Mandalay

Returning at long last to the subject of the Weybank again, after leaving the Cape Verde islands behind us it took only around two and a half days to reach the Spanish Canary Islands. I could once again listen to Portuguese Fado music from Madeira (which is only a relatively short distance north of the Canaries) and from the Portuguese mainland. At night I could also clearly receive BBC programs which were broadcast on long wave (200 kHz) from Droitwich.

On the chart below our approximate course from the Canaries to the Ile d'Ouessant (Isle of Sheep) is shown in red and it takes us just about three and a half days to reach it from the Canaries. Ouessant (Ushant in English) marks the southern entrance to the western English Channel and is definitely a place we don't want to get too close to due to dangerous currents in its proximity. The photo below the chart depicts why. Ouessant also marks the most western point of France.

The only subject of any interest on our way to Ushant was when we reached the Bay of Biscay. For some reason when "homeward" bound I always passed through it at night and this time was no different. As usual there must have been around a hundred or so fishing boats ahead of us with their navigation and fishing lights dotting the horizon like christmas tree lights. These boats both Spanish and French fish with lines and/or nets and have the right of way meaning that according to international maritime law we are obliged to change course and circle around them, which our captain commanded to do so.

On a previous ship that I had served aboard we had also entered the Bay of Biscay at night and also on a heading for Ushant. I was on watch in the radio room when I heard the radar's rotary converter in the room next door start up. A few minutes later the hatch between the radio room and wheelhouse slid open and the 3rd mate's face appeared. "Hey Sparks, come and look at this" said he, sliding the hatch door shut again. I went into the wheelhouse but couldn't see much of anything of what he was pointing at because of night vision but I had a look at the radar screen and saw the pin points that the radar's beam had lit up. Like looking at the Cop end of Liverpool football ground during a Champions League match. At this moment the captain suddenly appeared in the wheelhouse - "Mr. xxxxx, are you f-----g blind or what?" (Mr.xxxxx being the 3rd. mate). "I was just about to call and inform you, Sir- permission to go around?" stammered the poor 3rd. "Go around? You are f.....g mad! He then ordered him to darken the ship i.e. extinguish all lights including the navigation lights and then without a change in course we proceeded to plough our way right through the middle of them. If it had been a full moon that night the captain might not have risked it. He was one of the real bad apples. The crew including the officers had long since learnt to despise him - some even had a hatred of him bordering on the insane.

Time is money at sea and anything that can slow us down is to be avoided if possible. Ship captains start getting nervous when closing in on the English Channel and I don't blame them because it is the most dangerous place in the world for a ship to be as far as traffic is concerned. Any serious mishap (e.g. collision, running aground etc.) can be a captain's career stopper whether or not he is directly to blame - he is responsible for the safety of his ship and crew – it comes with the job.

We "turned the corner" at Ushant into the English Channel under perfect weather conditions. It was the start of April and the high pressure weather system causing it remained almost stationary over the length of the channel, Belgium, Holland and Northern Germany and was still in place when I eventually signed off a few weeks later. However, for us aboard not being used to the colder climes it was chilly and it was time to change into our uniform "blues" (the actual colour of which is almost black with just a tint of blue).

Having not worn this (our "dress") uniform for well over a year I felt a bit of self-consciousness - who were we going to impress wearing it aboard such an unobtrusive cargo ship as ours? It was uncomfortable to wear as the material it was made from was heavy wool, the weight of the trousers required you to really tighten your belt to the point of strangulation. Wearing a tie again was another pain in the ass. If I remember correctly the name given to the uniform's material was Doeskin. Where they got this name from heaven knows - it conjures up images of supple, thin deerskin. The jacket however with the gold braid on the sleeves looked very snazzy but left a lot of empty space to balance out. The captain and my chief electrician pal Pat had both served with the MN during WWII and thus wore on their uniform left breast rows of what looked like miniature coloured flags but which were medal ribbons - very impressive!

The peculiar thing about MN officers concerning their uniforms is that they hardly ever went ashore wearing one, almost as if they were ashamed of it. Indeed, many a MN officer wouldn't be seen dead wearing one ashore. On the other hand there were the ones who took pride in wearing it. Sixty-five years ago, a member of the Marine Engineers’ Association (MEA) – a Nautilus predecessor union – wrote to the MEA’s magazine to lament the sartorial standards of his fellow seafarers. He urged them to wear their uniforms while ashore to 'remind the rest of the population that there is still a Merchant Navy'. His colleagues, he claimed, regarded the uniform 'as a badge of servitude to be worn by postmen, bus conductors and others, who show their contempt for the garb by making it look incongruous with coloured shirts and gaudy ties'. Quite what the writer would have made of today's boiler suits and baseball caps is a matter for speculation – but one thing is for sure, concerns about the smartness of seafarers are nothing new.

"Women love a man in uniform", or so it is said. Apparently this is a true statement if one takes passenger or cruise liners as examples. Aboard such vessels passengers also vie for the status of a seat at the captain's table, at least once per voyage. Some such passengers repeatedly return for a cruise on the same ship, strengthening their status - "How wonderfull to see you again" says the captain while thinking "God, the old bat's back again".

Aboard some passenger liners, P&O being one of them, certain of their officers were expected (ordered) to mingle with the passengers even to the extent of drinking with them in the ship's bars. They were paid an extra allowance for this "service". I can imagine the envy of male passengers seeing how some of the ship's officers in their uniforms attracted women to them like moths to a flame. On the other hand officers had to contend with the likes of things such as those explained below.

John Arton, an officer aboard the Empress of Canada wrote the following:

"Got rollocked by the Captain on the Empress of Canada for appearing in a photo with a tourist and not having my cap one. This occurred during a First Class bridge tour when the passenger in question was having her turn to get photographed steering the ship, grabbed hold of me, put my cap on her head and told the photographer to take the photo. All photos used to be posted up the next day in the foyer by the shops and the Captain used to examine them daily. The day after my photo sans hat had been taken I was on my way to post up the noon position and put up the miles steamed in the last 24 hours for the passengers raffle, when I saw the captain examining the photos from the previous day. He suddenly straightened up and stared closely at one photo, looking around he spotted me and beckoned me over, pointed at one picture that had a rather startled looking deck officer {me} with a females arm around my neck and her sporting my cap. He wanted to know why I had no cap on but when I explained that the lady in question, a dame of the British empire, had just grabbed my hat and put it on her head, he was somewhat pacified. After that we had to keep a spare cap on the bridge for passengers use only.

That particular bridge tour was memorable. The usual procedure for the 1st class bridge tour was for me to go to the 1st class lounge where the passengers would be sitting reading or writing up their journals whilst listening to the pianist tinkle the ivories and the bored 1st class barman polished glasses with no customers. The barman would announce to the room that anyone wishing to have a tour of the ships bridge should follow me. Most of the time I would only have one or two interested with most of them just looking at me as if I was an alien from outer space. This time though as I approached the lounge I could hear raucous chatter and laughter coming from the lounge and on entering was greeted by the sight of a very harried barman trying to keep up supplying a large group of passengers, led by a very smartly dressed, well spoken middle aged lady {who turned out to be a Dame} whilst the poor pianist tried vainly to make his tinkling of the ivories heard. On my presence been announced this whole gang fell off their bar stools and demanded pitchers of cocktails off the barman for them to imbibe whilst they were on said bridge tour. I led this gang of them, along with all their drinks, up to the bridge all the time wondering what I let myself in for and what the Captain would say if he witnessed it all, probably nothing as they were 1st class.

Once I had them all on the bridge they were more akin to a bunch of school kids on a days outing. Trying to maintain any sort of order was nigh on impossible, they were just wandering around drinking and attempting to play with any and all the gear. I just managed to stop one of them from ringing full astern on the telegraph's, he had asked me what they were for and I explained that they controlled the engines {could not be bothered to explain steam turbines to him} and thus the ships speed. He had his hands on them and was about to ring them astern when I got to him before he could actually move them.

Trying to keep a bunch of half nizzed 1st class passengers in line on a bridge tour was one of the most exhausting experience I ever had whilst I was on the Canada".

Having worn our Calcutta tailor-made jungle green uniforms for now over half a year, they had been beaten almost to death by our Dhobi Wallah and the time had come for Pat and I to give them a ceremonial burial at sea.

The English Channel is approximately 300 nautical miles (nm) in length, 130 nm breadth at its widest and only 18 nm at its narrowest at the Strait of Dover.

If we could maintain our 15 knot speed (not taking into account any currents which may be running against us or making collision avoidance detours) it would take us 20 hours to traverse. It was already daylight when we entered by Ushant so we would cover only just over half the distance before the sun went down.

In the chart above I have marked the positions of the main coast stations that I monitored along the way. The radio traffic on the 500 kHz calling frequency was overwhelming - I had not heard such cacophony since we had left the channel the year before. I could judge our progress through the channel by the signal strength of the coast stations which would rise until we were abreast of them and then slowly decrease the further we advanced. Sailing through the channel I listened especially to the general calls from Lands End, Niton and North Foreland. These stations not only transmitted scheduled weather reports but also navigational and safety warnings on their working frequencies - as did also French coast stations. Sadly, these and all the other similar coast stations were relegated around twenty years ago into history's bin. Some ex-R/Os managed to save tape recordings of morse traffic on 500 kHz and have posted some of them on YouTube - "those were the days my friend, we thought they'd never end".

In 1969 when sailing through the channel it was a case of "everyman for himself". Only two years later, following an accident in January 1971 and a series of disastrous collisions with wreckage in February, the world's first radar-controlled traffic separation scheme came into operation. The scheme mandates that vessels travelling north must use the French side, travelling south the English side. There is a separation zone between the two lanes.

The closer one got to the Dover Strait the more dangerous the situation became not only because it forms a bottle-neck for incoming and outgoing ship traffic but because of cross-channel ferries. The major ferry ports on the Continent are Calais, Boulogne, and Dunkirk in France and Ostend in Belgium (longer routes are from Cherbourg, Normandy and Brittany). Ferries from these ports sail mainly to either Dover or Folkstone.

Adding to the ship ferries, in 1959 the first Hovercraft crossing occured taking just over two hours between Dover and Calais. Hovercraft entered commercial service in August 1968, initially between Dover and Boulogne but later also between Ramsgate and Calais. The journey time Dover to Boulogne was roughly 35 minutes, with six trips per day at peak times. The fastest crossing of the English Channel by a commercial car-carrying hovercraft was 22 minutes, recorded by the Princess Anne on 14 September 1995. When crossing through the Dover Strait I often saw these hovercraft however if the wind increased above around Beaufort 4 or 5 and thus the wave height, they had to suspend crossings otherwise the wave motion would cause the air cushion on which they lifted to collapse.

Cross-channel ferry traffic also increased due to "Booze Cruise" - tax duties on alcohol and tobacco on the continent were generally lower than in the UK - a bottle of beer would cost less than half of what one would pay for it in the UK and thus the ferry operators increased the number of their daily crossings accordingly to meet the demand.

Today a Dover to Calais ferry will take 90 minutes to cross the English Channel. One ferry operator alone offers 9 different Cross Channel routes, with up to 744 ferries sailing a week across the Channel. Its most popular route, the ferry from Dover to Calais has up to 35 sailings a day.

Even with the control and monitoring technology in use today it is still a mystery to me why there are so few "accidents", to put it mildly.

We managed to escape the channel unscathed and now headed up the Dutch coast where to pass the time a bit I would listen to one of my favourite coast stations - Scheveningen Radio PCH. Their VHF and HF telephony channels were mainly "manned" by girls who all were friendly and had an enticing lilt to their English - conjuring up visions of sweet blonde Dutch "Meisjes". When terminating crew members' radio telephone calls via PCH I was often on the verge of asking "How about a date?" but managed, in the knowledge that these were open radio channels and half the MN world was listening in, to reluctantly restrain myself.

Below is a link to a video of Scheveningen Radio PCH made around the 70's/80's:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HnAj-xcD8gc

Leaving the coastal chain of the Dutch West Friesian islands behind we now headed eastwards along the chain of the German East Friesian isles until the day arrived when in the early morning hours just after the sun had risen - there she was - the Lightship "Elbe 1". For a German seaman seeing her once again it is a sight to see - "home again at last".

On the 09. November 1949 the lightship Elbe 1 went into service in position 54° 00' 00"N, 08° 06' 35"E. Within the next 39 years she would survive many near-collisions and a number of severe actual collisions requiring her often to be removed from station to undergo shipyard repairs. On the 22. April 1988 she was finally removed from service and replaced by an unmanned automatic light-buoy named the Elbe Tonne - shown at the mouth of the Elbe in the same 58°N 08°E position in the chart above. The Elbe 1 lightship however avoided the breakers yard. She is now a museum ship but is still afloat and seaworthy.

A total of six almost identical pilot vessels (built between 1958 and 1964) patrolled the mouths of the Elbe, Weser and Ems rivers. Three of them were stationed at the Elbe, two of them at the Weser and one at the Ems. The pilot ships took up position near the Elbe 1, Weser/Jade and Borkumriff lightships respectively. Normally only one vessel at a time patrolled its respective lightship area.

The pilot vessels crew quarters were forward, up to 44 pilots had their messroom on the main deck and their sleeping quarters on the tween deck aft.
The ships were twin screwed with diesel-electric propulsion giving them a speed of 13 knots, had a length of 55.10 m, breadth of 9.50 m and a displacement of 767 BRT. The last of them to be replaced by modern vessels was the Kapitaen Koenig which served until 2015.

On our arrival at Elbe 1 it didn't take long before a cutter from the pilot vessel came alongside. The Sea Pilot boarded - he would con us as far as Brunsbuettel whereafter the River Pilot would board to take us the rest of the way to Hamburg. The weather remained beautiful as we commenced our journey up the river. The pilotage to Hamburg is long and it was only by mid-afternoon that we came abreast of the Willkommhoeft ship-greeting station/ restaurant (see Chapter 1) at Wedel/Schulau on our port side. Two 1960's postcards of this station are shown below.

We could hear a German commentator announcing our ship's name and further details to the guests over a loudspeaker system. Our national anthem was played and they raised the Union Jack (it might have even been the Red Duster - they were that organized - I can't remember). We saluted them with blasts from our fog horn as we cruised by. It was here that I noticed a launch leaving the pier at Schulau and then speeding towards us. Our gangway was already lowered when she came alongside and two people jumped aboard. They were shown up to the bridge where we discovered it was our German ship's agent together with his girlfriend whom he had taken along for an outing. She was an all-in-one German version of Bridget Bardot, Ursula Andress and Dolly Parton - a real head-turner and she knew it too. She was also pretty smart and could give as good as she got - all eyes were glued on her including the pilot's and its a wonder that we didn't run aground on one of the sandbanks. I had asked the pilot where we were going to berth and he told me the name of the wharf but that we would not be going alongside, instead we would be moored to Dalben.

The name Dalben is derived from the Dutch language. It is a column of wood like a very thick telephone pole or a bundle of them called Duckdalben which are rammed into the harbour ground and serve to either moor ships to or as in the case of the Kiel Canal to guide ships along to the lock gate entrances.

Below is an old photograph of part of Hamburg Port showing clearly the Dalben and how the ships were moored to them. These types of Dalben were still in use in the 1960's and we tied up to them in the exact same way. The wood used in Hamburg Port in the 60's was a hardwood called Basralocus which is highly resistant to salt or fresh water. The longest Dalben were almost 18 meters in length and weighed over 5000 kg!

In the last few years the remaining of these Dalben were also finally removed from the Hbg. Port and replaced with modern substitutes with material other than wood. A German company specializes in making furniture from these discarded Dalben - the wood has retained all of its good properties.