Return to

Home Page

NEW AUTHORS SHOWCASE

 

6M

P3

A LIFE ON THE PAN / LIB WAVE

by

Edward D. Baker

( Memories of a freelance Radio Officer)

 

Synopsis

 

At the end of WW2, mainly for reasons of tax, more and more ship owners-Greek owners in particular-began abandoning their national flags in favour of Flags of Convenience. The flag most widely flown was that of Panama but in the early 1950’s the Liberian flag appeared on the scene and soon pushed the Panamanian flag into a very poor second place. Within a few years ships flying the Liberian flag comprised the world’s largest merchant fleet.

 

Of the fifteen years the writer served as a radio officer in the Merchant Navy quite a number were spent on these ships. This is a  factual,if at times a lighthearted account of what Life was like on them..

 

PAN 1

 

The first time I travelled down Cardiff’s Bute Street was on May 4th 1943. Then, aged sixteen, fresh from an Edinburgh radio college and feeling very self conscious in my newly purchased uniform with its wavy gold band on the sleeve I was on my way to join my first ship as third radio officer: the RANDFONTEIN, a cargo passenger of the Holland South Africa Line.. Now, almost exactly five years later, May 1958 -the last three of which had been spent in the employ of the Marconi company and from whom I had just resigned— I found myself travelling down Bute Street for the second time. This time in response to a telegram from the Radio Officers’ Union giving the address of a company needing a radio officer on a Panamanian ship.

 

After twice having to ask passers-by for directions I eventually found the street I was looking for. It turned out to be a cul de sac situated in one of the more rundown parts of Cardiff’s dockland area bordered on either side by grimy, dilapidated warehouses. It was hardly the sort of district where one would have expected to find the offices of any self respecting shipping company and my first thought was that I might have got the address wrong. However, a quick glance at the telegram assured me that I hadn’t. Spotting a tarnished brass plate attached to the wall on the opposite side I crossed over to have a closer look. The barely discernible inscription it bore,” Vrettos & Co”,assured me that, unlikely though it seemed, I had indeed arrived at the right address.

 

Facing me when I opened the door alongside the plate was a gritty wooden staircase. I walked up and found myself on a small landing leading off from which was just one door, slightly ajar. I knocked and walked in. Sitting behind an untidy desk littered with papers in what was a rather sparsely furnished office was a pale, thin faced man in his fifties, wearing rimless spectacles and dressed in a shiny brown suit which had definitely seen better days.

 

He looked up, unsmilingly and speaking with a pronounced foreign accent asked what I wanted. I handed him the telegram. After reading it he asked to see my radio certificate and any proof I had of my experience. I passed over the certificate together with my Seaman’s Discharge Book and certificates covering service on non British ships. These were all examined at some length than, obviously satisfied he handed them back saying,” Is not my sheep. My friend in London ‘as just buy. Is new sheep. Cane”. With that he got up, lifted a trap door in the floor and beckoned me to follow.

 

I clambered down after him and on reaching the bottom I realised that I was in a ship chandler’s store. The place was full of drums of paint, wire hawsers, shackles plus a myriad of items needed for the running of a ship. He made his way to a wall telephone and was soon engaged in an animated conversation in what I realised was Greek. The call over he turned to me and said that the owner had agreed to the salary as stipulated in the R.O.U’s foreign Flag  agreement_, a copy of which I had picked up at the local union office. He went on to say that the ship was in Barrow-in-Furness, which came as rather a surprise as I had imagined that if not in Cardiff it would at least somewhere in the Bristol Channel -and that I was to catch a train leaving that night. Travelling on the same train would be the second officer and he suggested that I look out for him. He would, he said, be easily recognisable because, “He ‘as very beeg black eyes”. While I made no comment I couldn’t help thinking that the chances of my being able to spot, late at night, a person with big black eyes on, of all stations Cardiff’s, a port with a sizeable and well established racially mixed population living mainly in the area known as Tiger Bay were, to say the least, pretty remote.

 

As I made my way back up town, armed with money for expenses, I couldn’t help wondering what I was letting myself in for. I was soon to find out!

 

The rest of the day was spent taking in a movie then, after having a meal and sampling some of the local ale I made my way to the station, found a corner seat on the train and settled down to snatch a few hours’ sleep before we arrived in Crewe where I had to change trains. All thoughts of keeping an eye open for the second mate having long since been abandoned.

 

In Crewe, where there was going to be a fairly long wait I decided to go along to the buffet for a cup of coffee. There weren’t many people there and all of them, with one exception could safely be assumed to be British. The exception was a rather pale faced man in his early thirties sitting by himself a few tables away. He was wearing a lightweight fawn gaberdine suit and two tone shoes -and he did have rather unusually large brown eyes! It had to be the second mate I thought: a fact confirmed when I went over and spoke to him. A Greek as, so it turned out was everyone else on board. He spoke English with hardly any accent and we became good friends during the short time we were together.

 

On arrival in Barrow we took a taxi and shortly after entering the dock area the ship suddenly came into view. Of about 3,000 gross tons, listing heavily towards the quay and flying a rather tattered Panamanian flag she didn’t present a particularly inspiring sight. Her black hull, buff superstructure and aluminium painted lattice derricks were all badly rust streaked. Somehow her rather romantic sounding name -HELLENIC NYMPHE- emblazoned in bold white letters on her stern seemed sadly out of place. While she may have been a new ship as far as her present owner was concerned many years had passed since she made her way down the slipway.

 

As we got out of the taxi the first thing we noticed were sheep being hoisted aboard in a sling. An unusual cargo we thought. However ,we soon discovered that apart from a refrigerator and a virtually useless ice box the ship had no refrigerated storage capacity. The sheep constituted our meat supply for the trip.

 

Introduction

 

The first time I travelled down Cardiff’s Bute Street was on May 4th 1943. Then, aged sixteen, fresh f ran a n Edinburgh radio college and feeling very self conscious in my newly purchased uniform with its wavy gold band on the sleeve I was on my way to join my first ship as third radio officer: the RANDFONTEIN, a cargo passenger liner of the Holland South Africa Line.

 

Arriving on board I found that I would be sharing a cabin with the second radio officer who, apart from the D.E.M.S. gunners was the only other Britisher and non Dutch national on board.

 

As well as keeping the 12-4 watch in the radio room I was expected to spend two hours after breakfast every morning on the bridge. This partly to act as an extra lookout but mainly to familiarise myself with the various aspects of visual signalling and assist the cadet -who, at 31 was somewhat older than your usual cadet- in reading and responding to flag hoists.

 

It was during one of these spells on the bridge, a few days into the trip and with the convoy enveloped in fog that I happened to go out on the starboard wing. As I looked around I suddenly saw something that nearly made my heart stop! There, almost abeam and a little way out from the ship was a periscope. I immediately called out to the captain, a man in his late fifties who walked with a pronounced limp and who wore the ribbon of a Dutch decoration, warded I was told, in recognition of his bravery when his previous ship had been torpedoed. Followed closely by the third officer he came dashing out of the wheelhouse and looked to where I was pointing. Then,laughing and putting a fatherly arm around my shoulders he explained that what I was looking at was a fog buoy: a device attached to a long line which, as it was towed along sent up a spout of water thus enabling a ship in line which might not be able to see the one in front to keep a safe distance. While I must admit I felt a little foolish it was a great relief to know that it wasn’t what I thought it was!

 

Some twelve days later, south of the Davis Strait and just as it was starting to get dark we ran into an extensive area of ice. The escorts began scurrying about dropping lights near the larger and more dangerous pieces but these had a tendency to float way from and drift around to the back of the obsructions they were intended to identify, rendering the exercise of only marginal value. With ships altering course to avoid hitting each other or hitting one of these large and dangerous pieces of ice the situation became quite chaotic. So much so that all thoughts of keeping the convoy together were abandoned and the commodore ordered all ships to proceed independently to Halifax where, on arrival one or two ships were seen to have sustained superficial damage to their bows and where we. together with others bound for U.S. ports, joined a coastal convoy for the final leg of the After austerity Britain New York -which we reached by way of the Cape Cod canal and Long Island Sound -might well have been on another planet as far as I was concerned and visits to the empire State Building,Billy Rose’s Diamond Horseshoe, Jack Dempsey’s bar, together with numerous invitations to parties organised by various philanthropic groups in the City made for a memorable stay indeed.

On the return trip we were appointed commodore ship of the coastal convoy from Boston to Halifax the commodore and his signalling staff joining just prior to sailing.

 

It was while we were at anchor in Boston waiting for the convoy to assemble that I was called to the chief officer’s room and told that I was to put on a rubber survival suit and jump into the water in order to demonstrate to the passengers how safe and effective this type of suit was. As someone who at that time, in spite of having had a number of lessons, had failed to master the art of swimming, I

must say I viewed the prospect with a singular lack of enthusiasm not to say a certain degree of alarm when told by one of the junior deck officers that the suit had a tendency to leak at the neck. However, the jump was made, the suit didn’t leak and from what I gathered the passengers were suitably impressed!