparky” was a fan of Sandy Nelson and had a drum set in his cabin. He spent the days beating his drums to death then spent the remaining days teaching me how to play chess).

In 1966 the “Custodian” was due to sail from London on Christmas Eve. From there we would spend Christmas Day en route to Hamburg. In Hamburg we were to load a heavy lift onto deck and then return to London to complete loading general cargo, and then sail – on New Year's Eve! The officers were all Company men and in place. Harrisons used native crews on the West Indian run but, for obvious reasons, used white crews on the South African run. White crews were difficult at the best of times but finding anyone prepared to sign on to a ship that was sailing on Christmas eve and then on New Year's eve, proved impossible. Drastic measures were called for. The Chief Officer scoured the dockside pubs. In one he found an inebriated Donkeyman/Greaser just signed off a Port line boat. The donkeyman was put to bed on the Custodian and when he awoke we were in the North Sea and his thumbprint was on the articles. The Company flew down two AB's from Aberdeen (both were alcoholic and one was a kleptomaniac) who took one look at the port of registry and declared there and then that there was a “scouse plot” aboard against Scots and began drawing up plans for retribution. A 15-year old boy from a broken home in the East End was taken on as a cabin boy, despite being under-age and unable to read or write. An EDH from Welwyn Garden city came aboard wearing shirt and trousers and a “witches stone” on a chain around his neck. He was barefoot, and this was December in London. All he carried was a parcel wrapped up in newspaper, which we assumed was his kit but much later turned out to contain only marijuana.

The ensuing tragi-comic voyage led to violence aboard and ashore, a near mutiny, a death in Durban and a farcical funeral.

Paddy Henderson's “Koyan” was built in 1952 but surely must have been built from a pre-war design? I was told that Hendersons had got the K-boats “off the stocks, two for the price of one”. Anyway, the Koyan was under Elder Dempster colours when I joined her and was past her best. She was rusty and forlorn in the Herculaneum dry dock. Not only was she past her 'sell-by' date, she was well behind her sailing date as well. When the dock was flooded, the tunnel flooded too. The dock was emptied but when it was flooded again there was a problem with the screw. When we finally sailed there were still shore-side workers aboard trying to complete outstanding jobs. In the toilets the WC bowls remained unbolted to the deck. Outside the Mersey bar the engines failed. While we were loading fertiliser in Londonderry the fore-topmast came down. The foredeck looked like a scene from Trafalgar. The mast was secured on deck to be re-stepped in Lagos. The engines failed leaving Las Palmas. Fresh water ran out on our way down the west African coast. A passing fishing boat was signalled and drums were transferred to the Koyan, but I can't recall whether they contained water or lub oil. I do know that we had to throw buckets on ropes over the side to use sea water for shaving and flushing the toilets. We all looked and smelled like pirates! The water was replenished but up the creek (in Warri or Sapele) the engines failed again and we were stuck there for days and the water ran out. With no fresh water supply available we were issued with tins of Skol and Tennents lager instead. Yippee! When we finally arrived back in Hull the engines failed again, within sight of the harbour lights. The Koyan was the last ED ship that I sailed on.

I loved my job at sea. I was diligent and competent. It didn't matter whether I was sweating and covered in dirt down the hatch in Calcutta, or tallying tin all night in Lagos, or overseeing port entry, I loved it and everything else that we experienced was a bonus. I particularly liked getting the bundles of mail from the agent and handing out the letters. They were such a welcome morale booster.....unless the letter was a “Dear John”!

After a voyage on the “Wanderer” Harrisons promoted me to full Purser – I was 18.

Being a teenage officer was not without its problems. The age difference between myself and most of the other officers caused some friction. As far as I was concerned, my age was irrelevent, as long as I was capable of doing the job, then I deserved the extra gold stripe on my epaulette and the money that went with it. On one ship that I joined the Purser that I replaced was a fixture aboard, elderly and much-liked, and some of the more narrow-minded officers treated me as an 'upstart' and gave me the cold shoulder. But that wasn't the only problem. I needed to mix and engage with people of my own age, other teenagers, and they were only to be found in the cadets cabins, or down aft amongst the junior seamen and catering staff. Officers socialising with cadets or ratings was simply “not done” so at sea I sometimes felt myself isolated. But ashore was a different matter. These were the years of the “swinging sixties”, of “flower power” and “free love”.  The Beatles and the Rolling Stones. But once ashore and out of uniform, we were no longer officer and cadet, or officer and rating, we were teenagers, and there were many escapades and escapes!

I did learn one painful lesson that age and experience may have helped me to avoid :

that “Familiarity breeds contempt”.

The coast of South West Africa is notorious for its sea-mists, white and pink. At slow ahead, the regular blast of the whistle had kept some of us awake all night. Out of the mist loomed one of those big, C3 freighters of Farrel Line, slicing through the water at full speed. It was just feet and seconds away from slicing through us.

We were alongside the Landing Stage at Liverpool. There was a thick fog on the River Mersey but it was settled on the water. Up on the boat deck of the “Apapa” we were above it: it was like looking out of the window of an aeroplane at the clouds beneath. There were whistles and fog-horns sounding all around. And then I saw the top of the mast and navigation light of a small vessel. It appeared through the layer of fog from the Birkenhead side and it was heading in our direction. It was going too fast and its mast was cutting through the fog like a wire through cheese. It just kept coming and I couldn't believe it when the bow of a tug appeared right beneath where I was stood, and slammed into the side of the “Apapa”. Perhaps the skipper shoved the engines astern at the last moment, but the tug rebounded off our side and shot backwards into the fog at much the same speed as it had hit us at.

“Someone get that boat's number!” a voice shouted from the bridge, but the mast-top was already disappearing from view.

We were homeward bound and the weather in the Atlantic was atrocious. I went out on deck wrapped up in one of the heavy duffle coats that we used when working in the cold store. The wind was so strong that it was impossible to breathe while facing it, I had to turn my head sideways to gasp my breath in. And I was able to lean forward to about 45º against the wind. The sea as far as the horizon was foaming like boiling water.  And then I saw it. On the horizon and on a parallel course there was a ship, but not just any ship. It was a liner, an ocean greyhound, and it was flying. It was lean and sleek with a straight stem and a counter stern. It had four raked funnels. The seas were overwhelming her and several times the white water covered her bridge. I was sure that there were no pre-war style passenger ships still afloat with four funnels. It had no funnel or hull colours, the whole ship appeared to a pale blue-grey. It soon overhauled us and was gone into the distant gloom. I waited impatiently and at midday when the mate came off watch I asked him about the ship. He told me that the only ships that he was interested in were those that were on a collision course but that there had been no ships in the area and no radar contacts.

On the bridge there was a copy of Adlard Coles “Merchant Ships – World Built” and  my belief was confirmed when I found no outline of any four-funneled liners. But I had stood and watched that ship for maybe forty minutes from the moment it appeared on the distant horizon to the moment it was lost to view.

I remember:

Listening to the Durban Symphony orchestra and choir perform Verdi's Requiem.

A hilarious but fraught safari in Ceylon.

Watching the Apollo 11 spacecraft lift-off for the moon from off-shore Florida in 1969.

Being frightened rigid by Hitchcock's film “The Birds” at a showing aboard the “Apapa”.

Parties onboard with nurses from the hospitals and telephonists from the exchanges.

Floating on my back in the Red Sea (and then being battered against the ship's side by the wash from a passing tanker).

The marvellous canopy of stars at night at sea and a thousand wonderful sunsets.

Dolphins racing us, changing leaders in the bow-wave.

Whales being slaughtered and prison chain-gangs shovelling coal in their filthy, striped uniforms in Durban.

Preservation Hall in New Orleans and the Irish Showbands in Belfast.

Walking along the beaches at Dunkirk.

The Empire State building.

And much more...

                                                                I wish it could have gone on, but jobs for Pursers were fast disappearing and so were the ships that we served on. I think it was around 1980 and I had just completed a commission, an oil painting of the “Clan Sutherland”. A man who saw it told me that his father had just sailed on the “last Clan boat”. I couldn't believe it - what had happened to the fleet of 45 ships that they operated in 1965?  Similarly, I revisited Mersey Chambers (the headquarters of Harrison Line in Covent Garden) a couple of years later. No longer able to walk in freely and admire their display of ship models in glass cases, there was a glass security gate which I was not allowed to pass. I asked for a 'sailing list'. There was just one vessel on it, the “Author”. They used to have a fleet of 35 ships.

I am not being nostalgic but pragmatic when I suggest that for an island to lose its shipbuilding and shipping industry is a nonsense.

I would welcome any comments or feedback to : falaba63@hotmail.com

Also where and when the photos were taken.