On board MV MARINE PRINCESS  (WNLH)  of Marine Transport Lines

Summer of 1988

I have researched into my souvenirs to bring back my life “as a seaman”.  Unfortunately, time has a habit of erasing some information such as names of people, exact dates, description of places, facts and events in their chronological sequence.  But all that I write about happened, existed, and is true. I did my best.

*  written in 2000,  revised March  2006

I  dedicate  this narrative of my memories to 

To   all   the  ”Sparks”  of   the  World’s  Merchant  Marine

SUMMARY OF SEA SERVICES

Liberian Flag

SHIP / Call Sign      Type of Vessel        Company      Voyage details        Dates: from     to

___________________________________________________________________________

SS PELOPS/ELCG Greek     Freighter -    Scrap Iron                         Dec 1954 - Feb 1955

BOSTON - ROTTERDAM - AMSTERDAM - NEW YORK

_________________________________________________________________

PETROQUEEN/ELHU  Universe Tankships   (D.K. Ludwig)                           Apr 1955 - Jul 1956

                                                             Tanker              

SAN FRANCISCO - SAN PEDRO - KAWASAKI/YOKOHAMA - SUNGAI PAKNING (Sumatra) –

UNIVERSE LEADRER/5LCN  Universe Tankships                                  Sept 1956 - July 1957

                                                     (D.K. Ludwig)

At the time the largest (85000 DWT) tanker in the world built at KURE / Japan - NBC shipyards

KURE - SUNGAI PAKNING (Sumatra) - SAN FRANCISCO - MENA AL AHMADI (Kuwait) – SANTOS (Brasil) - CAPETOWN( for drydock) - SUNGAI PAKNING - SAN FRANCISCO (RICHMOND)

____________________________________________________________________________

ORE REGENT  Ore carrier National Bulk Carriers                                             August 1957

                                                       (DK Ludwig)

MORRISTOWN/PA - PUERTO ORDAZ(ORINOCCO RIVER Venezuela) - MORRISTOWN/PA

____________________________________________________________________________

UNIVERSE CHALLENGER /5LPX  Universe Tankships                    Sept1957  - Mar  1958

later re-named FRISIA       same as  5LCN - KURE –

SUNGAI PAKNING - SAN FRANCISCO - KURE (for dry-dock) - SUNGAIPAKNING - LONG BEACH (HUNTINGTON BEACH) CA

____________________________________________________________________________ST ANNA O/5LBD      Maritime Overseas Corp    T2 Tanker                    Apr 1958 – Jan  1959

 (“tramping”)YOKOHAMA - QUATAR - MITSUHAMA/Japan - PANAMA CANAL - BALTIMORE - PUNTA CARDON/Venez. - BOSTON - AMUAYBAY/Venez.  - ARUBA - NEW YORK - SANTOS/Brasil - CARTHAGENA/Colombia - CALLAO/Peru – PORTLAND /Maine

____________________________________________________________________________

SS ORE MERIDIAN/5LZI         National Bulk Carriers                            May  -  July  1959

                                                     - Ore Carrier

 (DK Ludwig, built at Kure) KURE - PANAMA Canal - PUERTO ORDAZ(Orinocco-River, Venezuela ) - BALTIMORE

____________________________________________________________________________SS ORE CHIEF/ELKM     National Bulk Carrier -                                           July - Aug  1959

                                      - Ore Carrier

NEWPORT NEWS - PUERTO ORDAZ(Orinocco-River, Venezuela) -MOBILE/Alabama

____________________________________________________________________________SEAWAY               National Bulk Carriers  - dredge                                             Sept   1959

dredging BLACK WARRIOOR LAGOON, BAJA CALIFORNIA/ Mexico

SAN PEDRO, CA FOR DRYDOCK

SHIP / Call Sign      Type of Vessel        Company      Voyage details        Dates: from     to

___________________________________________________________________________

DREDGE ZULIA/5MBC    Nional Bulk Carr                                        Oct 1959 – July 1960

                                      (DK Ludwig)

Dredge chartered to Venezuelan Govt. built at NBC Shipyards Kure) KURE - GUAM - SINGAPORE - SUEZ  CANAL - GIBRALTAR for bunkers - PORT OF SPAIN/Trinidad - MARACAIBO then dredging Maracaibo channel

____________________________________________________________________________ST OLYMPIC ROCK/ELYP  tanker  Greek/Onassis Shipping                         Oct - Dec 1960

from lay-up ROTTERDAM/SCHIEDAM - BREST(repairs) - PUNTA  CARDON(Amuay Bay, Venez. ) - BUENOS AIRES - SANTOS - PUNTA CARDON - BUENOS AIRES - PUERTO LA CRUZ/Ven - PAULSBORO/NJ

____________________________________________________________________________SS SPRUCE WOODS/ELYP National Bulk Carriers                                Apr - May 1961

Bulk Carrier  Coal from NORFOLK/VA for YOKOHAMA (via Panama Canal) then  KURE for lay-up

____________________________________________________________________________

SS J LOUIS/5MGC National Bulk Carriers                                      May 1961 - May – 1962

bauxite carrier built NBC shipyards Kure, Japan chartered to Reynolds Aluminium from KURE - GALVESTON TX (via Panama Canal) for dry-dock - OCHO RIOS/Jamaica- CORPUS CHRISTI /TX voyages to MIRAGOANE/Haiti and PORT OF SPAIN /Trinidad  (bauxite discharge through conveyor belts

____________________________________________________________________________

SS PETROKURE/ELGE   Universe Tankships  Tanker                                    Aug 1962 - Jan 1963

MARCUS HOOK(CHESTER)/PA - PUERTO LA CRUZ/Venez.. - MARCUS HOOK - MENA AL AMADI/Kuwait - MARCUS HOOK

_________________________________________________________________

CALGARY/ELSC  (exCOMMONWEALTH) Universe Tankships            Jun e 1964 – Jan  1965

                                                                         Tanker

PONCE/Puerto Rico  - PUERTOLACRUZ/Venez. - PONCE - VALETTA/Malta

for drydock - MENA ALAMADI/Kuwait via SUEZ - DUNKERQUE - MENA AL AMADI - AUGUSTA/Sicily - BANDA SHAPUR/Iran - WILHELMSHAFEN

After 3-1/2 years of service in the US Army, I was “Honorably discharged” in November of 1952 and settled down in New York to study under the GI Bill of Rights at the RCA Institute, on West 4th Street, in Greenwich Village. I waited two years for my naturalization. All through that time, while continuing my studies at RCA’s Institute,  I  could not get an FCC license, as an “alien”,  nor secure a decent job in the electronics industry which was contracted for defense work. I was broke and became very lonely and homesick in New York,  For the first two months after my discharge,  I went to school during the day and worked evenings as an “assistant” bar tender in a high class restaurant on East 42nd Street.

During the day, I had to take in electronic and math formulas; Then “coached” by Luigi’, the restaurant’s bar tender, I had to learn how to blend all kinds of liquors to make Manhattans, Martinis, Alexanders,  and other exotic cocktails to satisfy the sophistic clientele of the restaurant.

  But my GI Bill of Rights allowance was not enough to support me. So I worked on many odd jobs during the day:  welding metal saw blades,  assembling electronic devices, junior draftsman…  attending evening classes until I completed the Radio Telegraph Operator Course.  Homesick, lonely, restless, with no secure future, I thought of shipping out on some vessel taking me back to Europe. By chance in December of 1954, I was directed to a crew hiring agency on Broad Street in down town Manhattan. The manager’s name was Bodden, he was from the Cayman Islands. I packed a duffel bag with some clothing, books and a toilet kit,  put the rest of my belongings into a footlocker, vacated my rented room on West 13th Street in the Village,  spent a very noisy night at the Seamen’s Church Institute at the foot of the Battery where I put my locker into storage in the basement, and reported aboard a Liberty Ship in dry-dock at Hoboken, NJ. It was cold and rainy in December of 1954. The vessel, the SS Wolverine State (States Marine Lines), was changing her registry, from US to Liberian Flag and renamed the Orion Trader. I was supposed to be her radio operator. After dry-dock, she was going to load coal at Norfolk, VA for Naples, Italy. I had not yet a valid radio license. The captain, therefore, hired a British radio operator and  put me in the crew’s galley as a mess man... The crew was a mixed lot of German, Spanish (the friendliest one’s), Puerto Ricans and others... a sample of the jobless, homeless drifters one meets on lower Manhattan.  I saw that I had put myself into a bind, having  left a secure job for some unknown adventure. For the last six months, while attending night classes at the RCA Institute, I had worked for a good company and friendly people, bench-testing a new design of ni-cad batteries and doing some drafting. Now, in the rough and unfriendly environment of my new ship, I was  peeling spuds, washing pots and pans, cleaning mess rooms aboard the wet and cold Orion Trader, in the midst of a miserable, rainy winter in the Hoboken, New Jersey dry-dock. But, once again, my “lucky star shone in the darkness”.  An hour before sailing, Bodden, the hiring agency’s manager, came on board,  , I presumed to collect his fees.  He asked me what I was doing in the crew’s mess. After I told him, he said: ” I hired you out as a Radio operator, not as a crew mess man. You come back ashore with me and I will get you the job you deserve”.  I packed my gear,  got my passport back from the pissed-

off captain who had to sail with one man short.  Bodden gave me a ride me back to Manhattan

After another noisy night at the Seamen’s Church Institute, I  took a train for Boston, where I joined the SS Pelops as radio operator.

She was a tramp, a “Canadian” Liberty ship, flying a flag of convenience (Liberia), with a Greek  crew.  It was my first “real” job and  a  turning point in my life. It gave me a new confidence in myself,  and made me proud to have found a new “profession”.

On December 24th 1954, we sailed from Boston for Rotterdam, loaded with scrap iron. I was fluent with Morse code, knowledgeable in electronics, but I had to learn from scratch my first job as a ship-board radio operator,  a “Sparks”! I was fortunate to get plenty of help from many American radio operators, free ‘QSP’ advice on weather schedules and frequencies, traffic lists and operating procedures. The radio room on the Pelops was located on the bridge behind the chart room. In port, the smell of fried mutton grease from the galley reached  up to the upper decks; the ship lay under a layer of snow. I covered my equipment with signal flags to protect it from the ambient moisture. The radio set was an old RCA type; the filament power was turned on with a key, and the emergency gear was a genuine spark transmitter! I was the only one on board speaking relatively good English. The entire crew was Greek. They were black-haired and shaved every second or third day. To look like a true sailor, I decided to grow a thin beard. I just had read a book about the Greeks; they had quite a reputation. Therefore, I locked my cabin at night and wore a pair of pyjamas to bed. But they were a good bunch, very friendly and did not bother me. The captain’s name was Leonidas Patronas. He kept  a canary in its cage and had another pet, a lovely female white Pomeranian “Spitz”. Her name was Pelops,  naturally.  Every one aboard teased and played around with her. I was the only one who treated her as a friend.  I had been raised with a German shepherd when I was a kid, and all my life I have loved dogs with  passion. Every time captain Patronas came into the wheel house,  Pelops came into the radio room to lay at my feet and keep me company.  The Captain,  while standing on the bridge wing,  never bothered to go down to his quarters to relieve himself,  he pissed right into the rain scuppers. Never, in my long seagoing career, did I see any other ship’s captain or crew  member do such a thing.  I presumed it was a “typically Greek” custom.

           I did not keep a personal daily log then and cannot remember how long it took us to cross the North Atlantic through the many severe storms of that winter. It was a long voyage. The normal speed of this type of vessel probably did not exceed 10 to 11 knots and it appeared that Pelops sailed rather under the high waves than on top. During my first passage, I got plenty of “on the job training”. There was nobody on board who could help me. I copied weather forecasts from WSL, WCC, PCH and DAN, listened to their traffic lists, sent and received messages and acquired the habit of keeping a neat radio log.  At the end of my first North Atlantic crossing, I knew I still had a lot to learn, but I felt confident that I could handle the job.

          We arrived at about 4.00 am at the entrance of the channel leading to Rotterdam. The Dutch pilot who boarded our ship made a very good impression on me. It was early in the morning, yet his uniform was impeccably pressed, a black necktie exactly centred on his snowy white shirt. He was freshly shaven, his hands in shiny leather gloves, his uniform hat squarely set, in a sharp contrast to the unshaven black-haired Greeks...

          My parents had not seen me for almost three years. On this cold and snowy winter day of 1955, they traveled by rail from Metz to Rotterdam. When they boarded the SS Pelops

II - SAILING FOR LUDWIG

          I paid off the SS Pelops after she dropped anchor near Staten Island on her return from Amsterdam. Stepping ashore from the Ferry on Lower Manhattan, I spent another noisy night at the Battery’s Seamen’s Institute. The next day, I rented a small furnished room in the upper West 70’s and spent my days at the Seamen’s Institute and other sailor hangouts searching for a new job. One day I called at the offices of National Bulk Carriers on Madison Avenue. I was well received by the licensed personnel manager, Mr. Southwell. He told me to wait until called for a berth aboard a tanker sailing to Sumatra. Meanwhile, he issued me for $ 5.00, and a passport photo a Panamanian radio operator’s license (“Certificado de Idoneidad”). For a few days after that, I read up on Indonesia at the New York Public Library on 42nd Street.

          At the beginning of April, Mr. Southwell called me to his office. He gave me a letter of introduction to the master of the SS Petroqueen and a TWA tourist class ticket for San Francisco.  At my arrival, the company’s agents, Ahern and Co. (their offices were on Sansome Street) put me up for one night at the YMCA near the Ferry Building. The next morning, a launch brought me, with the new chief mate, Mr. Gerhard Krause from Hamburg, out to our new ship, the tanker SS Petroqueen, anchored in the bay, awaiting a berth at the  Standard Oil refinery in Richmond. The Radio Officer whom I replaced was a taciturn middle-aged American who did not share my enthusiasm for my new job. His explanations were rather brief, he was in hurry to disembark. But this time it was easier for me, I did not have to learn everything from the beginning. The small and narrow radio room was on the port-aft side of the main deck. The radio equipment consisted of an RCA 5-U console. Its power supply had rectifier tubes instead of a motor-generator. The equipment was in good shape, and the station well supplied with spares, tools and office supplies. Together with my duties as Radio Operator,  I had to take care of all the office work: typing  the  crew's and customs lists,  ship’s articles, payrolls, crew allotments etc. I had to check the crew’s passports and their vaccination certificates. It was a tedious task  done on the old radio room typewriter, the “mill”. There were no Xerox copying machines nor computers in 1955. But I set to it willingly. It took two days for the ship to discharge her cargo of Sumatra crude oil into the Richmond Standard Oil Refinery tanks, during which I familiarized myself with my  new surroundings. The Petroqueen was a tanker of approximately  35,000 dead weight tons, built in 1953 in Kure, Japan. D. K. Ludwig, the American shipping magnate, had leased the shipyards of the former Imperial Navy at Kure, where all the great Japanese aircraft carriers and battleships, like the Yamato, had been built. It was situated on the shores of  the Inland Sea, near Hiroshima.  Ludwig’s ships‘  construction was straight forward without any frills or attention to the crew’s comfort nor to appearance. (his motto was: “If it doesn’t carry any oil, we don’t need it...”) The smokestack was just that, a straight black pipe. There was no insulation inside the steel bulkheads, nor any air conditioning. But the ship was freshly

painted. The accommodations were clean and well cared for. My cabin, in the mid-ship house on the port side of the main deck, just behind the radio room, was a little confined, with a bunk, a settee with drawers, a small wardrobe and a wash - basin. I had to share the heads and showers with the 2nd and 3rd mates. The Chief Mate’s cabin and office faced forward of the midship house. He had his own bathroom and head. The Captain’s stateroom and office, the slop chest and the owners cabin were on the deck above. Then there was the wheelhouse, the chart and gyro rooms. In the aft accommodations where the engineers and crew quarters, the galley and mess halls, and the large engine room with its steam turbine which could drive the ship at a maximum speed of 17 knots (the captain usually maintained her at an economic 14 to 15 knots). The chow was tasty and plentiful. The unlicensed crew came from the Cayman Islands which were still British territory, in the Caribbean between Cuba and Jamaica. Their names were Bodden, Mclaughlin, Ebanks... Bill Braud the chief engineer came from New Orleans; those who did not know him thought he had a rough and tough personality. He reminded me of Wallace Berry, the movie actor from the ‘thirties, with his right eye  half-closed, his many  colorful tattoos on his chest and arms. But he really was a very nice friendly person, a good shipmate who ran an efficient engine room. It was so clean you could have eaten on the deck plates. It reminded me of a Dutch tugboat I had visited in Rotterdam. The Chief was a “ham”, a radio amateur. He had his transceiver in his office and had set up an antenna  with a six-element rotary beam antenna on the cargo mast on top of the after house. He was a great help to me and we got along splendidly. He always inquired of my watch schedule so as not to interfere with my radio reception, when he wanted to transmit, and I always advised him when I had traffic to handle or weather forecasts to receive.

          We left Richmond on the afternoon of April 12t 1955, passing under the Golden Gate Bridge. The weather was pleasant as we proceeded along the California Coast, bound for San Pedro,  there to load refined petroleum products for Kanokawa, near Kure, Japan. The crew had a distasteful job to do before the tanker could load its new cargo at San Pedro. All the tanks had to be thoroughly cleaned. First, steam pipes for the Butterworth machines were fitted into the tank openings on deck, which then were cleaned with live high-pressure steam. When they were free of gas, the crew had to climb down vertical iron ladders into the cargo tanks and muck up into buckets the thick petroleum residue on the bottoms, the sides, in every corner of the huge deep steel caves. On deck, other seamen hoisted the buckets on ropes and emptied them overboard into the sea. In those times, we knew nothing  about ecology and the protection of the environment, we had never heard of Captain Cousteau, no special containers existed yet aboard vessels to store petroleum wastes. 

          San Pedro in the mid-fifties was still a lively sailor’s town with many taverns and shops. After a day and a half of loading we put back to sea, on a Northwesterly course.

Before departure, I hadcopied the weather forecasts broadcast from all the "Pacific Rim" radio stations: San Francisco, Vancouver, Guam, Honolulu, Tokyo.  On  my first voyage, our skipper wanted to take the shorter Great Circle route to Japan, despite the risk of rough weather along the way. It did not fail. As expected, at about 49 degrees of latitude North, we met several vicious gales which smashed our starboard lifeboat. The  Captain was relieved when we returned to San Francisco.

          Our new Skipper, John Parker, was a young, active and very intelligent gentleman  from Philadelphia who had a University degree in Marine Engineering. He kept a tight, clean ship. Parker was very "safety conscious". We had to walk along the cat-walk to the aft accommodations for our meals or for any other reason. When the weather was rough, he ordered a temporary change of course to protect all personnel from wind and waves. With Gerhard Krause the chief mate and Bill Braud, the Chief engineer, we had a very good crew, the Petroqueen  became a "happy ship". There was plenty of overtime for the unlicensed deck and engine men. The Chief Engineer spent most of his time at his ham set, chatting with radio amateurs all around the Pacific and  on board other ships, “Maritime Mobile” ham stations, but the engine room was clean and efficiently run. His was a "colorful" personality: “... This is W6KXX, Mobile Maritime...the Tanker Petroqueen, in the Pacific....Hello, old friend, how nice to talk with you again, a real pleasure...” then he would turn around, and, while his correspondent answered him,  he would wink to us and grumble “... what a pain in the ..., that old s. o. b., that old f...”, with the transmitter cut off. He would come back on the air, and resume his “friendly” conversation, with the nicest and kindest of compliments and expressions of his deepest friendship. But he carefully cut off his transmitter whenever he expressed his thoughts with the strongest expletives. Every third or fourth day, if the weather was good, Captain Parker and myself helped him to take down his 6-element rotating beam antenna, on the roof of the after-house and  put it back up again on the cargo mast after he modified his designs. My friend Joe Prewitt told me that, when he was a teen-ager ham operator, he used to contact him aboard the “Tanker Petroqueen, Maritime Mobile in the Pacific...”

          The deck hands spent their time chipping rust and painting decks and bulkheads. As soon as the last paint job was done on the poop there started a new one on the forepeak. The engine - room crew maintained the steam turbines and the deck machinery: anchor windlasses, steam winches, cargo pumps. The crew looked eagerly forward to their shore leave in Japan. We usually stayed two to three days in Kawasaki or Kobe, which was our favorite liberty port. The chief mate and the captain managed to find excuses for slowing the discharge of our refined cargo. On my first voyage, we called at Kanokawa, on a small island in the Inland Sea near Kure where the Petroqueen had been built. I enjoyed my visits to Japan. In the mid-fifties; the US Dollar was worth 360 Yen. We found the cost of living and prices of goods very affordable compared to the United States. And we especially appreciated the beauty and gentleness of the Japanese women. Many love affairs were born. I never spent a lonely night ashore in Japan. As a Radio Operator (the “Sparks”) I was “the first one ashore, the last one back on board”. But since I was purser and in charge of the payroll, I had to return during the day aboard ship to issue more cash advances to the crew.  I spent my time in Tokyo, on the Ginza during the day and the early evening hours: Shopping in the large department stores, taking  a “Turkish bath” in the specialized establishments,  where a lovely attendant took good care of me ((bath and massage), viewing a show at the Nishigekki Music Hall, or at the Kabuki theater. Behind the Shinjuku railroad station were little narrow streets with small restaurants where I had many delicious sushi dinners, and little bars where I befriended the charming  “hostesses” who, sometimes, became my lovers for a night. I also took numerous sightseeing trips to the country side. Once I traveled south  to admire the great Buddha of Kamakura. Another time, I went to Lake Hakone at the foot of Mount Fuji. Some evenings a taxi brought me to a certain address near the Sumida River: It was a beautiful house, entirely built of wood in the traditional Japanese style. In the entrance hall, an elderly lady, the hostess,  greeted me with deep bows. I tool off my shoes, and was lead into a small room with thick rice straw mats (called “tatamis”) and cushions on the floor. The financial transaction were simple and straight forward. I was to get acquainted later with the so-called “red light” section of many Japanese cities. As long as these were preserved from Western (American) influence, there was none of the sordid notion of prostitution, of raw commercial “sex” as one is familiar with in the “West”. The Japanese architecture, its interior decoration, retained a delicate beauty in its sober elegance. The girls were not the traditional Geishas, but were no less delicate, sweet and devoted to your needs and desires. Sometimes, I met some “ladies” who had been spoiled by American GI's; believing they would please me, they affected the “Yankee” style of speech and behavior. Our relationship rapidly came to an end and I searched for a Japanese companion behaving in a more traditional fashion. 

          In the house near the Sumida river… the hostess presented me, with deep bows,  a cup of hot green tea and small rice cakes, and left. I felt at ease, relaxed in this quiet environment. The Japanese style inspired in me a state of peace and serenity... A few minutes later, the sliding door opened, a beautiful and graceful young lady dressed in a colored silken kimono knelt before me: “Kombawa..”. It was my chosen companion for a night of love. Together we took the honorable O’Furo, the Japanese bath. We undressed each other with no false shyness. There was no shame, everything appeared natural. She soaped and rinsed me all over, I did the same for her, and when there was no more soap on our bodies, we bathed together in the tub of almost boiling water. I felt clean, relaxed, serene, and spent a night of delightful love with this sweet young lady. With time, I began to appreciate Japan and its people; I became interested in its culture and read many books on Japanese history, literature and art.

          After discharging our cargo at Kawasaki, the Petroqueen proceeded on a southwesterly course, along the Ryu Kyu Islands. If there was no threatening typhoon moving to the West we took a shortcut to the South China Sea by transiting the Surigao Straits and the Sulu Sea. There was no air-conditioning aboard Ludwig’s tankers, and one can easily imagine how it felt sailing through those Southern latitudes.  But I enjoyed watching the flying fish and the occasional dolphins jumping out of the clear deep blue waters and playing in our bow waves. Ferocious sea battles had beene fought during WW II in the San Bernardino and Surigao passages.  But now tere was only “pure enchantment  of the Tropics”… We entered the South China Sea through the Balabac straits, and sailed along the coast of Borneo. Heavy, sweet vegetal smells arose from the tropical rain forest, dark thunder clouds hovered over the jungle, lightning bolts flashed inland. In the evening, flights of “flying foxes”,  huge bats, glided over the land. We rounded Singapore, leaving to starboard the elegant silhouette of Raffle’s Lighthouse framed by palm trees. Steaming by the many small islands around the Southern tip of the Malaysia Peninsula, we encountered countless vessels of all kinds, sizes and nationalities. Approximately 100 miles into the Straits of Malacca, our ship sailed up the Bengkalis river, and docked at a clearing in the Sumatra jungle. It was the Sungai Pakning terminal of the Caltex Oil Company. Small river tankers brought the crude oil from the drilling fields up river and pumped it into large oil tanks, from which it was loaded into the tankers from Norway and elsewhere. Universe Tankships Inc. (National Bulk Carriers) had a charter contract with Caltex and Standard Oil of California. The officers aboard the river tankers and the managers of the terminal, were Dutch. They were wonderful fellows and I had many friends among them. All ships’ officers had a standing invitation to the club ashore, and we always got a warm welcome. I passed enjoyable days there with my new friends,  playing ping pong or billiards, sipping Heineken beer, invited to delicious lunches of curry and other Indonesian rice dishes. On Christmas day of 1955, a large sign at the club’s entrance “requested guests to leave their skis and boots outside”. The owner of the grocery store and restaurant in the Indonesian village nearby was Chinese. He  exchanged our US Dollars for Indonesian Rupees. His was a large family, and his wife seemed to be in a permanent state of pregnancy.

          I spent fourteen happy month aboard the Petroqueen. I enjoyed my job and I got along very well with everyone aboard. Gerhard Krause was from Hamburg. I was French, had fought against the Germans during WW II in the French Resistance. But right from the first day on, we agreed  never to speak in German while on board nor to mention any of our countries’s old problems. Mr. Krause was a Seaman of the “Old School”  and a  Gentleman. I came to admire, to respect and to like him very much and we became good friends. Later, he would be my Captain on another of D. K. Ludwig’s ship (the bauxite carrtier J. LOUIS. )  I remember two memorable shore parties with him. During a rainy month of November, 1955, the Petroqueen went to dry-dock for five days at the Hunter’s Point shipyards in San Francisco. One evening, Mr. Krause and I went “out on the town”: We had diner at an elegant French restaurant and, after some “pub crawling” through the International Settlement, we finished the night at the Montmartre, a French night club on Broadway. On other evenings, we enjoyed a more classical form of entertainment at the Bocche Ball, on the corner of Columbus and Broadway, an Italian night club specializing in Opera singing.  In February of 1956, Gerhard Krause managed to get away from supervising our ship’s discharge and we spent a beautiful night in Yokohama, in a typical Japanese inn, each of us with a lovely companion.

          Like the other tankers, ore-carriers and dredges of National Bulk Carriers and  Universe Tankships Inc.,  the Petroqueen sailed under the flag of convenience of the Republic of Liberia, her home port Monrovia.  D. K. Ludwig was assumed to be the richest man in the United States. But he shunned publicity and avoided the press; he did not belong to the “Jet set” society like his Greek rivals. Not much was known about his private life. Despite his great fortune, rumor had it that he traveled by commercial plane, not even in business class. Later, in the seventies and eighties, he had  a huge floating paper mill built in Japan. Tugboats towed it half around the world to the province of Jari on the Amazon river in Brazil, where he had bought a piece of land as large as the state of Connecticut. On it he wanted to plant a special kind of pine tree. The mill would convert their wood into paper pulp. But the project proved to be an ecological disaster. The military dictators  who ruled Brazil did not like the idea of a foreigner owning so much land in their own country and they expropriated him. He lost huge amounts of money in his latest venture

          The vessels of Universe Tankships Inc. were efficiently run, well maintained, well supplied, with an emphasis on safety. At that period, most of the company’s Captains  and Chief Engineers were Americans. Other officers were from Germany,  Scandinavia (my best friends were the Danes), Great Britain,  the Netherlands, they were Greeks, Italians, Yugoslav. I only once I met another Frenchman aboard a Liberian ship, but this, as Rudyard Kipling used to say, “is another story”. In 1956 my wages as Radio Officer and Purser were approximately $ 250 per month including overtime, with 15 days paid vacation a year. A voyage from  San Francisco to  Sungai Pakning via  San Pedro, Kawasaki and back took about 60 days. We generally  managed to avoid the many Pacific winter storms, because we stayed South of 40 latitude North on our way to Yokohama. Copying the available weather forecasts along our path I looked out in particular for tropical storm and typhoon warnings. Captain Parker carefully routed our ship around or away from their paths.

          One day, there was some ill temper between the Chief Mate and the steward.  Gerhard Krause left the choice to the Captain. Either he, or the steward would leave the ship. When we returned to San Francisco, the steward together with his young friend (?),  the cabin boy, were paid off. We got a new steward and a new BR. (bed room messman).  It resulted in a tremendous improvement in the taste of our chow and the cleaning and upkeep of our cabins.

          I had become proficient with my duties as a Radio Officer and ship’s purser. I came to recognize the dangers of typhoons and  severe storms of the Pacific Ocean, the dense fogs along California’s coast; I knew the joys of sailing along tropical islands, the magnificence of sunsets, the inspiration of sunrises. And I fully took advantages of all the pleasures of  land, during my shore leaves.  But when ever after a lengthy stay in port we put back to sea,  we all had the same feeling of being cleansed, of being “purified”  of all the vileness of the land  (on board Navy ships,  it was:”… Now hear this, clean sweep down fore to aft…”), 

          I have made three lists of Captains under whom I have sailed. On the first list, are those who left me indifferent. They did not bother me, I performed my duties,  they did theirs, we had no complaints about each other. On the second one I listed the s… heads,  the stupid ones,  the mean b…,  those who did not like me. Luckily  this list is a short one. On the third were listed the very good ones. Theirs was always a happy and lucky ship, safe and efficiently run, like the Petroqueen under John Parker’s command. How can I forget the big Christmas party he gave for the Officers and Crew  in Yokohama  on December 25th 1955?

          He was most helpful to me in my job as “purser”, with payroll work and ships articles. He let me use his personal electric typewriter in his office. When we entered Japanese ports, about a dozen uniformed officials came aboard: There were always two or three officers for each function: immigration, customs, public health. In separate folders, I brought crew lists, crew customs declarations (how many cartons of cigarettes, bottles of liquor,  phonographs, cameras etc... ), the crew’s vaccination certificates and passports. The Japanese were dressed in sharply creased uniforms, wearing white gloves, their shirts freshly laundered, diffusing a clean smell of soap. Then came on board the gentlemen of Sharp and Co. Ltd., the Company’s agents in the Far East, who brought our mail and thick bundles of Japanese currency. It was one of my duties to give a draw to the crew. The boys  had to sign a list of their draw in triplicate, and this sum was then deducted from their wages at the end of the voyage .      

          As much as I  enjoyed my shore leaves in Japan, with no less pleasure did I look forward to our return to San Francisco. I never missed our passage by day or by night under the beautiful Golden Gate Bridge,  it always thrilled me. The San Francisco Pilot Boat had a sail. In the spring of 1956. On one of our approaches to the Bay entrance, the lifting fog revealed a school of small whales alongside our ship. Ahern and Co. were our agents on the US West Coast, and they were very good to us.  Even before we dropped anchor at the quarantine station off the Ferry Building, while sailing along the Marina and Fort Mason, and before the ship was cleared by immigration and health services, a launch left the shore and came alongside carrying  several US Mail bags for us. I  brought them to the radio room, where I sorted the ships mail. I distributed the official envelopes to the different department heads, and brought the personal letters and packages to the officer’s staterooms, the crew mess or even down to the engine room. After docking at Richmond’s Standard Oil  pier,  when all the ships paperwork was taken care off,  when all of us were paid off and Captain Parker had given me his OK,  Captain Miller, the port agent took me ashore with him to my beloved City of San Francisco. I usually went shopping at the City of Paris on Union Square, dined in an elegant French restaurant, went "pub-crawling" in the International Settlement,  or saw the latest French movie.

          I corresponded regularly with my parents in France. From the Pacific and  China Sea, I was able to contact FFL - St. Lys Radio, the powerful French marine radio station, through which I sent them our next ports of destination and approximate dates of arrival. They sometimes sent me my hometown newspaper, the “Républicain Lorrain”.  One day, I wanted to have some fun. I took the newspaper ashore with me to Tokyo. At a newsstand, I slipped it in-between the local press like the Asahi Shimbun and others, all printed in Japanese characters. I took some photographs. Then again in Sungai Pakning, among huts and palm trees, right in front of the local Communist Party headquarters, I gave the newspaper to a few young men who made as if they were reading it. I went to visit the Hindu tailor of the village, a venerable gentleman with a long white beard and a large turban on his head. He also spread the news paper in front of him. I then sent the prints to the Républican Lorrain with a caption: ”A citizen of Metz traveling in the Far East was immensely pleased to see that your newspaper is read also on the other side of the world...” They published the photographs with my letter. My parents knew it was one of my funny tricks and they had a good laugh.

          A painter came aboard one day in Yokohama to sell paintings of our vessel on silk. I bought one and sent it to my parents. They had it framed and hung up in their living room.  After they passed away, this picture followed me from France to New York,  to California, to France and back again to Belmont. It is very dear to me.

          In July of 1956,  after 14 very pleasant and satisfying months aboard the good old  Petroqueen,  I needed a vacation, it was time for a change.  I was paid off in San Francisco on June 28th 1956. The Company had authorized me to  travel back to Japan aboard the Petroqueen, this time as a passenger. With my discharge certificate, Mr. Parker gave me a letter of recommendation for my next Captain. At the end of my vacation, I was to join on her completion in Kure, Japan, the Universe Leader of 85000 dead weight

 tons.  She was to be,  in 1956 The largest tanker  in the world.                       

from my personal files

The SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE, Wednesday,  November 14, 1956

WORLD’S BIGGEST SHIP HERE

New Vessel Brings Record Oil Cargo

by Jack Folsie

          The visitor is the Universe Leader - a tanker - American owned, Japanese built, flying the flag of the African Republic of Liberia and under contract to Standard Oil Co. of California. On her maiden voyage, she carried Sumatra crude oil from the South Pacific to make enough gasoline to run every one of California’s 6,000,000 autos for 50 miles.

          Low in the water with her record oil cargo, the tanker glided in through the Golden Gate shortly after 6 a.m. dwarfing two outbound aircraft carriers. She had waited overnight outside the Golden Gate for a high tide so she could safely enter. Even so, she cleared the San Francisco sand bar by only about four feet. The giant vessel dropped one of her 16 ton anchors to hold her steady against the quiet tide and proceeded to wait for the first of several operations needed to pump out her cargo. The super tanker is so deep in the water - her keel is 45 feet under the surface - that loads of oil must first be pumped out of the giant. Only after this lightening can the Universe Leader proceed, about Thursday, to Standard’ long wharf at Richmond to complete her unloading. In 52 separate tanks below deck .the ship carried 602,622  barrels or 26,000,000 gallons of black sticky oil. This is enough oil to keep the Richmond refinery going full speed for four days. The liquid cargo  with the weight of the ship displaces 109,000 tons of water. The tanker’s dead weight tonnage. is 85,500 tons. Her nearest rival, the Queen Elisabeth, is 84,000 dead weight tons. “You can compare that with your giant aircraft carrier Forrestal” said Chief Mate Bernard J. Baum. “The Forrestal displaces only 75,000 tons”.

This $8 million jumbo is the responsibility of Captain Jesse F. Bird, a 60 year old New Yorker. He  predicted that his ship, one of the new breed of tankers that can’t fit in the Suez Canal, will be just a has-been for size.  The Universe Leader is owned by National Bulk Carriers Inc. of New York which registered the ship at Monrovia, Liberia, a home port the tanker is unlikely ever to visit. Liberian registry, however, allows the company to take advantage of liberal maritime and tax laws enabling the ship to compete with other foreign flag tankers. The crew consists of 58 men of six nationalities including American officers, a French radio operator, and German, British West Indian, Chinese and Okinawan crew men. “Everything is big around here, but the men”, said chief officer Baum, grinning. “We are just human”.

          There were some crew changes on our arrival in San Francisco, when I was paid-off on June 28th.  My replacement was a young, and cheerful Dutchman who had brought his guitar along. Mr. Krause went back to Hamburg for a well deserved vacation, and the young American third mate from Upstate New York, a graduated from the Kings Point Merchant Marine Academy was promoted to Chief Mate by Captain Parker. The second mate was a grouchy old Canadian Irishman. I moved into the owner’s cabin on the Captain’s deck, as  a “passenger”.

          This was to be a cheerful voyage. The weather all along our Westerly route, just South of the 40th parallel, was perfect. Before departure,  I had bought a case of French champagne at the City of Paris, the great department store on Union Square (replaced by Neimann & Marcus). Captain Parker still had a provision of exquisite Japanese caviar. In the evening, after the  4 to 8 p.m. watch, we sat on the main deck watching the sun set in the West. The Dutch radio officer would fetch his guitar and sing sea-chanteys, cow-boy songs or popular tunes, while Captain Parker and I served champagne, crackers and caviar.  We were happy, care-free,  it felt good to be at sea, on a good ship, with good men.

          Meanwhile, in the North Atlantic near the Nantucket Lightship, the SS Stockholm collided with the Italian liner Andrea Doria. The French Line’s Ile de France made a 180 degree turn to  rescue the passengers of the sinking Italian vessel. In the Middle East, Nasser, the Egyptian dictator, nationalized the Suez Canal, and a new world crisis was born.

          In Yokohama, after saying good-byes to my Captain and shipmates, I obtained a two-month tourist visa with my French passport. I took a taxi to Tokyo and stayed overnight at the Kokusai International Hotel,  behind the main railway station. But I wanted to get away from the big city.  A very humid heat wave had settled over Tokyo to make my stay unpleasant.  I shipped my sea bags by rail to Kobe and flew to Osaka by Japan Air Lines the next day. I had a lady-friend in Kobe. Her sister was married to an innkeeper near the ancient capital city of Nara, between Kobe and Kyoto. I settled down at this lovely hotel,  adjusting myself to the local customs. I slept on a rice straw mat, the “tatami”,  ate with chop-sticks the food I was served.  A “western-style” toilet on the premises,  was my only concession to "western" customs. I was happy with the Japanese way of life. My hosts were delightful and treated me with much friendliness. There were many things to see; I went  to Nara to admire the huge statue of Buddha, to feed the tame deer roaming freely in the park among the many temples and stately pine trees. I felt in peace and  harmony with my surroundings.

          In beautiful Kyoto, one evening in a bar I met three Australian wool merchants. We had a big party, and I over-indulged with beer and sake. Trying to jump over a low fence,  I twisted my right ankle. In a minute it had swollen to the size of a grapefruit.  A taxi brought me back to my hotel in the country side. The next day, my host called a doctor who prescribed hot humid bandages and complete rest. To overcome my frustration and loneliness,  the owner’s wife asked her sister, my lady friend in Kobe, to stay with me until I would be fit again. She gave me much tender love and care. My injured foot was healing fast .and soon I was able to walk with a cane. I said “Sayonara” to my love and to my friends. I had read James Michener’ novel, “Sayonara” (Hollywood made a very bad movie from the book) and I wanted to visit the resort town where Marlon Brando, in the film, had met his lover. In Osaka, a special train took me to Takarazuka. It had been built around a large music hall, whose performers were all women, in contrast to the traditional "men only" Kabuki theater. It was a kind of Japanese style “Radio City Music Hall” with traditional Japanese and "western style" musicals and dances on a large stage. The women in the shows were lovely, the little city was pleasant,. Then I returned to Kyoto,  to celebrate  my birthday with my lady friend on the 8th of August,.  

          Towards the end of the month, I traveled south to the port city of Kure, where my new ship was being built. It had been the main naval base of the Japanese Imperial Navy (what Norfolk and San Diego were for the American, Brest and Toulon for the French Navies). The big battleships like the Yamato  and the Japanese aircraft carriers of WW II , which had bombed Pearl Harbour, had been built there. Daniel K. Ludwig, the American shipping "tycoon" leased the big yards and started to built his own ships. Now the construction of the largest tanker in the world, the Universe Leader was underway.

          Kure lies on the shores of the lovely Inland Sea, across from the island shrine of Myia Jima,  about  15 to 20 kilometers from Hiroshima. Since the ship would be finished in September, I continued to “play the tourist”. I traveled by ferry boat to the famous hot spring resort of Beppu, on Kyushu Island.  Famous for the ponds of boiling yellow sulfur mud springs -  smelling like rotten eggs. I stayed at a charming Japanese inn on the outskirts of the town. The inn’s owner had been employed before the war at the Japanese consulate in Hamburg. There was no language barrier this time since we both spoke German.  He treated me like a “honored guest” and  offered his special sake. In the evening, he had a taxi bring to my room the loveliest host of the local “geisha (!?!) house”. I spent two memorable nights at my new friend’s lodge. From Beppu, I continued, by train to the Mount Aso volcano,  which I ascended on the back of a donkey.. Evil smelling vapors rose from the crater’s depths. Then I traveled to Nagasaki where I was received with “full honors” (French champagne, a steak diner) by the Honorable Consul of France. He was a retired French colonial civil servant who had lived many years in French Indo China, and had settled in Japan for his retirement.  Nagasaki had been rebuilt after its destruction in August of 1945. I visited the house on a hill overlooking the bay, where Madame Butterfly was assumed to have waved her good by’s  to her lover’s ship...  Puccini made a beautiful opera of this love story.

          On my return from the island of Kyushu, I stayed a few days in Hiroshima. It was another city which became dear to me. There was a special atmosphere of “Peace on the World”, of "Universal Friendship" in Hiroshima,  I visited the Peace Memorial and the museum with all the reminiscences of that fateful August day of 1945... There was a popular music festival at Hiroshima’s International Hotel, and one day a group of Japanese teen-agers mistakenly thought I was a French singer and asked for my autograph. I graciously obliged, and I had big laugh, at the kid's expense! Hatsuko Kawamoto was the receptionist at the Japanese-style hotel where I stayed. We became lovers. Together, we traveled to Miya Jima, the Holy Shrine on a small island near Shikoku.  Another time, we stayed three days at a hotel in the mountains. There was a small stream of hot water, where all the guest bathed in the nude, without false shame or modesty.  But it was time  to return to Kure, and see for myself how a big ship was being built. All the licensed officers of  Ludwig’s ships resided at the Senba Hotel before sailing. I met Jesse Bird, the “commodore” of the N. B. C. fleet. He was a real old timer, certainly closer to 70 than to the 60 years he declared on the crew list.                    He had been around Cape Horn in sailing ships.  He commanded, on their maiden voyages,  all the new ships built at the N B C Shipyard. And there was also Borje Borjeson, the Big Swede, who was the company’s Port Steward. I was the first of the crew to arrive.

I did not get bored in Kure. I became interested in ship-construction, and did a lot of “pub-crawling” in the town's "red light" district. From a photo shop I rented an enlarger and developing material to process and print my own photographs. And every second or third day, I took the train or bus to Hiroshima to meet my beloved Hatsuko-san; On other days, she took the last train of the evening after her work to join me at the Senba Hotel.

          The Allied occupation of Japan was in its last stages. The Kure zone had been allocated to the U.K. Armed Forces and a small British army detachment was stationed  there.  Completed at the beginning of September, the Universe Leader was scheduled for  her sea trials.  The British officers  of the Kure garrison were invited aboard. I was busy in the radio room with the ship yard electronics engineers who tested the navigation and communications equipment. I learned a lot,  watching how the compasses were swung, the radio direction finder calibrated, the transmitters and receivers tuned-up, the auto-alarm system and the battery charger tested. The radio equipment was the latest RCA model 6-U radio console. The vessel’s sailing and engine performances were in accordance with the required A.B.S. specifications. The shipyard managers, Universe Tankship's Port Captains and engineers, Captains Jesse Bird, and Peter McGuire, John Rawles, the Ched Engineer, every one was satisfied with the new vessel's performance. For the British officers the sea trials where the occasion for a big party; they could not have cared less for the Universe Leaser's sea worthiness.  They had brought  on board with them cases of whiskey, gin and beer. I was not invited to the party. But what pissed me off, was that they took all the booze which they had not consumed back ashore with them, even half empty bottles.  Stick under their arm, stiff upper lip, “ I say, old chap, jolly good show...” and all that... Typically British?

          Then the new crew arrived: Chief Mate Joe Baum, the steward, mates and engineering officers.. , The deck and engine unlicensed men were a blend of Cayman Islanders and Japanese from Okinawa. The Cayman Islanders, excellent seamen, where soft spoken,. friendly, never a source of trouble. Unfortunately their worked at a slower and more relaxed rhythm that the Japanese from Okinawa. The Cayman Islanders’ nonchalance and casualness would cause friction with the Okinawans, and later NBC’s personnel manager would man the ships  with a more homogeneous crew.

          Captain Litchfield, the Port Captain from New York, joined us the day before departure. The largest tanker in the world was to  sail  on her maiden voyage. It would be a “first” in Maritime History.

          That night there was a big party at the Senba Hotel. After a delicious diner of Kobe Beefsteak and O’Suchi,  there was much rejoicing,  singing, dancing with the ladies of the Hotel.  There were unlimited quantities of beer,  sake and even a few quarts of Suntory whisky, smooth like aged Scotch… The party at the hotel broke up around 10:30 p.m., but Chief Mate Baum, the young German steward, the 3rd mate and 3rd engineer, both from Hamburg and myself, all of us dressed in the hotel’s house kimonos, Japanese wooden slippers (gettas) on our feet,  made a last round of the neighboring bars to say good by to our many lady friends. Hatsuko Kawamoto took a late  evening train  from Hiroshima and joined me in my room  for a last night of love.  She came with us in the taxi who took us around six a.m. to the pier, where we boarded the SS Universe Leader for her maiden voyage.

          The weather was pleasant, a light swell welcomed us into the Pacific after our passage through the Bungo Suido straits separating the Islands of Shikoku and Kyushu.

          We were bound for Singapore for bunkers. Captain Jesse Bird assumed command, assisted by Captain Pete McGuire who would take over as Master when Jesse Bird would leave us in the United States. McGuire was a very friendly  Irishman from Boston,  and a magnificent "Master Mariner".  He had been a pilot of the Suez Canal and told us many stories about his experiences. We were particularly interested since Nasser's of Egypt take-over of the Suez Canal had created an ugly world crisis. The size of the Universe  Leader would not permit her to transit through Suez. She introduced the era of the Super Tankers. They would bring Middle East crude oil to Europe and the United States the long way around the Cape of Good Hope.

          We sailed along the Ryu Kyu Islands and  passed the Formosa Straight into the South China Sea.  A few days later, we docked at Keppel’s Harbor in Singapore to take bunkers. There were also other kind of provisions brought aboard: columns of coolies, ascended the accommodation ladder, carrying on their back cases of beer, gin, whisky, and other kinds of alcoholic refreshments, Coca Cola, soda, Schweppes tonic water etc. Captain Bird had decided as a gesture of public relations to open the ship to visitors.  He detailed the steward and myself near the big icebox in the mid-ship house to serve  drinks to the many visitors, what ever they asked for. To the Hindus, Malays and Chinese, Coca Cola, Pepsi or iced soda water. To Englishmen, Australians, Americans or other Westerners, beer, gin, whiskey or what ever.  And since it was very hot in Singapore, and the ship’s quarters not being air-conditioned, we ourselves became very thirsty. When I finally managed to get ashore after the party,  I was unsteady on my feet and suffered from a headache. A Chinese lady I met at Singapore's "Great World" invited me to her home. She lightly spread some Tiger Balm on my forehead, which relieved my headache and allowed me to fully enjoy her company.

          It was autumn, there were no typhoon warnings. But other alarming happenings were threatening the world's peace: British and French amphibious forces had landed near Port Said, Egypt to take the Suez Canal back from Nasser. The Soviet Army brutally suppressed a revolt in Budapest, and President Eisenhower, probably intimidated by the Russians' saber rattling, ordered the Anglo-French Expeditionary Forces out of Egypt. The French Forces had given the Egyptians a thorough beating near Port Said, and were approaching Cairo. The Israelis were victorious in the Sinai Peninsula, but the unfortunate pull out of the French and British from Egypt made the whole affair appear like a big triumph for Egypt’s Nasser.

           We dropped anchor off Sungai Pakning, on the East Coast of Sumatra, I met old friends.  Again,  Jesse Bird gave a few  parties on the big ship for the staff of the oil terminal.  It took six days, and  many loads of river tankers to fill our huge ship with close to 500,000 barrels of Sumatra Crude Oil. I wrote to my parents: ”... It was like filling a bath tub with a tea kettle..."

          The Universe Leader encountered “no significant weather” on her Eastbound passage of the Pacific. The typhoon season was over. We  settled pleasantly in our new ship’s routine. The radio room and adjacent stateroom were spacious and comfortable, although there was still no air-conditioning aboard Ludwig’s big ships. The radio equipment worked well and did not give me any problems. I communicated with all the familiar coast radio stations on the “Pacific Rim”, copying conscientiously all available weather forecasts and sending faithfully the ship’s observer messages to the US Weather Bureau.  As  “purser”,  in charge of all paper work, I was kept busy typing on the radio room's “mill” three or four copies of crew and  customs, payroll and allotment lists,  the ship’s articles,  checking  passports and vaccination certificates. I was also in charge of the ship's slop chest. Borje Borjeson, the Company’s Port Steward,  had provisioned the supertanker  on her departure from Kure with the finest Australian beef and mutton,  fresh fish, vegetables,  fruits and many other delicacies. The food was good, he was a great “feeder”.  Officially, only the two Captains and the Chief Engineer had right to alcoholic beverages, “as amenities to visiting shore-side authorities”.  Some of us  kept a few cases of beer and a few bottles of other "supplies" in our quarters. There was an unwritten policy of tolerance aboard.  As long as we behaved ourselves and did our job,  Captain McGuire closed his eyes. The seating arrangements in the Officer’s saloon was in accordance with traditional European Merchant Vessel’s customs: The two Captains, Chief Engineer, Chief Mate and 1st Assistant Engineer ate separately in a smaller dining lounge adjoining  the main officer’s mess. We did not wear any uniforms, but Captain McGuire did not tolerate T-shirts and insisted that we always wear clean shirts and shoes at  dinner time.

          The close friendship between Chief Engineer John Rawles and Captain Mc Guire dated back to the war. They had sailed together on the North Atlantic convoys.. Rawles was a very nice person and we became good friends. His hobby was  photography; he was  also a radio amateur. Twice daily, he came forward to the mid-ship house to “report to the captain”, his arrival coinciding with the cocktail hour.  Passing near the radio room,  he called in : ”Spark’s, setup your chess board.”.  When he came down from the Captain’s deck, he stepped into the radio room and, not bothering to sit down, made me “check mate” in three or four moves.  It went so fast that  I had no time to remember his moves.  The second mate was a Norwegian who had lived in Australia during the war. He had an horrible accent. One of his many swear words was ”Bleuidy...”. I could not tell if he was speaking English with his Norwegian accent and an Australian pronunciation, or the other way around.  The third mate was from New Zealand, built like a rugby player.  He was a cheerful fellow.  His stateroom was across the alley way from the radio room.  Sometimes, he would step out of the shower bare a… naked but covered with soap lather from head to toe and call out to me: “Sparks, take my photograph...” (to send to his girl friend?). He became another of the many friends I had on board.

Not only tankers, but also ore-carriers and other type of vessels  were built and operated by D. K. Ludwig's National Bulk Carriers.   When I arrived in New York and reported to  Mr. Southwell, the Personnel Manager, he assigned me as vacation relief for one voyage to the SS Ore Regent,  sailing from Morrisville, Pa, to Puerto Ordaz, Venezuela. She had cargo holds instead of oil tanks.  Like a tanker,  she had a mid-ship house for the bridge ,  chart and radio room, quarters for the Master, the Mates' and the Radio Officer. The aft accommodations were for engine room, engineers and crew quarters, galley and messes. It was a new route for me:  Sailing down the Delaware River, rounding Cape Hatteras, passing through the Mona passage, and after the Caribbean steaming up the Orinoco River into the dense jungle, to a small port where conveyor belts filled our ship's holds with iron ore. While going up and down-river I had to keep a permanent watch for ship traffic with VHF radio stations. Puerto Ordaz, surrounded by the hot and humid rain forest on the shore of the large Orinoco, was a typical Central American village: a few streets, American trucks, donkeys, one-story houses in pastel colours of pink, pale blue or green,  and the usual bars and bordellos catering to the local work force and to the careless sailor who would be tempted... to "indulge". In the ambient humid heat, the local beer tasted good.

          Once loaded with iron ore, we steamed down the Orinoco’s estuary, the Serpent's Mouth, through the Bay of Trinidad, into the Caribbean. We were lucky to come back to Morrisville without meeting any hurricanes. The Ore Regent's permanent radio operator,  back from his vacation, was waiting for me and I went back to New York, to seek a new assignment from Mr. Southwell.  I met Captain Bird in his office. He  was going back to Japan to take out the newest Super Tanker. I asked to be his radio operator again, and Southwell and Bird agreed. The next day I left for Tokyo's Haneda Airport  on a North West Airlines DC-6. It was a long flight which took me from New York to Seattle, with stopovers in Detroit, Minneapolis - St. Paul, Billings - Montana,  Spokane,  Seattle, where  I boarded a DC-7 to continue my journey to Japan, via Cold Bay,  Alaska.

          Universe Tankships Agents in the Far East were C. F. Sharp and Co. One of their representatives met me at my arrival. I made arrangements with him to spend a few days in Tokyo before boarding a night train to Hiroshima  where I spent two  days with my lady friend,  Hatsuko Kawamoto,  before rejoining Jesse Bird and  Borje Borjeson at Kure's Senba Hotel.   Our new ship  was the 85,000 d. w. tons tanker Universe Challenger, sister ship to the Universe Leader. (In 1958, after I had left her, her name was changed to SS Frisia). Her route was the same: loading crude oil at Sungai Pakning for California. As usual, Jesse Bird and Borje Borjeson, the Swedish port steward, left us in San Francisco after our first voyage. Captain Gates, formerly skipper of the Petro King, took command.  Around December, we tied up to mooring buoys off El Segundo, north of San Pedro, near a large electrical power plant and discharged our cargo to the shore through submarine pipes lines. To go and come back from land, we had  to negotiate a pilot ladder hanging alongside our big ship. When she was discharged, it was a long climb up.  And it was  very acrobatic to board the crew launch or grab the end of the ladder and ascent the high black sides of our tanker while the little boat was bounced about by the huge Pacific swells. Sea lions were lazily loafing on top of the mooring buoys and  troubled our sleep with their loud bellows.

          Around Christmas, I visited Disney Land and the Marine Land at Palo Verde's.

In January, the Universe Challenger went to Kure for her first dry-dock period. My French passport needed to be renewed at the nearest French Consulate, which was Kobe.  I got permission from Captain Gates and from the Japanese Immigration authorities to travel by train to Kobe where I arrived late in the afternoon. I took a room at the Oriental Hotel and went "pub crawling" around the Moto Mashi railroad station.  It did not take me long to become friendly with a very lovely "hostess" in a bar. Maria Pace was born in Argentina, of mixed Spanish-Japanese parentage. Her Latin  blood was very evident in her exquisite features and sweet manners. It was not for financial reasons only that she consented to become my lover.  But I had to pay a "fee" of about $ 20  to the bar manager to take her out that first night, more to keep her with me the following days when she did not go back to work. Together with the "gifts" I gave her, the hotel, dinners, sightseeing and other unplanned expenses, it was an costly shore leave. But it was well worth it! And I had enough cash left over to buy a telephoto lens for my Asahi Pentax camera. We spent four delightful days - and nights of passionate love;  we visited Kyoto and Nara and we had a wonderful time.

          Then I returned to Kure. The Universe Challenger, freshly painted, sailed through the Bungo Suido into the great Pacific Ocean, bringing on her next voyages Sumatra's and Kuwait's crude oil to El Segundo and Richmond. One day we had to enter Long Beach Harbour for some repairs. A dense fog covered the entire Californian coast. The crew launch who took us ashore got lost trying to find her landings . Once I stepped on land, I noticed a black sedan on the dock... with a small radio antenna. A few husky men in blue jeans and chequered shirts loitered nearby; right away, I "sniffed" them out as custom's agents.  My conscience was clear, I did not carry any contraband.  But I wanted to have some fun.  I went towards them and "spontaneously" opened my bag "for inspection". They were not too happy to have been recognized, and sent me on my way.

          Again I needed a change. I was homesick for Japan, suffering from – what seamen call the “Hawaiian sickness”: “Lack’a Nooky” ….

          On March 6 1958, I paid-off the Universe Challenger, and said “Good By” to Captain Gates . By pure chance I met Mr. Southwell at San Francisco’s airport. He was dispatching  45 crew members to Kure for manning a new ship aboard  a chartered  Pan American DC7 airliner.  I volunteered to help him with passport, immigration and other formalities. He added my name to the list – since the whole plane was on charter there were no additional coast  to Universe Tankships for one more passenger,  and I managed a free trip back to my “beloved” Japan.  Mr Southwell had agreed to Pan American’  offering full 1^st class services and amenities (free drinks, delicious meals,  reclining seats ). We travelled in comfort with refuelling stops at Honolulu and Wake Island.  Ruthless  battles had been fought on that island during the War. But there was not enough time for sightseeing while we waited in an air conditioned terminal lounge for ground crews to service our airplane.

On my arrival at Tokyo’s airport, I contacted a friend of mine, an American who had a ship  chandlery in Yokohama. We met at the bar of Tokyo’s Imperial Hotel.  The hotel had been designed by the famous architect Frank Lloyd Wright, and was supposed to be “earthquake proof”. We enjoyed a delicious dinner together afterwards in small cozy “sushi” bar behind the Ginza.

From Tokyo, I wrote a postcard to my parents: ”Dear Mama, dear Papa,  I al back n Japan for a vacation before joining a new ship….”  They thought I was crazy, and were mad at me for not once, since our last meeting in Rotterdam, in the winter of 1955, to have come back to Metz.

I spent a few days and nights in Tokyo, sightseeing and “pub crawling” , then took a train to Kobe where again I met Maria Pace. I then went to Kyoto. Monsieur Hauchecorne, professor at the French-Japanese Cultural Institute, was an old friend of mine.  He had lived in Japan all his life. He spoke the language fluently,  was a scholar of Japanese culture and art. He was wholly devoted  in improving cultural relations between France and Japan. He taught me much about  Japan’s history, art, literature. 

Kyoto, once the capital of Old Japan, was a beautiful city with many palaces, gardens, temples. Each spring was celebrated the Cherry Blossom festival, with dances by the lovely “Maiko-Sans”, the Geisha apprentices”…

I intended to study Japanese and  brush ink painting.  Mr. Hauchecorne helped me to find a Japanese style room for rent  in a home of an elderly, very distinguished lady.  There were many old paintings and scrolls,  vases with lovely flower arrangements, “ikebana”… Clean smelling “tatami” rice straw matting on the floor. A sliding  door opened on a small garden with a “bonsai” – miniaturized- pine tree, a stone lantern,  some bamboo plants and a small fountain… after my “honourable  o‘furo”, the traditional hot bath, .dressed in alight kimono, enjoying a flask of hot sake… I felt in perfect harmony with my environment… imagining myself back a century ago, in the period of Emperor Meiji… 

But “fate” again caught up with. I had given my new address to my friends…  Three days after my arrival in Kyoto,  I received a telegram from my friend, the ship chandler in Yokohama: ”………Dear Bob… Have found the ideal job for you aboard a tanker on a permanent run between Persian Gulf and Japan. If OK,  call me immediately by ‘phone, expecting you in Yokohama tomorrow….”  I called my friend,  then  packed my gear, said a regretful “sayonara” to Hauchecorne and to my landlady to whom I paid two months of rent, and took a night train for Yokohama…

My new ship was the ST Anna O, a Liberian-flag T-2 tanker, managed by Maritime Overseas Corporation of New York,  bound for Qatar in the Persian Gulf. The Captain was a Frenchman, Raymond Fultot;  he was a former officer of the French Merchant Marine. Serving in the French Navy during the “phony” war, he was at Dunkirk in 1940. But during the German occupation, he became a “collaborator”, siding with the Vichy Government, and fighting against the Gaullist Underground. I had  been in the Maquis, the French Resistance, hiding in the mountains of Southern France from 1943 to France’s Liberation in the fall of 1944, to escape deportation to Germany as a slave laborer. I feared that an ambiguous situation would arise between us.  But he was my Captain and I was the Ship’s Radio Officer. I adopted a “wait and see” attitude, intending to do my job as good as possible. I was lucky to find a well maintained radio room. The radio console was a Radio Marine (RCA) 4-U,  but with the latest RCA communications receiver and a tube-rectifier power supply instead of the original, awkward and noisy motor-generator set. The ship was well kept and clean, the chow tasty and plentiful.  Fultot appreciated my efficiency as a ship’s purser. As long as we avoided talking about war and politics we got along well together.  Llopis the Chief Mate and  Goosen, the Dutch Chief Engineer became good friends. The crew were Spanish and Greek.  The Spaniards were “Gallegos”, from the province of La Coruna, the North Western part of Spain. They were excellent seamen, friendly ship mates. Only the Greeks, as usual, , created many problems by their controversial attitude. 

Fultot was a careful and experienced mariner. Departing Yokohama bound for the Persian Gulf,  calling briefly at Singapore for bunkers, we  had a smooth passage through the Strait of Malacca, the Indian Ocean, Arabian Sea and Strait of Hormuz to Qatar, where we loaded at the Umm Said oil terminal. We did not go ashore.  In the Persian Gulf and the Indian Ocean, I was able to communicate with the US East Coast (WSL, WCC) radio stations. On our way back, before transiting the Strait of Malacca, we received a Company  message advising us of a new charter party for the tanker.   All crew members signed on in the Far East were to be paid-off in Japan. The Anna O,  after unloading her cargo, was to sail in ballast to the US East Coast for new orders. We had  three  Chinese from the steward department who had been hired  in Singapore.  Based on this message, I asked Fultot to pay me off in Japan, but he refused to let me go, pretending that the message concerned only “unlicensed crew members”. I did not know where he got that. The Company’s message stated clearly: “... all crew members signed on in the Far East”. The truth was that I was too efficient in my work as a purser and Fultot wanted to keep me on board. I did not make a big fuss about it and decided to stay on. I did not regret my decision. We discharged our cargo at the Mitsuhama oil terminal near the hot springs resort of Matsuyama - Dogo Onsen,  on the shores of Shikoku Island in the Inland Sea of Japan. I had visited Dogo Onsen the year before.  It was a pretty little "hot spring" resort town.  We all had a good time during the five days of our stay. Fultot,  Llopis, Goosen  and myself spent our evenings at the local night club. The skipper was wooing the favors of the shipping agent’s secretary, while I spent many pleasant nights with her girl friend. As always, I left Japan with good memories and regrets, promising myself to come back.

          Crossing the Pacific, Fultot treated us to a cocktail party to celebrate the passage of the International Date Line. We called at Long Beach for bunkers and received orders: after transiting the Panama Canal, we were to load  crude oil somewhere in Venezuela, for discharge in Baltimore. This was the first of my many Panama Canal passages. I was greatly impressed by this monumental work in such a hostile environment, and fascinated by the handling of the ships while passing through the many locks.

          We took on a cargo of crude oil at the Punta Cardon, Amuay Bay, oil terminal. It was at the entrance of the Maracaibo channel.

          In Baltimore, Goosen, our Dutch Chief Engineer, was relieved by an English man,  Balls,  who was a big pain in the ... There was “water in the gas lines” between him and FuItot. I have noticed that when a Captain and his Chief Engineer dislike each other, it makes waves on board a ship.  Balls sided with the Greeks, who were an endless source of trouble. Many of them had problems with the US Immigration Authorities.  Their papers were never in order and they were denied shore leave in US ports. The Greeks usually defied the immigration rules and went ashore anyway.  If caught, the ship risked heavy fines, but Fultot was unable to correct the situation and to call them to order. The crew had bought a lot of souvenirs in Japan to bring back to their families in Greece and Spain: - the usual music boxes, dolls, photo albums, and other cheap trinkets found in the shops around port cities.   They had no great monetary value. I was unable decode the boy’s handwritings on their individual customs declarations, and was careless in detailing all the many things they had purchased on the customs lists. One day, arriving in Boston, a whole squad of mean custom inspectors searched the ship. They went into every cabin, looked into every crew living and storage spaces, snooped into the most unexpected "nook and corner",  checked all my lists and declarations in detail. But, maybe disappointed not finding  any narcotics, or contraband tobacco or liquor, the agents concentrated instead on my carelessly typed customs declarations: they found more dolls, music boxes, or other such objects than were listed on the manifests. Those items had no real monetary value. The Spaniards and Greeks could not afford expensive cameras and other electronic devices. They did not engage in contraband.  But the mean chicken sh… Bostonians leveled heavy fines on the poor sailors. Luckily the Company settled with the authorities. I felt guilty and promised myself in the future  to be more careful in typing the Ship’s clearance documents.

          The Anna O became a “tramp ship”. We loaded at Venezuelan oil ports: Punta Cardon, Amuay Bay at the entrance to the Maracaibo Channel, at Caripito, near the island of Trinidad, where we sailed up a narrow river to reach this “God forsaken” place lost in the jungle. We loaded at the World’s largest oil refinery on the Island of Aruba. All the “girls” there were from Columbia. I believe “girls” were Columbia’s main export, before the advent of the drug traffic.  We discharged on the East River in New York,  at Hartford, Connecticut, Boston, Baltimore. Twice we sailed down to Santos, Brazil, where I met again McGuire and John Rawles, my former Captain and Chief Engineer of the Universe Leader. They were aboard the Harold H. Helm, the U. Leader’s “sister ship”, on a permanent run between Santos and Kuwait. Santos was a welcome change, in contrast to the expensive US East Coast ports, unfriendly to seamen, and the dirty oil ports of Venezuela.  As usual, the “sparks” was the first one ashore - and the last back aboard.  We stayed at least two days and nights at the oil terminal way back in Santos’ inner harbor.  Work was slow in Brazil.  With Fultot, and friend Llopis when he could get away, we had our drinks on the sidewalk café of the Atlantico Hotel (I had lost my German girl friend’s address) or at the Hotel Parque Balnear,  dinner at Don Fabrizzio’s on Praia do Gonzaga. Once I took a “collective” taxi up the Via Anchietta freeway to Sao Paulo. It winded its way through dense jungle up the steep side of the mountain until it reached the “plateau” where the great metropolis was spread out. I admired the modern architecture of Brazil’s greatest city.  In a nightclub I met a French speaking Spanish lady who had lived in Marseilles. Twice we loaded at Carthagena, then through the Panama Canal, proceeded for Callao, Peru’s main port., A heavy smell of anchovies hung over the whole area.  In 1958, you could take a streetcar from Callao to Lima. Peru’s capital is a beautiful city with many baroque churches and splendid palaces in Spanish colonial style. The main square is called Plaza San Martin, the best hotel is the Hotel Bolivar. (In many Latin American cities, it was either Hotel Bolivar and  Plaza San Martin, or the other way around).  After visiting the Cathedral, near the Government Palace, I bought some silver objects and llama skins on Calle de la Merced. It was still  possible in 1958 to sit at a side walk café under the arcades in front of the Bolivar, writing post cards  while enjoying a cool beer.  Afterward, I took a taxi to the pleasant and quiet suburbs of Mira Flores and San Isidro. Lima’s streets were quiet and restful. When I returned to Lima in 1979 and the early ‘80’s, I found an impoverished population in an over-crowded city,. I thought that all the proud descendants of the Incas had come down from the Andes to stagnate in abject poverty on the parched plains in the slums around Peru’s Capital. The people  appeared tense, sad, not one smile on their dark oriental faces. In down town Lima, the contrast between the luxurious modern concrete hotels like the Hilton, the Sheraton, and the more traditional  Hotel Bolivar, Lima’s high-class suburbs and the impoverished masses of people crowding the ancient streets appeared even more brutal. The old buildings dating back to the Spanish Vice Royalty of Peru where falling apart. But in 1958,  Lima was still pleasant and quiet .

          Despite our problems with Balls and the Greeks, the Anna O was a good friendly ship under Fultot’s command. With Llopis, we formed a good team.  In Santos and Callao, Fultot sold several boxes of 50 cartons of cigarettes from our stores to the Port Captains and Chiefs of Customs.  Since I was in charge of the slop-chest, he gave me a few dollars from the sales.

          During the German Occupation, Fultot had belonged to a collaborationist clique of the Vichy regime.  Condemned "by absentia" for “collaborating with the enemy” at the Liberation, he fled from France to find refuge in some Italian monasteries before being smuggled to Argentina with other Nazi war criminals and French collaborators.  My conscience was clear.  I had loyally fought for my freedom and France’s Liberation in the Maquis Resistance and the First French Army till the end of World War II.  I admired and respected General De Gaulle.  Who was I to judge my fellow-man?  I appreciated Fultot as a good captain and we enjoyed each other’s company, glad to speak the same language. When going ashore together,. we had a quiet dinner (a lobster  when Llopis came with us)  and went to a movie or a quiet bar for a few drinks.  Fultot told me of Argentine customs, described the night life of Buenos Aires.  I always paid my share of taxi fares, restaurant and bar bills and other expenses. I was proud and did not want to take advantage of our camaraderie. From every port, before sailing, I had to type the ship’s and master’s expense accounts for the Company:  On the Captain’s disbursement records, I found: ...”taxi fares ship to shore to ship,  gratuities (dinners, drinks) to shore authorities and agents and other expenses, etc...” He had charged to the Company all his personal expenses... I kept my mouth shut,  it was none of my business.

          On two occurrences,  a day or two out at sea after departure from Santos, we discovered a stowaway. The first one was from Uruguay.  Probably he had jumped ship in Santos, and was trying to find a cheap passage to the United States. Heavy fines were imposed on the ship and her owners for carrying stowaways to the US. When the man was discovered hiding in a life-boat, Fultot shut him up in a spare cabin for a day or two, then he made him paint and chip rust on deck alongside the other sailors.  Feeling sorry for the guy,  maybe because he was a fellow Latin-American, but mainly to avoid any problems later on,  he signed the man on the ship’s articles with full pay. But the Uruguayan was an ungrateful bastard: On our first American port of call,  he jumped ship and disappeared. Luckily for us he was never caught. The second stowaway was a Greek.  I suspect that our Hellenic sailors helped him aboard and kept him under cover. This time, Fultot got mad. He made him work on deck, without pay,  and had him shut away with hand cuffs each time we called at a US port. But when Captain Fafoutis later replaced Fultot, he promoted the Greek to Chief Steward.  I must admit that the food improved considerably after that.

          On a freezing December night of 1958, we came into the Port of New York to discharge at an oil terminal between Bayonne and Elizabeth, New Jersey. To get to the nearest bus stop, I had to walk about a mile on a deserted road, with an arctic northerly wind knifing through my thin summer coat.  I was not prepared for the New York  winter season.  I took a bus to the 42nd Street terminal and had a quiet diner at the Midi on West 48th Street, one of my favorite French restaurants, before getting back aboard my ship. The next day, Captain Fultot was relieved by Captain Fafoutis, a Greek.  Except for the promotion of our stowaway to Chief Steward and a slight improvement in the food’s taste, things did not changed for the better.  Llopis and myself were sorry to see Captain Fultot leave the ship.  We had some good times together,  and Fultot had been a good ship’ master.  From that day on, the Chief Mate and I ran the ship.  Fafoutis was always tired.  He slept all day.  At night he came on the bridge.  In the wheel house, he turned the lights on (!),  sat in the captain’s chair and bull shitted with the Greek crew while sipping beer. This while sailing in the congested waters along the US East Coast and in the Caribbean.  When we came into port, I had to wake him up to sign all the crew and customs lists, cargo manifests, clearance and other papers for the local port authorities. I had to prepare the pay rolls all by myself.  Fultot had warned me about the Latin American ports.  He advised me to fully satisfy the customs agents' and other “shore vultures’ ” greediness when ever they wanted some things from the slop chest. Otherwise, if unhappy, they could impose fines, cause endless harassment to the ship, and it would cost more money to the Company to get out of trouble than the few cartons of cigarettes, khaki trousers, shirts, razor blades, bottles of booze and other slop chest items from our stores to gratify their greed.  But when Fafoutis woke up from his “hibernation” to check the ship’s expense accounts,  he gave me hell for having been too generous with the South Americans.  He was too thick headed and too stupid to recognize the situation and the common sense justifying  their gratification.  After our first voyage with Fafoutis, we docked in Brooklyn. The President of Maritime Overseas Corp., Weishaar the Personal Manager, and other firm officials came aboard.  The Company was in financial trouble. There would be a general reduction in wages. The crew were to choose between sailing under reduced pay or be discharged and repatriated to every one’s country of origin (Greece and Spain). Since I had been signed on in Japan, I requested therefore to be repatriated to the Far East...  “Nothing doing... “. I was the most efficient radio operator and purser in their whole Liberian flag fleet.  They wanted to keep me and I could stay on board with my old wages (approx. $ 300 monthly)”... I accepted, but I did not feel too comfortable about it.  I would be paid more than the Chief Mate, who had his overtime reduced as well. I went ashore that evening, took a room at the Jai Alai, a Basque restaurant and hotel in Greenwich Village, where I met Captain Fultot who was waiting for a job with my old company,  Universe Tankships Inc. Then, completely demoralized, and contrary to my normal good behavior,  I got drunk that night. The next morning, I could not remember where my ship was docked in Brooklyn.  It took the taxi driver 30 minutes to find his way,  and when we came to the pier, the Anna O  was gone!  Luckily the port captain of M.O.C. was also on the pier waiting for other lost crew members.  After her discharge, our ship had to vacate her docking space for another tanker and anchor in the Narrows off Staten Island,  to await clearance to sail.  Llopis arrived a few minutes after me; and a launch took us aboard. Until that day I had never missed a ship nor been late for departure.  I was glad  that it was not my fault.  We sailed shortly after for Carthagena,  to load crude oil for Peru. Again I could enjoy another Panama Canal transit,  get pleasure from two days in beautiful Lima. Off Mollendo near the Chilean border, tied up to mooring buoys, we discharged the rest of our payload through an undersea pipeline. There was a very heavy swell and no shore leave was being granted...

           I felt uneasy about making more money than the Chief Mate. I had the impression that the company had me by the b...  And, for the first time aboard a ship, I was scared, each time the captain came on the bridge at night, turning on the lights in the wheel house, while we sailed through the crowded sea ways of the Caribbean and the US East Coast. I began suffering from some kind of intestinal disorder, certainly of psychosomatic origin.  We were bound for Portland,  Maine where I asked for a medical discharge.  We docked on a very cold Sunday evening in January of 1959.   Snow was freezing on the winches and deck gear.  Maine in hose days was a dry state and no wine or beer was served with my dinner that evening. I was frustrated.  I took night train for New York’s Central Station and booked into the Jai Alai Hotel in Greenwich village.

          For a few days I was hospitalized for observation and tests (painful barium-enema X rays and sigmoidoscopy (!) examinations) at the Maritime Hospital on Staten Island.  They could not find anything wrong and referred me to a psychoanalyst. It did not cure my intestinal problems.  They plagued me until, in 1977, a severe abdominal surgery removed polyps from my intestines, which luckily were not malignant.

          I stayed in New York until the beginning of March 1959, lodging at the Jai Alai, and taking my meals at the Champlain, my favorite French restaurant on West 49th Street. Then I went to see Maritime Overseas Corp., demanding to be repatriated to the Far East.  They refused my demand. Yes, they would repatriate me to France, but I had to pay my own way to get back to Japan. I bought a ‘plane ticket for San Francisco and embarked at Oakland on the SS Overseas Joyce,  a freighter owned by Maritime Overseas Corp.,  bound for Kobe. The cheap and stingy bastards charged me, their employee, full cargo passenger fares to sail on one of their own ships !

          She was a WWII Victory Ship. The weather was good, the chow... so-so..  The Radio Officer was an old grouch, his main interests the stock market, his main reading material the Wall Street Journal and Baron’s.  I have never been interested in financial matters.  It was a boring voyage for me, having nothing to do. But I was coming back to Japan!…

VIII  -  RETURN TO NIHON…

I got off the Overseas Joyce in Kobe and moved directly to Kyoto. I stayed for a month at a Japanese style inn, a few blocks from the Myako Hotel, where I went in the morning for a “Western” style breakfast and to read the latest news in the English edition of the “Asahi Shimboun”. Four US servicemen, on leave, were staying at my hotel, and we became good friends. In 1959, the renowned Kyoto Cherry Blossom Festival coincided with Crown Prince Akihito’s engagement to his lovely fiancée, Miss Michiko Oda.  All five of us, with a few pretty maids from the inn, took part in the festivities. There was a big parade on Kyoto’s main streets, with lovely Maiko San’s (Geisha “apprentices) in their colourful silken kimonos, many floats, carts, costumes of Old Japan. The weather was beautiful, the cherry trees were blossoming in white and pink, and we joyously celebrated the events "imbibing" many flasks of sake and bottles of beer…  Monsieur Hauchecorne invited me to a formal party one day at the French-Japanese Institute to celebrate the union of the two “sister cities” Paris and Kyoto. That evening I met the conductor of the new Kyoto Symphony, a reputed German musician from Kolln and his charming wife.

          Japan’ economy was growing rapidly. The US occupation had ended, the people were eager to enlarge their economic and cultural horizons. They were friendly and open to foreigners.  With the favourable rate of exchange (360 Japanese Yen for 1 US Dollar), I could afford  to have a good time.  I was not worried about the future, did not think of saving money. Western style and culture were fashionable. Young boys and girls met and dated in coffee houses or tea rooms. Each of those had their own style: Some were playing classical music only on their hi-fi sound systems, some others had complete collections of jazz records. One tea room was dedicated to the French “Chansons”: Edith Piaf, Yves Montand, Mistinguett, all the old and new favourite record and radio stars from France. That is where one could find me almost every late afternoon, where I met my dates and friends. I visited all the beautiful temples, gardens, palaces of old Kyoto,  went sight seeing to Nara, rented a row boat on Lake Biwaka. I went on a week-long train and bus tour of the many spa resorts of the Wakayama Peninsula, departing from Osaka, At  the Mikimoto Pearl centre I saw  women dive “topless” for pearl oysters; I visited Japan’s most sacred shrine at Ise.  In Kyoto, one day, I met Patrick James, studying for a doctorate in Japanese literature and culture at Kyoto’s University. He was “typically British” in appearance, dress and behaviour. He had served in the British Royal Marines and had a flashy Grenadier Guards moustache. During the day, he dressed in British tweeds, with his handkerchief hidden in his sleeve... But in the evening, he walked around in a “Yukata” (a light informal kimono, worn as a house coat or replacing a pyjama); in his wooden “gettas” which made him appear even taller that his natural six feet six inches,  he stood out in the crowd of evening strollers. He lived in a Japanese style house with thick tatami mats on the floor.  I admired a precious and antique set of Japanese swords he kept in front of his desks.

At 4 AM,  one day, I watched trawlers unloading freshly caught tuna at the Osaka Fish Market where all the seafood traders and restaurant owners came to buy the fresh daily catch. I had an excellent sushi for breakfast. I learned to say “Okini”, in the “Kansai” dialect, instead of the usual “Domo Arigato Go Sarimasu...” (Thank You). I read up on the different eras of Japanese history: The Tokugawa, Kamakura, Edo, Meiji Jidai’s (periods).  Patrick James called the present one (late ‘fifties) the “Transistor Jidai”. I read Japanese classic literature translated into English: Murasaki Shikibu’s “Pillow Book”,  the Tales of Genji, the narratives of the 19th century writer Lafcadio Hearn.  I studied the different styles of wood block prints.  I got a brush, ink and paper to practice Oriental painting. I visited a traditional “Geisha House” and was introduced to “O’Sha’no yu”, the ancient Tea Ceremony,  went to a Koto recital - a sort of harp,  to the Kabuki theatre where an all male cast, in women’ as well as men’s roles, enacted dramatic legends of the past. In the spring of 1959, the latest French films were very popular in Japan. But I also enjoyed many “Shambara Eiga”movies, the Japanese equivalent to American Westerns. The actions took place in the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries: stories of Feudal lords,  the Samurai, in mortal sword fights with each other for their honour, or for the love of a beautiful lady,  violent tales of intrigues, betrayals and acts of loyalty (like the story of the 47 Samurais). They were fierce, tense, emotional dramas. There were no English subtitles, I did not understand one word of Japanese. But thanks to my fertile imagination I made up my own stories.  I enjoyed most of all the magnificent period settings of architecture and furniture, the insides of palaces, the gardens, the ancient costumes of lords and ladies, all fastidiously and artfully recreated for the screen. All the actresses were very beautiful, their loveliness and grace contrasting strongly with  the almost brutal “machismo” of the male heroes.  Of course, I was never lonely at night; my loves were called Michiko, Kimiko, Sumiko, they were exquisite, sweet, devoted. I avoided those girls who, believing to please their Western friends wore falsies to increase their breast’ volume and tried to speak in American slang, who dressed too obnoxiously in American style clothes...

But the state of my finances started to deteriorate, and I thought of looking for a ship again. I had written to Mr. Southwell, apologizing for my “unfaithfulness” to Universe Tankships. He had secured me a free trip to Japan the year before, and I had sailed for another company.  He did not hold it against me and assured me of a berth on board the next ship to come out of the Kure yards in May.            

          Toward the end of April, I packed my gear, said “sayonara” to Monsieur Hochecorne and to all my friends in Kyoto and took the train for Kure.

          Kure had become my “home town”. As a Frenchman, I was given a two-month tourism visa each time I came to Japan. This time, my visa  had expired. I was well known at the Kure immigration offices and I became an “alien resident”. As before, I stayed at the Senba Hotel.  Captain Bird and Borje Borjeson arrived shortly after me.

In Hiroshima I met again  my  lady friend, Hatsuko Kawamoto.  On her days off we journeyed together to the holy island of Myia Jima, on the Inland Sea, right across from Hiroshima.

 My new ship was the SS Ore Meridian, chartered to load iron ore on the Orinocco River for the East Coast of the United States.  

On the last day before sailing, there was the traditional party at the Senba Hotel,  then a round of familiar bars with my new ship mates. And as before, Hatsuko-san, after her work took a late train from Hiroshima to spend the last night with me, and early  next morning she went with me by taxi to the docks, for a tearful “sayonara”.

IX  -  THE ODYSSEY OF THE ZULIA…

          I was back “home”... at the Senba Hotel, with Captain Bird and Borje Borjeson, reunited with  my lady-love,  Hatsuko Kawamoto from Hiroshima and meeting old friends in the city and at the ship yard,

          Daniel K. Ludwig had entered into another venture: building a series of dredges for the Venezuelan government. The first was the Zulia, contracted to keep the Maracaibo sea channel open for shipping from its Caribbean entrance to the Lake.

          It was a “self powered, side casting boom, suction - hopper dredge”. Four drag heads cleared a 115 feet wide path on the sea bottom. Powerful  pumps aboard the ship “sucked” the mud and sand through a three foot diameter 437 feet long pipe, suspended on a “boom”. This “boom”  rotated 180 degrees, on a turret, like the guns of a battle ship,  so that the dredged material was ejected outside the channel limits. It was a monster. (Refer to the sketches –drawn from memory).

          I spent many days aboard the new ship, with my old friend the yard’s electronics technician. The radio station was of  the latest RCA 6-U  type;  a RCA radar and several VHF transceivers were installed in the large wheel house. In the chart room was a huge drawer cabinet for charts. On its left side, a glass covered compartment housed the ship’s chronometers. The Radio officer, once a day, receives a standard Universal Time (or GMT) signal. In the United States the specific station transmitting this signal on 5,000, 10,000, 15,000 and 20,000 kHz is WWV located  in Colorado. The “sparks” patches the time signal up to the chart room. The mate on watch, listening to it with his headsets, notes the clock ’s error and records it in a special note book. The shipyard drawings had located the headset ‘phone jack about 7 feet away from the  glass case.  Rather awkward for the mate to watch his chronometers from so far away. I drew the electrical engineer’s attention to the discrepancy which he corrected right away. But he got mad at me. A “Gaijin”, a foreigner, had made him “loose face” in presence of his subordinates.  In the good old times of the Samourais, he may have committed “hara kiri” after having cut my head off with his big sword.  Lucky for me, we were in 1959... My friend, the technician, had a big laugh behind his boss’ back.

          I made the acquaintance of a secretary at the shipyard offices.  Motoko Hisaoka-san was  sweet,  pretty and very intelligent.  It was “Love at First Sight”. This time, it was not, as usual, a casual physical encounter nor a friend-lover relationship like the one I had with Hatsuko in Hiroshima over the last 3 years. It pained me to have to break our old relationship.. It was tough for Hatsuko-san, - I  was not very fair to her,  but “C’est la vie”... I was 37 years old, in love at last (or so I thought...). We spent our week-ends together in a Japanese style inn on the outskirts of Kure. We hiked through the mountainous hinterland of Hiroshima, festooned  in the splendid colors of autumn. We became friends with a group of young students and their teacher, with whom we corresponded for many months afterwards.

On a rainy December day the Dredge Zulia sailed through the Bungo Suido Strait

bound for the Panama Canal. We had a crew of about 100 men aboard. Except for the officers and the maintenance electrician (Karl was from Hamburg,  he became my best friend onboard) they were all Japanese from Okinawa. The Ryu Kyu Islands were still American occupied territory.  National Bulk Carriers personnel department estimated that the Japanese were more efficient in their work than the nice and gentle Caiman Islanders. They preferred to hire them for their special ships  like the dredges  and the bauxite carriers.  I got along well with them.  As usual I was in charge of all the paper work, but this time I had a crew member assigned to me as a clerk. I appreciated his help.

We settled into the routine of a Trans. - Pacific crossing. As soon as we were on the high seas, I sent out a general radio call on 500 Khz:

CQ CQ CQ DE 5MBC

GM  DREDGE ZULIA QTO KURE BND BALBOA PANAMA   PLS QRU?

73 TO ALL   AR

("calling all stations, good morning, Dredge Zulia leaving Kure bound Balboa Panama please any traffic for me? greetings - end").

I like to be brief but courteous on the air. I avoid contact with Greek radio operators. They always want you to relay messages for them free of charge. They are a pain in the neck, they transmit Morse code usually “with their left foot”,   and take up all my time. Many ships answered me, wishing us “bon voyage”, giving  their name, port of departure, position and destination, details on their local weather etc.

Jesse Bird, the ”Fleet Commodore”,  was in command until the Dredge became operational under the Venezuelan Government’s  Charter. Captain Paarn was then to become Zulia’s Master. He was a very good captain, and specialized in dredging operations. We had a very nice Spanish Chief Mate.  Our American Chief Engineer was working almost 24 hours a day, trying to fix all the too many bugs.  A Venezuelan government official on board was Jesse Bird’s daily drinking companion. At about 11 o’clock in the morning and at four thirty in the afternoon,  Jesse would call down the midship house companionway for his friend, or he would send me to his stateroom to fetch him for the twice-daily cocktail hour. We were spoiled, like on a passenger ship, by chief steward Borge Borjeson’  professional catering and all the fresh provisions he had loaded  before departing Kure.

          We were proceeding at the Zulia’s average sea speed of 8 knots along 5 degrees of  latitude North.  Three times a day I copied all the weather forecasts along our route. But small local tropical squalls are not always predictable.  We had not yet passed the 180th degree of longitude, when one night we encountered moderate gale force winds and swells. The ship started to roll and to pitch, and all the gear began to break loose. The huge boom swung from left to right, chains and cables released their hold on the heavy dredge heads which banged against the ship’s side. The situation became panicky, it was “action stations, all men on deck...”  I manned my radio station, ready for any emergency. We turned into the wind, stopped engines,  and mates and crew tried to fasten the heavy machinery with all the chains and lines we had on board.  I became busy sending out 300 to 400 word long messages to the Company in New York, to the shipyard in Kure,  to Daniel K. Ludwig in Hong Kong where he was supervising the building of his private yacht. Jesse Bird  complained  “...of the murderous Pacific swells...”  Later on, he was to be blamed for the incident.  I believe the Kure shipyard was responsible, not foreseeing that heavy seas could put the dredge at risk, neglecting to inspect and test the restraining gear of the weighty machinery.