Anecdote

Stephen Hiller @ MYONIA, Thu, 04/23/2009 - 00:52

Just an item to add to ship's history, she discharged cargo at the town of Devonport in northern Tasmania 9/12/1954

William Redvers... @ SPONDILUS (3), Tue, 04/21/2009 - 23:02

This is an extract from the book I m writing about my father's forty years at sea as a marine engineer:-

-------- snip

My father, William Redvers Foprter (1900-75) was still just a 4th Engineer when he left on his third voyage on MV SPONDILUS. They spent New Year?s Eve in Falmouth and after a week left for Curacao and then, surprisingly, headed for the Antarctic whale fishery, arriving ?early in March?. There were a record 41 expeditions in the Antarctic in 1930-1, mostly Norwegian, but one of two British companies, Southern Whaling & Sealing Co., was owned by Lever Bros. The Unilever subsidiary, Raw Materials Ltd, had contracted to buy the entire production of Antarctic whale oil at double its current price and this costly mistake was compounded by whaling expeditions hiring transport vessels to offload whale oil thus extending catching well beyond load capacity. MV Spondilus must have been chartered as one of these transporters and would have also supplied fuel oil to the factory ships (for the furnaces which rendered down the blubber) and whale catchers. With three blue whales as buffers (fender-hval), they moored alongside the factory ships, transferred fuel oil and after flushing their tanks loaded the whale oil. The putrefying bodies of the fender-hval were discarded. Spondilus may have taken oil from Skytteren (the ship on which he spent the 1929-30 whaling season in Antarctica) which secured 94,000 barrels of whale oil that season but only had room for 80,000 barrels. By the 9 March they were at the shore based whaling stations in South Georgia and on the 19th arrived in Table Bay, South Africa. The main customer for whale oil in Germany was Unilever and they called in at Hamburg to unload their cargo, returning to North Shields on the 24 April 1931.

Two days later ?a serious disturbance amongst the Chinese members of the crew? was reported in Lloyds Weekly Casualty Reports:

Jarrow, April 26: A serious disturbance among the Chinese members of the crew of the motor vessel SPONDILUS, owned by Anglo-Saxon Petroleum Company, Ltd., occurred at Hebburn-on-Tyne on Saturday night (April 25). Revolvers were used and Ah Ling Kee, fireman, was wounded in the head. The officers eventually succeeded in establishing order.

The South Shields Gazette gave a fuller (and more accurate) account of what happened on MV Spondilus the day before my father left the ship. The ?serious disturbance? was over a gambling debt of ?20-17 shillings (the equivalent of about ?900 today) which the quartermaster owed to the boson. There was an argument and the boson was shot by the quartermaster. There were counter accusations of cheating and it was claimed that the victim had bought the revolver in Hamburg. The bosun survived and at Hebburn police court a few weeks later, the charge was reduced to unlawful wounding. The quartermaster was sentenced to six months hard labour and ordered to be deported. The only other person to give evidence was the second mate, Harold Gosling, from Kent. Captain Jack Williams, who was Mate on the MV Spondilus twenty years later, recalled:

?Mah Jong gambling was, and in all probability still is, the major form of relaxation amongst Chinese crews. I can remember quite vividly the ?day workers? opening the tables just after noon on a Saturday and playing with the watch men till well into the Monday morning watch, non stop. I also remember during rounds walking through their smoke filled rest room and seeing a vast amount of hard money, stacked on the tables, at a time when Merchant Navy pay was low, really low. The play was noisy and mainly in a happy mood but it could become heated. I have to say that for all my years at sea the happiest was always with a Chinese crew, they are so reliable, hard working and loyal.?

Without sea time as a junior engineer on a motor ship he would not have been able to get his Chief ticket endorsed for motor vessels. After he left Spondilus on the 26 April 1931 he passed his First Class Motor Examination at Newcastle on the 15 June.

He was qualified to serve as Chief on both steam and motor vessels but trade had ground to a stop, ships were laid up and he was unemployed for a year. By the end of 1931 3.5 m tons, one sixth of the Merchant Navy, were laid up in British ports and 56,000 seamen, one in three, were idle.

---------- end

Bill Forster
son of
WILLIAM REDVERS FORSTER (1900-75)

Christopher Grindle @ MACTRA (2), Mon, 04/20/2009 - 11:43

Hi Dennis
I was on the Mactra whilst it was in durban for repairs and then sailed with it to yokohama where it had a new aft section to the foredeck made and fitted. If you could email me the pics that you have I would appreciate it my email address is christophergrindle@hotmail.com. I have many fond memories of our time in durban especially the football match against the castle brewery , we lost the game but the session in the brewery afterwards was no contest

Terry Mchugh @ THEODOXUS, Fri, 04/17/2009 - 23:58

Does anyone remember George McHugh, or know what happened to him. He vanished from the Theodoxus around 1950 /1951.

Denis Conaty @ MACTRA (2), Thu, 04/16/2009 - 23:21

I have photos of Mactra when it was in Durban while under repair after the explosion of the east coast of Africa..!!

Sean Marsh @ EBALINA, Wed, 04/15/2009 - 09:28

A few weeks ago i wrote an anecdote on the Eburna site stating that we picked up Vietnamese refugees! On closer inspection of the photos i have realized this was an error as it was on the Ebalina that we picked up the refugees. I do apologize for this error unfortunately without glasses, at the time i'd mislaid mine, my eyesight isn't very good. Apart from the ships name all other information about the rescue is, to the best of my recollection, correct. One day when i can workout how too do it i shall put the pictures on my computer and send them to this site.
Sean Marsh

Sean Marsh @ EBALINA, Wed, 04/15/2009 - 09:27

A few weeks ago i wrote an anecdote on the Eburna site stating that we picked up Vietnamese refugees! On closer inspection of the photos i have realized this was an error as it was on the Ebalina that we picked up the refugees. I do apologize for this error unfortunately without glasses, at the time i'd mislaid mine, my eyesight isn't very good. Apart from the ships name all other information about the rescue is, to the best of my recollection, correct. One day when i can workout how too do it i shall put the pictures on my computer and send them to this site.
Sean Marsh

Ken Gifford @ GOLDMOUTH (2), Tue, 04/14/2009 - 04:38

"Goldmouth" was my first seagoing ship and was a bunkership in Singapore.
We serviced many ships off Pulo Bukum going alongside larger vessels and
having smaller ones come to us.At this time the French were about to be evicted
from Indochina and we fuelled many large troopships full of North African soldiers
from the French colonies going north to Saigon.
"Goldmouth"was in poor condition,and was used as a dormatory for officers waiting
to join ships or go on leave.

Peter Coxwell @ VARICELLA, Mon, 04/13/2009 - 21:55

The Varicella was my first ship joining in May 1964 as a deck apprentice for 11 months with Dick white , Colin Flexon and John Hill .The skipper was Captain Taylor and my first night at sea was an eventful one as on passage from the anchorage to discharge in Rotterdam we were in collision with a cargo ship , the Niedersachzen ? , which brought forward my first drydock in Skaramanga and the skipper's retirement. I learnt one valuable lesson that trip , to stay away from black oil ! I also learnt how to chip decks for 8 hours a day without going mad , how to paint acres of deck in green and bulkheads in white and how to shovel sludge into buckets and throw it ' over the wall '.Fortunately I managed to keep away from Black Oilers thereafter .

Gordon Wright @ OPALIA (2), Sat, 04/11/2009 - 20:31

Opalia was a sort of 'Marmite' ship for Deck Cadets: you could love it or hate it (and sometimes both almost at the same time). It engendered such a fabulous camaraderie between the cadets on board that it provided possibly the best time of my cadetship. At the same time, the cadets were treated so badly by the 'management' of the ship that unhappiness was rife! (By management, I'm not necessarily referring to individuals so much as to the systems that existed for managing and working the cadets, though occasionally the inconsiderate or even arrogant behaviour of certain officers did make life worse.)
I learned a lot during my two trips on Opalia, though not entirely because of the 'training ship' tag. I learned that I found it rather hairy hanging over the bows on a stage painting the name when we were lightship and therefore a fair distance above the briny! I learned that chipping rust is pretty boring. I learned that digging the sediment out of bloody great cargo tanks using nothing more than a hand shovel when you are in the Caribbean causes you to sweat profusely. I learned that TJP gets very thick if the heating coils fail! I learned that if you 'drop' an anchor while going 'slow astern' and the windlass brakes are useless, there will be a good chance of losing the anchor!
All in all, though, with the mists of time hiding the worst excesses of Uncle Joe's bullshit from my eyes, I look back on Opalia with great fondness. She was physically a beautiful ship (or so I thought, and still do) and it's a shame such ships are no longer gracing the sea.

Gordon Wright @ AMASTRA (2), Sat, 04/11/2009 - 20:08

Amastra: what a ship!
I spent 4 months or so on Amastra as a deck cadet. As many will remember, she was powered by a Doxford motor - a sight to behold...when it was running. I lost count of the times we wallowed aound 'not under command' while the long-suffering engineers fixed the fuel pipes (or some other, less frequent point of failure) again. After dark, sparks would drift out of the funnel, which was quite interesting when we were fully loaded with aviation fuel!
The master at the time was the great Jimmy Millar. He had an incredible capacity for Ballantyne's whisky: I often saw him down a Heineken beer glass full (presumably 330ml in modern money) before dinner and go back for more straight after eating! Despite this, he hardly ever appeared to be under the weather (though on the rare occasions he was, he could be very entertaining).
We had a trip into the Baltic when it was iced over. We had to tie up a good 15 feet off the loading platform because of the solid blacks of ice between us and it. The next trip took us to Curacao (or was it Aruba?) where the ship was heeled over somehwere between 10 and 15 degrees so that the anti-fouling paint could be reapplied, first on one side and then, after a quick turn around, on the other. We spend four days, in total, living on a permanent fairly steep slope!
I was always a sucker for the older ships and I loved Amastra to bits (as I did Opalia and, to a lesser extent, Drupa and Serenia). What a pity such vessels have gone forever.

Ariffin Ramli @ ABADI, Sat, 04/11/2009 - 02:10

I have celebrated Hari Raya twice onboard Abadi 2002 and 2004. Also refit at Sembawang shipyard Singapore on Sept 2004.