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.
