Diary of a Merchant Seaman

~Diary of a Merchant Seaman~

Andrew Shiston

Casa de Snapdragon LLC

Albuquerque, NM

Copyright

Copyright © 2012 Andrew Shiston. All rights reserved.

Cover photo Copyright © 2012 Patricia Saunders. All rights reserved.

Smashwords Edition

No portion of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior written permission of Andrew Shiston, unless such copying is expressly permitted by federal copyright law. Address inquiries to Permissions, Casa de Snapdragon Publishing LLC, 12901 Bryce Avenue NE, Albuquerque, NM 87112.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Shiston, Andrew.

Diary of a merchant seaman / Andrew Shiston.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-937240-07-3 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Shiston, Andrew--Diaries. 2. Merchant marine--Great Britain--Biography. 3. Sailors--Great Britain--Diaries. 4. Sailors--Great Britain--20th century--Biography. 5. Shiston, Andrew--Voyages and travels. 6. Merchant marine--Great Britain--History--20th century. 7. Sailors’ writings, English. I. Title.

VK140.S55A3 2011

387.5092--dc23

[B]

2012011028

Published by

Casa de Snapdragon LLC

12901 Bryce Avenue, NE

Albuquerque, NM 87112

http://www.casadesnapdragon.com

Dedication

To my love who has given me new strength

Thank you Sue

All my love always

About this Book

This is the true story of Andrew, who came from a seafaring family and ran away to sea at the age of fifteen. Although most of his family served in the Royal Navy, Andrew joined the Merchant Navy.

During his twenty- five years at sea, Andrew sailed an amazing four million miles, covering the entire globe . . . sometimes to places you may never have heard of, and adventures that may sound impossible, yet true.

He served on over 69 different vessels of all types, from vessels of 600 tons to vessels over 500,000 tons. There were cargo vessels, gas carriers, U.L.C.C, massive oil tankers, passenger ships - from the queens to immigrant liners. He sailed cruise liners, cable vessels, laid telephone lines across the Atlantic and Antarctic, discovery ships, oil platform vessels and many others. Some of the stories will make you cry and some will give you a good laugh; some are tragic.

Prologue

I will start this story from my first memories. I was a two year old at the end of the Second World War. We lived on the top of the Island of Portland overlooking a naval base. I can distinctly remember seeing fighter planes over Portland. My family used the Verne Prison as an air raid shelter, and I was told it received a direct hit. Our family had to be dug out from the rubble, but we survived.

A few years after the war, my family moved to Weymouth, just across the Portland causeway, where I lived until joining the Merchant Navy in 1959.

Before I joined the navy, my mother and father had divorced. My father forced my mother, sister and me to leave the family home, and we moved in with a family friend, though still in Weymouth.

My mother could not come to terms with this. When I was fifteen, she saw me off on the train to travel to a training camp. This would be the last time I would see her for twenty years. I will include some of this in my diaries, but it seemed she had a calling to work for Christ, and she left the family home to become a medical missionary, eventually ending up in a Leper Colony on the west coast of Africa where she worked with the acclaimed Nobel Peace Prize winner, Albert Schweitzer. Many years later she was awarded the Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (M.B.E.) for work with the sick.

16th March 1959

I was fifteen years of age and after leaving school with just a reference to good ability and time keeping. I joined a builder’s merchant as a trainee salesman, but this wasn’t for me. I yearned for the sea and to be free of the land. As a young lad I used to sit on the farthest point of Portland watching all manner of vessels sailing up the English Channel to ports across the world. I left home to join the Merchant Navy and signed papers to spend twelve weeks at a training camp to train for the sea on a ship that was moored in the Severn Canal in the county of Gloucester.

We were marched out to the barracks square and ordered to stand in line, then handed cadet uniforms, and told to get changed and return on parade. Now we were all dressed the same, many of us had arrived clothed in all manner of different styles, this was the late 1950s the Teddy boy era.

We were marched into long, narrow Nissan huts where row upon row of three tiered bunks were lined up. This would be our home for the next twelve weeks or until we joined our first merchant ship. Our training would be on an old ship called Vindicatrix. She sat moored in the Severn River canal. On her bow she had a larger than life bare breasted female figurehead and on deck were two bare masts outlined against the cold grey sky.

As I lay in my hard bunk the first night, my thoughts were of home. With a start, I woke at six o’clock and the boatswain mate was shouting, Hands off ***** and on with socks, line up in the barracks square.

We paraded wearing only shorts and plimsolls. It was a freezing morning and most of the young boys were scared. We lined up two abreast of the boatswain’s mate shivering in our thin clothing. For an hour we ran round the camp, some of the weaker cadets dropped out with exhaustion and cramp, then the orders stop, get showered. We ducked and dived through icy showers, shivering as we marched off to the mess for one slice of bread with margarine and a mug of un-sugared tea.

These days, Britain was still getting on its feet after many years at war, so the equipment we were issued was not the best that money could buy. We had to parade on Sundays, polished boots and looking as smart as we could. This Sunday it was raining and after standing and marching in the torrential rain, instead of the stamp of boots, all that could be heard was this squish of saturated cardboard. Our boots had soles of compressed cardboard that soaked up the water like sponges. When we returned to our barracks we had to cut up the cardboard from our food parcels and resole our boots. We were allowed food parcels, we had to have them. The food we were given was enough to live off, but not enough to give us the energy we needed to survive some of the gruelling tests we were given.

We started each day at six o’clock, followed by a two mile run in all kinds of weather, sometimes ice and snow and dressed in a vest and shorts. After parade we would eat breakfast, usually just a mug of unsweetened tea and a small bowl of porridge. Next we attended morning classes, instructions in tying and identifying different knots. The afternoon was more substantial, sailing the old fashioned lifeboats which was an almost an impossibility.

Upon arrival, we were told that we were allowed five shillings a week (25 pence in today’s money.) This was usually spent on food from the small village close by, as well as for cigarettes. To do this we had to slip out through the wire fence and, if caught, it would be jankers (extra work). We progressed in our learning of how to sail a ship’s lifeboat, but in these modern days this was a useless project. It did, however, give us experience for what was to come.

In the ship’s hold was a gigantic pile of coal. When any boy was punished this was where he went, shovelling coal from one end of the hold to the other. There was an initiation for new boys, as well. One had to touch the figurehead’s left breast with his right hand which sometimes caused the cadet to fall into the canal. He then had jankers (punishment) a day for getting wet, a day for disturbing the swans. This went on and on until he had a week of jankers and was made to work long into the evening because punishment couldn’t interfere with classes.

In the summer time, the jankers would help the nearby farmers bring in their crops. The food was not sufficient for cadets to live on. For breakfast we ate porridge with salt instead of sugar and a cup of weak, sugarless tea. Dinner was a potato and a piece of questionable meat. For tea we had two pieces of bread without butter and at night a mug of cocoa without milk, and then bromide was added.

As days and weeks went by, young, timid boys became men. We out-did all that was required. We laughed and joked while having ice cold showers, we climbed and ran up the mainmast, washed our clothes in freezing water, and the next day we did the same. After twelve weeks of this, as well as exams, we were free and in the uniform of a seaman cadet. We marched down to board a train to take us to our new lives. Looking back, those were the happiest weeks of my life and I wouldn’t have missed them for all the tea in China.

A song we sang as we left behind twelve weeks of happy misery.

They say that at the Vindi

The food was very fine

A spud rolled off the table

And killed a pal of mine

Gee Ma I want to go

Gee Ma I want to go home.

They say that at the Vindi

The women are very fine

You ask for Bridget Bardot

And they give you Frankenstein

There were many other verses.

Chapter One

24th July 1959

My twelve weeks of training at the ship had passed and with the rest of the boys who had finished the course, we took the train to Southampton Seaman’s Pool. The building was old, and, for some reason I couldn’t fathom, painted green. With trepidation I entered. The building had a big sign on the wall that read in large letters Quiet! Ahead of me was a massive desk, about five feet high with an official sitting behind it. I waited in line and, when my turn came, started to tell them who I was. Before I could sign any papers, I was told to stand in line to see the seaman’s quack (doctor). When my name was called and I went in, he told me to drop my underpants and cough. He then told me to get dressed. He told me I had passed my medical, yet all the time he had this strange smile on his face. I collected all my seaman’s papers and I.D.

Some guy at another desk with a face like Fagan told me to take a form to Cunard White Star. He informed me they would stamp my seaman’s papers. Next I had to go to Miller & Rainer’s shops, collect a Cunard rig, and go down to Herbert Walker’s Avenue docks where I would report on board the R.M.S. Ivernia.

The first R.M.S. Ivernia was built in 1899 and her maiden voyage was in 1901 from Liverpool to Boston with a list of just 154 passengers and 5 maids.

This Ivernia II was built by John Brown & Company Clydebank, in Scotland and was launched in 1954. She was 608 feet long and 80 feet wide. She displaced 21,717 tons and her twin screws could reach speeds of 19.5 knots and would carry 925 passengers. Her maiden voyage was 1st July 1955.

24th July 1959

I walked through the massive dockyard gates and stood looking down the quay. Stretched out before me in a long line were eight or nine passenger liners moored alongside. The Cunard R.M.S. Ivernia was closest to me, aft flying proud; the Merchant Navy Red Duster, the Union Flag on a sea of red. Flying on the mainmast was the Blue Peter ready to sail on the tide.

The Ivernia was just over twenty- one thousand tons gross weight and her usual sailings were from Southampton carrying passengers and mail to either Montreal or New York.

I walked toward the gangway and climbed up to the ship’s D-Deck. There was a Quartermaster on watch. He asked what my business was and if I was new crew to go forward and see the signing on Shipping Master.

I found my way up three decks to the promenade deck and found the Shipping Master. He took my papers and told me to sign articles. I had no idea what I was really signing, but I scribbled my name and handed over my discharge book. A Boatswain’s mate told me to go and find a cabin and find my way to the sailor’s slop chest. There I could find