Ship Simulator
English forum => Ship Simulator 2008 => Media => Topic started by: Traddles on January 10, 2010, 15:51:59
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I found this picture amongst my store of photos. It shows sailing lighters alongside my ship in the harbour of St. Johns, Antigua, West Indies. The lighters were real sailing vessels with no engines, just a couple of large oars, which were hardly ever used as the lightermen were very skilled sailors. They would bring one of these alongside with scarcely a bump. You can see the drinking water barrel in the stern. I used to wonder if it was not liberally laced with rum. ;) :o
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Wow, that's really interesting. Thanks for posting that! - I always find the past interesting, especially knowing someone who has been there, and done it.
Thanks for sharing :)
Jack.
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Hi Angus
Could we perhaps tempt you to post a few more photos? I agree with Jack- and it's FAR more interesting than watching a modern container terminal!!!
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Hi Angus
Could we perhaps tempt you to post a few more photos? I agree with Jack- and it's FAR more interesting than watching a modern container terminal!!!
I second that!
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wow very interesting picture!
thank you for uploading that :2thumbs:
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Thanks for the kind comments folks. You have prompted me to do some searching. :blush:
here are a few more for you. A general cargo ship in those days carried anything you could possibly think of, usually just stowed loosely by stevedores, by hand, without pallets and certainly without containers, which had not appeared then.
No.1 A sailing lighter returning to shore empty.
No.2 Chief officer Graeme Cubbin tending a race horse. Deck cargo for Trinidad. This man later became Master and the Marine Superintendent of the company. He also is the author of "Harrisons of Liverpool" a definitive history of the Company.
No. 3 A refuse lorry being loaded at Liverpool for the West Indies.
No.4. A rowing lighter taking offloaded cargo ashore at St.Vincent, West Indies. ( I think that is where it is, but my memory gets a little rusty, Like Me :doh:
No.5. A passenger coach for Rhodesia Railways being discharged from our after deck by our own 40ton jumbo derrick (we didn't use tonnes then) at Beira, Mozambique, (Portuguese East Africa then)
Rhodesia is of course now Zimbabwe, (No comment :-X)
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On a lighter note. ;D King Neptune (and his Mrs.) struggling down the foredeck on crossing the line. Climbing over the lashings and chocks was an everyday pastime.
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Definately more interesting than the 'sterile' much-the-same-ness [sic] of a modern container ship! Railway carriages and horses... You don't get that on the Emma Maersk!
Angus, when you say 'the line' do you mean the International Date Line, or the Equator, some other nautical term, or the queue for the harbour Pub? ;D
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Stuart, the "Line" is always the Equator. In the picture the M.V. "Herdsman" was outward bound to South Africa from Birkenhead. Deck cargo, four oil tank wagons for Rhodesia Railways, 2 on the foredeck and 2 on the after deck.
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Like those pictures!
Love to have been on that lighter in the first pic!
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Sorry Angus, forgive my ignorance.
I wonder if it's still traditional to perform any celebrations when crossing the equator these days.
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I'm sure that cruise ships in particular still have the ceremony of crossing the line. Mostly we didn't bother but that particular trip there were an awful lot of greenhorns aboard and the Old Man decided it was appropriate. The dunking pool was built just aft of the scene you can see. An old canvas tarpaulin on a dunnage wood frame was enough. The poor chaps who were subjected to Neptunes ministrations were in a very sorry state after it was over. Engine oil, red lead paint and grease from head to foot. YUK. :o Quite cruel really, but "if you can't take a joke--------".
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Interesting storys and pics mate! :)
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Neptunes still comes on board when young sailors pass the line for the first time!
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Neptunes still comes on board when young sailors pass the line for the first time!
Only if they are stupid enought to admit it's their first voyage...
Angus, can you imagine them doing that now? grease, red lead, oil... "H&S, human rights..." ::)
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The nonsense is also taken seriously aboard oceanographic research vessels. After all, R/V stands for Recreational Vehicle, right?
One also receives a wallet card to carry so that one does not have to repeat the exercise.
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The nonsense is also taken seriously aboard oceanographic research vessels. After all, R/V stands for Recreational Vehicle, right?
One also receives a wallet card to carry so that one does not have to repeat the exercise.
:lol: :2thumbs:
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Only if they are stupid enought to admit it's their first voyage...
You can't fool Neptunes, since he writes every name in his book! :angel:
Harring that's been dead for a week or 2, is a good replacement for red lead and such. It's biodegradable :2thumbs:
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Hi Ballast,
On a biologic expedition, there is always some icky stuff from a plankton tow or a midwater trawl. It is biodegradable, and you are the bio that gets to degrade it.
Regards,
Marty
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Rotten herring or oil/grease red lead???
And you lot go to sea by your own free will??? :o
I've often thought you all mad; now I know it! ;D
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Hi Ballast,
On a biologic expedition, there is always some icky stuff from a plankton tow or a midwater trawl. It is biodegradable, and you are the bio that gets to degrade it.
Regards,
Marty
Whehe, and i always thought the crew of a R/V was too serious for stuff like that! ;D It proves again, that you can't judge stuff without being there.
Rotten herring or oil/grease red lead???
And you lot go to sea by your own free will??? :o
I've often thought you all mad; now I know it! ;D
No worries, you'll be washed down thoroughly with the fire hose afterwards. Just to wash off the greenhorn slime :doh:
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Very interesting pictures, thank you a LOT for sharing them! :2thumbs:
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Wow...Thats really interesting, always nice to hear stories from the "Old Days", no offence Traddles ;)
Great Pictures :2thumbs:
Matt
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No worries, you'll be washed down thoroughly with the fire hose afterwards. Just to wash off the greenhorn slime :doh:
Hmmm. I think if a fellow crew member came near me with water, grease/oil/slime then he would be going swimming... Head first... Though a traditional tot of rum would be just splendid.
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This would cool their courage. Batumi, Georgia, USSR. Awaiting some kind of action to discharge grain in bulk into those boxcars. No.1. Looking at pictures on Google Earth, the same cranes are still there.
Leningrad, USSR in November, 1975. Also kind of cool. No.2.
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These are the last 2 I can find.
No.1. Atlantic rough stuff. M.V. "Wayfarer"
No.2. Mule no.43, escorting M.V. "Inventor" through one of the Panama locks.
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More nice pics!
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I know it must have been very hard work on these ships, but I think you enjoyed the life onboard?
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Great at sea, lousy in port. :doh:
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There is a Dutch book about the seaman's life where they quoted the mother of a seafarer who said "my son doesn't work, he sails at sea" :2thumbs:
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Great at sea, lousy in port. :doh:
With a girl in every port? Or is that just the Navy ;)
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Only the one, in Liverpool (THE greatest port) and we are still together after 52 years. :angel: Not sure about these Royal Navy types though, merchant seamen earn the money for their Country, the Navy spends it. :evil:
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Angus, speaking of merchant vs navy... When you were starting out sailing, I suppose some of the senior officers onboard would have been of the right age group to have sailed merchant convoys in WW2... I bet they had a few tales to tell...
I really do envy you sometimes (not all the times- some times I'm happy being me ;))... All I've ever done is sit in a blasted office... Safer, warmer, drier, but dull...
Incidentally, in one of your photos, you are in Russia... You've mentioned Russia to me before in PM. Did you do a lot of work to Russia? Are all the stories of 'frosty receptions' and 'being shadowed by Russian navy' real, or were they just western propoganda against a good, decent nation?
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Stuart,
The ship I was on, M.V."Wayfarer", was on a time charter to the Russian government. Our job required us to go anywhere they wanted us to to load grain in bulk as they had had so many failed harvests. We would load, once in Chicago and down the St. Lawrence to Canadian ports, once in Montreal and other coastal ports, and once on the West Coast of USA, at Stockton, and Long Beach, California, and Vancouver, Washington, (USA) up the Columbia River, then sailing to somewhere in Russia, and discharge the cargo. When empty the ship was sent off, in ballast, to find another cargo. I called twice to Leningrad, (St.Petersburg) and once to Batumi. In each port three guards were stationed on the quay, one at the bow, one at the stern and one at the foot of the gangway. The object was two fold, a) to keep us ON the ship and b) to keep their own folks OFF the ship. We had to have floodlights hung over the outside of the ship so that the authorities could see that no one was trying to get aboard from the waterside. Whilst the pilots who came aboard and the stevedores were very polite and even friendly, the authoritarian folk were icy in their approch to us and not at all pleasant. One wonders just what they had been told about decadent westerners which made them so afraid of us. I once tried to give cups of tea to the guards during a very cold night in Leningrad only to have a rifle pointed at me and the terrified shouts of "Niet, niet". I found it very sad really. :(
As to the other part of your question, My dad was at sea through both world wars and was a survivour of Convoy SC26 when it was attacked by a UBoat wolfpack in the north Atlantic. Of the 22 ships which had sailed from Halifax, Nova Scotia only eleven arrived safely in UK. ON arrival in Liverpool King George 6th came aboard to welcome them home and to give his thanks for their safe arrival. The ship he was on at the time, S.S. "Magician" was nicknamed the "Magic Can" afterwards for obvious reasons. He was also master of S.S "Dramatist" which was the first ship up the river Irrawaddy to Rangoon on its relief by British forces. He had towed a tank landing craft from Suez to take part in the relief, but sadly as it was proceeding ahead of his ship up the river it hit a mine and was totally destroyed with all hands.
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Hi Angus
I have travelled to several communist countries in the 80s and, whilst I didn't have any guns pointed at me, the authorities were not too welcoming. Perhaps only those who have visited such countries or obviously lived in them, can understand what it was like... It worried the hell out of me on occasions and made me somewhat more politically aware than most others. Having seen the way they blanket ban all western newspapers (and pre-satellite) TV stations too, who knows what they told the local populous about us...
Having seen the film 'The Cruel Sea' when I was a kid, I was fascinated by it (fascinated may not be the best word, I will think of a better one later) and went on to read not only the Monserratt books, but also an incredible story of the Jervis Bay (the book title escapes me). The sailors and officers of both the Royal Navy and Merchant Navy were incredible people (as were other from other countries of course). Very much because they were 'just' normal people doing a dangerous, hard job... Not superman as made out in some films. What ship did your father serve on in the convoy?
EDIT: Just read that 100 lives were lost from that convoy... It was also one of the first convoy attacks that claimed a U boat too...
Sorry for hijacking your topic, Angus... But I think of the period 1939-1945 as one of the most 'interesting' in the whole of history. Anyone who has seen 'Uncle Albert' types from 'Fools and Horses, will know about their 'during the war' stories; Personally I find them absolutely incredible to listen to... Back in a time when things actually mattered.
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Stuart,
As I mentioned above, my dad was mate of the S.S. "Magician" in that convoy SC26, she was in fact the Commodore ship.
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Sorry, I didn't see where you said his rank.
There are quite a few web pages about this convoy (and many, many more from what I can see).
Thanks awfully for sharing these interesting stories with us.
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I apologise if this topic has gone a little astray. :-[ Needless to say I am very proud to have had a father like I did. After the SC26 incident my dad had to sail again after less than 2 weeks at home. He left Liverpool just as the blitz started when so much of the City was destroyed. I cannot think what he must have felt, leaving a wife and four children behind, knowing that we were probably in as much danger as he was. I attach a photo which my mother had taken on his promotion in 1944. You can see why I am so proud to be his son. His medal ribbons include the Atlantic star, the Africa star, the Burma star, the Italy star and three medals from the 1914-18 Great war.
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Angus, it's me that has caused this topic to go astray, but I'm sure no one will disagree that it is worth it!!!
Anyone who serves their country in TWO wars!, whether in the a big grey battleship, or in an un-armed merchant vessel, is worthy of total respect.
I notice the stripes on the cuffs of his jacket are a pattern I have not seen before- does this reflect some particular part of his career, or have I just not paid attention before (I mean the pattern as I've only ever seen plain stripes before).
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That is standard British merchant navy braid. During the WW2 all Company braid was forbidden so that there could be no confusion as to who was who. For example, the Masters braid in the Harrison Line is exactly the same as a Commander RN. The official title of masters in the Company was in fact Commander.
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to bad that they cant do that any more, like milk has to be cleaned.
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to bad that they cant do that any more, like milk has to be cleaned.
I was just thinking exactly the same thing... ???
That is standard British merchant navy braid. During the WW2 all Company braid was forbidden so that there could be no confusion as to who was who. For example, the Masters braid in the Harrison Line is exactly the same as a Commander RN. The official title of masters in the Company was in fact Commander.
I see the error. The braiding that I've seen was merchantmen who were seconded to the RN. See what I mean? The detail of history are being lost bit by bit :(