Mandalay

You may not believe this but there came a moment when I watched the arrow moving through 35° starboard and then crept slowly up to 40°, hung there for a moment and slowly moved down again where it rapidly headed to port to do the same thing there. That was the moment when I started to wonder about my 7th Sense but luckily that was the only time that she rolled that far. At the time it happened even I was praying „please don‘t let the cargo shift“.

Every vessel has its own natural syncronous rolling period which is inversely proportional to the square root of the metacentric height and directly proportional to the beam of the ship. If the vessel encounters a series of waves in such a manner that the wave period matches the rolling, the vessel will have no time righting itself before the next wave strikes.

Another thing about rolling is when your own centre of gravity starts going somewhere else. For a brief moment you get the feeling of weightlessness, like the astronauts in training who were jetted up to the stratosphere, the aircraft then abruptly headed downwards again but at the point of transition from up to down they would experience zero gravity for a short time. Years later I was aboard a big container ship doing sea trials in the North Sea when we also started to roll heavily. There were a lot of sub-contractors aboard either there to get their equipment tested or as in my case to fix the radars if they decided to breakdown. I was in the bridge ( which was not just big but wide) when we took a bad roll to starboard and I watched in horror as one of the contractors standing at the port side lost his grip and flew like Superman right across the width of the bridge and smashed into the starboard bulkhead. He only survived because he didn‘t fly head first but he broke a lot of ribs and other bones. We had to interrupt the sea trials and sail back to where we could get him ashore to a hospital – this was in the days just before helicopter evacuations or pilots boarding via chopper became almost commonplace.

Returning to Helene she slowly lost interest in us as by nightfall we were climbing hills instead of mountains and although still rolling like a pig, nowhere near as bad as what we had already gone through. Slowly we escaped but high winds, rough seas and torrential rain dogged us for days after.

For those of you reading this but have not gone to sea, below is an animation to give you an idea of how it was for us in the  tropical cyclone.

I was long since well and truly in love with Weybank. It would have been perfect if she had been christened with a name like Sally or Mojiko but being a Bank Line ship I‘m sure she wasn‘t christened at all – just shoved down the slipway unceremoniously in Bank Line Owner fashion – like a whore being pushed out by her pimp – „get on with it and start earning your keep, you bitch!“

No champaigne, not even a bottle of Guiness bid her a „safe and happy …..and all who sail on her“.

Month after month she had carried us safely and uncomplaining through everything that nature could throw at her. Not once did we have to heave to in the middle of nowhere to change a piston, unlike aboard a number of other ships that I sailed on. You trust her with your life in the true sense of the word in the knowledge that she won‘t let you down. You even start talking to her like during the cyclone - „come on girl, you can do this easy“. I‘ve seen a lot of car owners who feel the same with their cars – are we all nuts? (yes).

After roughly 19 days at sea since leaving Davao, we arrived at dusk at a remote bunker terminal in Capetown‘s „boondocks“ and sailed at dawn the next day – a quick overnight „Formula 1“ pitstop – we didn‘t have to change the tyres – just fill her up. Our next waypoint is the Cape Verde Islands – 3369 sm distant, 9-10 days sailing time.

On leaving Capetown we entered into the Benguela Current, a cold water current which is 250-300 km in width and flows slowly, about 1 kt speed in a northerly direction along the south-west coast of South Africa and Namibia.

The so called Skeleton Coast is a 40 km wide and 500 km long coastal stretch in Namibia, a hostile but fascinating area. It is the northern part of the Atlantic coast of Namibia and south of Angola from the Kunene River south to the Swakop River. It is associated with shipwrecks, and stories of sailors walking through the desert in search of food and water. The name is derived from the bones that lined the beaches as a result of whaling operations and seal hunts. A few of the skeletons were human. In the days of „windjammers“, being shipwrecked on its coast would turn into a nightmare for any survivors of the actual wreck, as the photo below will attest to. Note the broad surf and the massive sand dunes rising directly from the water line.

When sailing off the coast of Namibia we experienced the Cassimbo which is the name given to fog in this area caused by the meeting of the cold ocean current and the warm winds from the desert and

is responsible for the many shipwrecks that are littered up and down the Skeleton Coast. It can also extend to the width of the Benguela current.

As to our course towards the Cape Verde waypoint and beyond to the Bay of Biscay I can remember nothing untoward occuring. We all fell into our watch keeping routines and the days passed by uneventfully – no storms or accidents aboard or breakdowns – with each sea mile left behind us, slowly getting closer to home we weren‘t even bored as we might otherwise have been.

In the interim I‘ll describe an incident which occured when we were in Yokohama which I had totally forgotten. Describing Yokohama in a previous chapter I had stated that as we stayed for only a day I couldn‘t write much about it. Well, I could, if only I had remembered…..

According to international law each ship which had a radio station installed, no matter its nationality, had to have a Ship Licence (pertaining to the radio station) issued by the government of

the nation under which flag the ship sailed. In our case the license was issued by Her Majesty‘s Postmaster-General and a copy of it had to be displayed in the radio room. The License stipulated

what frequencies and types of emissions the radio station was authorised to use and the same for the Lifeboat Station and for the Radar Station. It also contained five closely typed pages containing rules to be followed etc., etc.

To make a long story short, each Radio Station had to undergo a yearly radio survey and inspection

to ascertain that the radio equipment was functioning A1OK and that the rules etc. were being adhered to. For this reason if a ship was in British waters when its yearly survey was due, a British Post Office Telecommunications official would board the ship to carry it out. Who would do the inspection if the ship was not in home waters? An authorised government inspector of the country which the ship was visiting when its inspection was due. On inspection by such an official if any equipment defects were found, the inspection would be abruptly terminated. The faulty equipment would have to be repaired and thereafter a new inspection date arranged. The ship would not be allowed to sail until the so-called Radio Safety Certificate was issued by the inspectors i.e. the terms of the inspection had been met.

When we were still in Osaka the captain told me that the yearly inspection would take place in Yokohama. I told him not to worry, all of the radio equipment was in top condition. As soon as we arrived in Yokohama our Japanese ship‘s agent came aboard and told me how the scene would be set. First an employee of a Japanese marine radio company (not a government official) would come aboard to do the survey. If everything was found to be A1OK then he would telephone the government inspector who would then arrive for the official inspection. The agent then told me that after a successful inspection and it came time for the inspector to sign the certificate it was the norm that he expected to be offered a good few drams of premium Scotch i.e. whisky and not offered from a half empty bottle either!

As we were in port the bond locker was sealed so I ran around all the officers accomodation asking if anyone had an unopened bottle of Scotch – alas the answer was no so I went to the captain and asked for some Yen so that I could buy a bottle ashore. Off I shot ashore and at the front door of any promising looking store I mimicked taking a glass to my lips while pointing at the store‘s shelves and shouting „Whisky?“. It didn‘t take long when one kindly gentleman pointed at a shop down the street and said „Whisky!“. „Arrigato!“ and off I ran. When I ran into the shop I asked „Whisky?“ whereupon the proprietar bowed and then gestured for me to follow him, up to a shelf loaded with Japanese Suntory whisky – not a bottle of Scottish Scotch in sight. Time was of the essence so I ended up buying a one litre bottle of the most expensive of the Suntory range. It came inside a very nice looking box as well. Off I galloped back to the ship and as soon as I got aboard I took it to my cabin and placed it under my writing desk on the right hand side. I then locked my cabin door and shot up to the radio room. I just made it before the Japanese surveyor arrived to do the pre-inspection check.

The surveyor was a young, tall Japanese who appeared to be just a couple of years older than I. There was none of the usual bowing or attempts at small talk - he started off more or less ordering me to do this or that in an arrogant way. „Switch on the main transmitter!“ - that kind of thing. I played along for a bit – until he told me to switch on the emergency transmitter – as soon as I did he pressed the morse key down and started twiddling the main tuning knob. Doing something like this would destroy its main transmitting valve so I immediatly knocked his hand off the key and then gave him a piece of my mind. I told him that before he arrived all of the equipment was functioning perfectly and I was going to keep it that way.

Anything he wanted to survey, I would do the operating and he could do the watching. If he didn‘t like it, he knew where the gangway was! This must have got him thinking overtime especially of having to explain to his superiors why he was ordered to leave the ship. It is a paradox because in the Ship License it stipulates that the radio officer will not permit any other person than himself to operate the equipment. To give him some credit his attitude then immediately changed for the better and we concluded the survey. He then buzzed off to telephone the inspector „ready when you are !“

A half hour later not one but two inspectors arrived. Both of them very polite elderly gentlemen in grey suits. They both stood in the background ticking off items on their clipboards as I operated the equipment – with my Japanese survey „friend“ giving a running commentary in Japanese.

All went well and my „friend“ then said that the inspection was successful and could they sit somewhere to fill out the paper work ( a hint about a few Whisky drams). I told them that we could do it in my cabin while having a few whiskys to which their eyes lit up. Down we traipsed to my cabin. I unlocked the door and ushered them in, asking them to take a seat. Up to this point I had not mentioned that it was Japanese and not Scottish whisky which they were about to receive and I was a bit apprehensive as to how they would take it when I spilled the beans. However, I never got to that point because when I threw a glance underneath my writing table – the whisky was gone!

It didn‘t need Sherlock Holmes to deduce who had removed it. It could only have been taken by my

steward who happened also to be the „Captain‘s Boy“ (captain‘s steward). He was the steward for only the two of us. My cabin door had a Yale key type lock, not an easy lock to pick even if you were an expert. My steward however had a pass key. At sea we never locked our cabin doors, only when in port. I said „excuse me“ to my guests and had a quick look around my cabin, checking in my wardrobe, under the day-bed (couch), the drawers underneath my bunk – nothing! I then opened my cabin door and shouted down the alleyway towards the dining salon - „get the captain‘s boy up here immediately!“. After an embarrassing five minute wait in which the Japanese held a muted conversation amongst themselves , in slouched the captain‘s boy.

I had been fortunate during most of our voyage to have had good stewards – of the cheerful and efficient kind with whom one could hold normal conversations with about family life, aspirations etc., etc,. Unfortunately, each time we returned to our proxi „home port“ Calcutta, most if not all of the Indian crew were changed. With the last of our crew changes in Calcutta I ended up with our present „Captain‘s Boy“. This steward was slightly taller than me, carried a lot of overweight and slouched around in sandals while wearing a white kind of Kaftan and white trousers. Talk about slow motion! He was lazy, performing his „duties“ with a minimum of effort – I would sometimes watch him as he for instance gave the washhand basin a perfunctory wipe with an old cleaning rag

instead of running the water and giving it a bit of a scrub – that kind of thing. Sweep the floor and carpet, empty the gash can (litter basket), fill up the water caraffe, make the bed (bunk) and change the bed sheets once a week – that was all that his work entailed as far as I was concerned. He had a sly look about him and projected a kind of latent insolence. He was very light skinned and it appeared to me that he seemed to think that this gave him a kind of superiority over his fellow Indian compatriots aboard. I instinctively took a dislike to him and I am sure the feeling was mutual.

When he arrived at my cabin door I asked him what he had done with the whisky. „I threw it away, it was standing next to the gash can“. I replied that it was nowhere near the gash can, the gash can was behind the other side of the writing table. I also told him that no one in his right mind would throw such a thing away without having a good look inside it at first – in its nice illustrated box – the weight of it alone would induce a good peek inside. I told him to go and retrieve it from the rubbish (when in port the ship‘s rubbish (meal leftovers, empty bottles etc.) couldn‘t be just tipped over the side polluting the harbour. In ports, rubbish was tipped into empty oil drums which were lashed to the stern railings of the ship. Once the ship had left port and was out in the open sea, the contents of the oil drums would be tipped into the ocean). The captain‘s boy replied that he couldn‘t retrieve it as he had thrown it over the ship‘s side into the harbour instead. I accused him of being a blatant liar and to get out of my sight. My Japanese guests who had no doubt got the gist of this new kind of Kabbuki show offered their commiserations „Vely solly...“. To my relief they signed the „Safety Certificate“ without further ado and I then accompanied them to the gangway where we exchanged polite farewell greetings. I had just returned to my cabin when through the open door I saw a chain of stewards, led by the Chief Steward, passing by and then up the staircase to the captain‘s cabin. In the alleyway I heard snippets of „Marconi Sahib say...“, „bad words..“.

Shortly thereafter I saw them passing by my cabin door doing the „Congo“ in the opposite direction, minus the Chief Steward. Not long after that the captain appeared at my cabin and asked me what had happened. I told him what had happened to which he replied that he commiserated with me but that „we now have a problem, the stewards have all gone on strike and will remain on strike until you apologize in front of all the other stewards to the steward in question“. The Chief Steward had told the captain that the Captain‘s Boy had stirred up all the other stewards into supporting his demand for retribution. This was indeed a problem and it would start with our lunch which we would not receive. In the days of yore a „strike“ would have been another word for mutiny, punishable by being tied to the main mast and getting a dose of the cat, being hung from the yard arm or keel-hauled. Alas, those days were long gone. The captain had always been a good skipper and it wasn‘t right that he should end up with the problem. I myself could see no other solution (apart from beating the crap out of the CB) and so, swallowing my pride, I told the captain that I would apologize but on one condition – that the CB would cease being my steward for the rest of our trip, even if it meant me cleaning my own cabin etc. I added that the CB, due to the „bad blood“ now between us making any further daily contact „impracticable“ to say the least, would agree to this (I didn‘t mention that he would also be happy to have even less work to do, having now only to serve the captain).

The moment came when The Chief Steward, CB, all the other stewards, the Captain, First Mate and the Bosun all gathered in the dining salon to hear my mia culpa confession: „I apologize profusely for offending steward xxxxxxx on the xx/xx/1969, wrongly accusing him of dishonesty in regards to an item missing from my cabin. I sincerely regret the accusation made and hereby ask the accused for his forgiveness in the matter“. A short pow-wow followed between the chief steward and the CB whereupon the chief steward then stated: „The Captain‘s Boy accepts your apology but only on the condition that he will no longer serve as your cabin boy“. „Agreed“ - end of the Mutiny on the Weybank. The CB still had a pass key so from that moment on I took all my personal papers (letters and photos from Inge etc.) up to the radio room and locked them up there – CB didn‘t have a pass key to get in there and had no business being there in the first place if caught. Even when he was my cabin steward, he was not the one who brought my morning and afternoon coffee up to the radio room – neither was he the one who swept the radio room every day.

Suntory retrospective; a US Marine wrote the following about the bloody battle on Tarawa atoll during WWII:

Just behind the coconut-log wall where the men of D Company had died there is a pit containing a 77-mm. gun, whose ammunition supply had been half exhausted. A few yards further along the wall there is a 13-mm. machine gun. Inside the gun pit is a half-pint bottle of the only brand of whisky I have ever seen in Japanese possession. The label, like the labels of many Japanese commercial products, is in English:

Rare Old Island Whisky

SUNTORY

First Born in Nippon

Choicest Products

Kotobukiya Ltd.

Bottled at our own Yamazaki Distiller

As I have written before, being at sea over long periods has something in common with being a prisoner in Alcatraz – both surrounded by water. This may sound a bit over the top but the similarities between a convict serving time and a seaman at sea are striking. The life of a convict is regimented by a combination of the prison warders and the clock. The convict will probably spend most of his time in his cell but otherwise his cell door is opened in the morning – he gets to do his ablution followed by breakfast then either work (if permitted to) at some sweatshop making car number plates or sewing mail sacks, has a lunch break and then back to the sweatshop. He might get an hour‘s recreation time mingling with other prisoners in the prison yard and by then it‘s time for the evening meal. Nowadays they might even be permitted to watch TV for a couple of hours in a common room but then comes „lock up“ - back to their cells until the next morning when the cycle is repeated. As we all know, prisons are violent places and who really runs them, the warders or the convicts is sometimes questionable. Apart from this, even the most placid of prisoners can at times go stir-crazy, errupting violently. A prisoner might be able to peep over the wall or through the fence at that which he cannot attain. He can‘t walk out through the gates to go to a movie, a dance, for a Big Mac, hook up with a girlfriend, visit his parents or siblings, go on a vacation, join a sports club, wander through shopping malls – the list of what he can‘t do is just about endless.

When at sea, we can‘t do any of these things either. Instead of a cell I had my cabin. We also led a regimented life, the only difference being that we had to control ourselves with self-discipline. Admittedly a deckhand for instance had to follow the orders of a Mate or Bosun but these were work related. Instead of going to a sweatshop, we had to keep our watches. Breakfast, lunch and dinner broke the monotony. We didn‘t have TV or movies to watch, no internet to Skype or phones to contact loved ones. Our main recreation time was spent reading. A lot of possible hobbies had to be given the miss because we had no room to carry them out in or if we did we could not get our hands on re-supply of items required to maintain them. We had alcohol aboard but at sea most of us would be very careful not to get inebriated. I might at the most just drink one can of beer at the end of my last watch of the day. And so, like an old-age pensioner, each day seemed to merge with the last - „what day is it?“, only the weather around us changed. However, redemption for us was always the next port of call – instead of „Spring Break“ we had „Prison Break“ (not to be confused with prison breakout Hi Hi).

When the academic Erol Kahveci surveyed British prison literature while researching conditions at sea, he found that “the provision of leisure, recreation, religious service and communication facilities are better in U.K. prisons than… on many ships our respondents worked aboard.”

Instead of this general situation improving for seafarers over time in the future, it got a lot worse, especially for those serving aboard container ships:

In 1965 the Bank Line fleet had 57 ships, all of them around 12000 dwt. By 1978 the Bank Line fleet had drasticly shrunk to only 18 ships! What had caused this rapid demise?

The Bank Line fleet was comprised of what is termed „multipurpose“ ships, a better word for „general cargo“.

General cargo meant just that – you name it, if Bank Line could get it to fit aboard, in it went. All kinds of cargo would be lowered into the holds and stowed next to or on top of each other (with the exception of certain hazardous cargoes that had to be seperated). General cargo (also called Breakbulk) are goods that must be loaded individually and not in containers nor in bulk as with oil or grain. Breakbulk cargo is transported in bags, boxes, crates, drums, or barrels. Bales of jute, boxes of tea, timber, electronic goods, automobiles or automobile parts, crates filled with shoes or cutlery or heaven knows what. At other times all of the holds were just filled with copra (a Bank Line favourite cargo), wheat or some other bulk cargo. Bank Line (BL) ships would go anywhere to pick up cargo and for this reason they limited the size and hence the draft of their vessels so that they could navigate up rivers like the Hooghly to get to it. Often a BL ship would moor to a river bank in the middle of nowhere while loading/discharging cargo with her derricks from/to the likes of Oxcarts.

Discharging and then loading general cargo at ports like Calcutta could take weeks before the ship was ready to sail again. These long stays in port were caused by the time consuming process of lowering cargo nets into the holds, filling them up and then hauling them out. In the holds and tween-decks cargo had to be rearranged and stowed securely to prevent them shifting in bad weather at sea. Cargo plans had to be redrawn so that the individual cargoes could not only be later located but also to maintain the stability of the ship.

When ships carried general cargo, a cornucopia of everything, in bales and barrels and piles – and dockers unloaded all by hand, there was more time ashore. There was rest and recuperation. On a voyage in 1954 a typical cargo ship, the SS Warrior, carried 74,903 cases, 71,726 cartons, 24,036 bags, 10,671 boxes, 2,880 bundles, 2,877 packages, 2,634 pieces, 1,538 drums, 888 cans, 815 barrels, 53 wheeled vehicles, 21 crates, 10 transporters, 5 reels and 1,525 undetermined items. A total of 194,582 pieces, all of which had to be loaded and unloaded by hand. The total weight came to just under five thousand tons of cargo and would have taken weeks to move.

In 1955 a US American trucker named McLean who ran his own trucking business came up with the bright idea of a container which he promptly designed and produced – a container with standard dimensions.

McLean built his company, McLean Trucking into one of United States' biggest freighter fleets. In 1955, he purchased the small Pan Atlantic Steamship Company from Waterman Steamship and adapted its ships to carry cargo in large uniform metal containers. On April 26, 1956, the first of these rebuilt container vessels, Ideal X, left the port of Newark in New Jersey and a new revolution in modern shipping resulted. This trucker revolutionized not only the trucking business, he unknowingly at the time sounded the death knell to not only the Bank Line but also to the British and US Merchant Navies.

After the Second World War, the great powers in shipping were Britain and the United States. They had ships and supplied men to sail them. In 1961 the United Kingdom had 142,462 working seafarers. The United States owned 1,268 ships. Now British seafarers number around 24,000. There are fewer than one hundred ocean going U.S.-flagged ships. Only 1 percent of trade at U.S. ports travels on an American-flagged ship, and the U.S. fleet has declined by 82 percent since 1951.

By 1965 Japanese and Korean shipping companies had had a good think about the use of containers and had invested in building ships centered around the dimensions of standard containers, a la McLean.

Instead of loading general cargo with cargo nets, all they had to do was load the holds up with containers which all had the same size and which would fit neatly into the dimensions of the ship‘s holds – which were designed for just this purpose. This concept rapidly found acceptance by freight companies worldwide and who adapted their own resources to meet those of these new container ship companies. By the early 1970‘s many of these container ships had already become the largest ships in the world but with an inherent increase in draft. To accomodate such large vessels, many ports worldwide built new deep-water facilities which were often by necessity remote from the location of the original port. Thus, new rail and road links were also built to be able to transport the containers to and from the vessels. These new container ports also built massive crane gantries to enable rapid loading/unloading of the containers. Due to this, most container ships adapted by ridding their main decks of their own cranes/derricks but keeping usually a single mobile gantry of their own, „just in case“. This in turn opened up more space for stacking up containers on the main deck.

In the 1960s the Bank Line had derisively refused to believe that the container ship concept held any future and instead steadfastly stuck by their multipurpose general-cargo guns. The Bank Line was not alone by any means in this belief – many other British and foreign shipping companies would soon pay the ultimate price. By 1975, just 10 years on, they were having difficulty in obtaining cargo to transport. This was a time when you could see many a general cargo ship which had undergone some quick shipyard doctoring in an attempt to make it into what it just couldn‘t become – a container ship. To gain the finance to be able to get their foot into the container ship market door, the BL started rapidly trying to sell off their general cargo ships. To avoid any new-ship building delay they started instead to buy second-hand container ships but it was all too little, too late.

Now, in 2020 some of the world’s biggest container ships are over 1,300 feet long with a width of 180 feet. Their engines weigh around 2,300 tons, their propellers 130 tons, and there are twenty-one storeys between their bridge and their engine room. They can be operated by crews as low as just thirteen men (and women) with the aid of sophisticated computer systems and carry an astonishing 11,000 20-foot containers. If that number of containers were loaded onto a train it would need to be 44 miles or 71 kilometers long!

The silhouette image above shows the size of the Weybank in comparison to a container ship behemoth. The container ship is three times the length of the Weybank!

Below, a view of a container ship‘s holds :