The final place on the cruise was North Berwick on the Firth of Forth in Scotland. Here again we were anchored off-shore and it was there that I had the experience of having two girls waiting for me on the jetty. I have completely forgotten how I coped with that but know I walked up The Law, a steep hill crowned by a pair of whale's jaw bones, with one of them.
About mid-1946 my father married a widow, Margaret Cooney, who had come to Brigg with a family that had taken over the Angel Hotel. She had two children, Agnes about a year younger than me and Michael about the age of my brother John.
Soon after the summer cruise we went into Portsmouth Dockyard for a major refit which was to take over a year. Only a skeleton crew remained on board; Chief E A Ron Botteril stayed and wanted me to stay and so it was arranged. During the refit I was able to get to Brigg very frequently. Leaving Portsmouth about tea time on Friday evening enabled me to be in London in time to go to a theatre and then catch the mail train at about 11:00pm, getting to Brigg in the early morning.
During this time I saw some stars of the British theatre. Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh in Antigone; Anton Walbrook and Mai Zetterling in Ibsen's The Wild Duck; Angela Baddely in Ibsen’s The Doll's House. At the Palace theatre I saw a show called Gay Rosalinda which was an adaptation of Die Fledermaus written by Johann Strauss "the younger" in 1874. The orchestra was conducted by Richard Tauber, a famous tenor who had by that time given up singing. I also went to two performances by one of the leading London symphony orchestras, conducted by Sir Adrian Boult. This was at the Coliseum theatre just off Trafalgar Square and one of these provided me with an unforgettable moment, the opening of the second movement of one of Tchaikovsky's symphonies - either the fourth or the fifth. I have since heard it many times on recordings but am still unable to remember which. The movement starts with a French horn solo and was turned into a popular song Will This Be Moon Love. On a less cultured note I went to the Windmill Theatre which produced continuous revues, many of the acts featuring scantily dressed chorus girls. It was there I saw Jimmy Edwards before he became famous.
January and February of 1947 brought one of the worst winters for many years.
Electricity generation, still suffering from years of war-time neglect, was overstretched and much of industry was limited to a three day week. The King and Queen were on their way to South Africa in the battleship HMS Vanguard; when the King heard about the chaos he is said to have wanted to return. The Vanguard was escorted as far as Freetown in West Africa by an aircraft carrier in which my brother Ken was serving. I cannot remember now if it was the Indomitable or the Indefatiguable, The crew were given shore leave in Freetown in Sierra Leone; Ken's first taste of "foreign parts".
As autumn 1947 approached, the ship was almost ready for service and it became known that we were to join the East Indies station, based at Trincomalee in what was then Ceylon. The crew increased to the normal complement and three new artificers joined my mess; Freddie Studwell (electrical), Pat Hannan and Bugsy Wheeler (both ordnance). They had been six months behind me at Torpoint and we became firm friends. An additional chief electrical artificer, Jim Stead, joined us and, as he was senior to Ron Botteril, Ron took over work which mainly involved gunnery control and kept me under his control.
Jim Stead was well liked but was a little eccentric. One day he came into the workshop rubbing his hands and saying "It's my wedding anniversary today". "Congratulations, chief" we chorused. "Don't congratulate me," said Jim. "I've left home".
On the first day at sea for post-refit trials, paint started to peel from one of the funnels and about the same time the diesel engine that drove one of the ship's four electricity generators suffered a serious fault. I do not know what caused the funnel to become so hot but it necessitated a further spell in the dockyard. Eventually the faults were rectified and after a period of leave we left for Trincomalee in October or Novemember 1947.
First stop was Gibraltar, for only one day I think, and then we entered the Mediterranean.
For several hours we were close to the coast of North Africa and I spent some time in the gunnery control tower looking at the scenery through the huge binoculars which in action were used by the gunnery officer to direct operations. Soon we arrived at Malta and entered Valetta Harbour on the day of the celebration of St Paul Shipwrecked. St Paul was on his way to Rome when shipwrecked in AD 61 or AD 62 and spent about three months there. The event was (and probably still is) one of much festivity with brass bands parading in the streets. The Birmingham did not stay as long as St Paul; next day we were on our way to Port Said at the northern end of the Suez Canal.
About the first thing I saw in Port Said was a huge sign, COCA COLA. What a welcome to the mystic east! The second thing to strike me was a huge statue of Ferdinand de Lesseps, the Frenchman who built the canal. Small boats carrying Arabs trying to sell all kinds of merchandise swarmed around the ship. Ropes attached to baskets were thrown onto the deck so that goods could be hauled up for inspection; if a prospective buyer showed interest haggling over the price took place and eventually the goods were either sold or returned.
Then it was into the canal. The west side of the canal was quite green and fertile looking but on the east there appeared to be nothing but desert; I thought of the Israelites and their 40 years of wandering in that hostile environment. At about half way along the canal are the Great Bitter Lakes which are big enough to allow ships travelling in opposite directions to pass each other.
Emerging from the canal into the Red Sea we spent a day or so at anchor to paint ship so that we would arrive on station looking spick and span. There was an oil refinery close by which had a terrible smell. Two or three days brought us to Aden, at that time a British possession. We were told it hardly ever rains in Aden and I know the streets were very dusty and the cinema did not have a roof. At the cinema I saw Goodbye Mr Chips.
Some of the crew were given a conducted tour into the old part of the town which occupies the crater of an extinct volcano; access is through a tunnel in the side of the crater. We also saw a place that was alleged to have some connection to the Queen of Sheba and her visit to King Solomon. In the evening with one or two mates I somehow met the local police chief; he showed us the cells which were full of shouting Arabs. He explained that he had rounded them up as they were known petty criminals who might prey on the Birmingham's unsuspecting crew. So much for Habeus corpus.
Then started the last lap - across the Indian Ocean to Ceylon and Trincomalee. It was said in the navy that Trincomalee is "Scapa Flow in technicolor" and so it proved. The harbour is huge, it is described in Encyclopaedia Britannica as "one of the world's finest natural harbours", and it is surrounded by tropical vegetation. There were no jetties and so all the time we spent there was at anchor in the harbour. The town itself was then a shabby place with no buildings of any interest; even the Hindu temple looked in need of a spruce up.
We were now on tropical routine which meant a fairly early start in the mornings but work finished at mid-day. We had plenty of opportunity to swim: over the side of the ship, on Sober Island and at a beach on the open sea in Trincomalee. Sober Island was a small island in the harbour with a jetty, and every afternoon a boat left the ship with men wanting to swim there in an area enclosed by shark-proof netting. In Trincomalee there was a club on a beach for naval personnel where sandwiches and tea could be bought but going there meant a walk of about a mile along Tricomalee's main street from Pepper Pot Pier to where the ship's boats took liberty men. I never heard any explanation of how the pier got its name.
Quite close to Pepper Pot Pier was a canteen where meals and drinks were on sale. The beer was brewed at an inland town, Nuwara-Eliya, and was known in the navy as "sludge". I found the name well-deserved and consumed very little of it.
Apart from swimming at the club we were able to watch the Tamil fishermen at work close by. Outrigger canoes took a huge semi-circular net out to sea. The net was then dragged in by men on the shore and always contained a large amount of fish. The market was also close by and I used to buy mangos and limes there.
More memoriest to come from Cliff on Brigg Blog.
1 comment:
Your 'Coke' experience reminded me of a similar experience in 1966...we were pulling out of Aden and I was re-assigned to a Hunter squadron at RAF Sharjah in the Persian Gulf.
This was a few years before oil was exploited off the Trucial States, now the United Arab Emerates...everything was very primitive ...the road between Sharjah to Dubai, about 8 miles distant, was a compacted sand track used by camels and a few Landrovers.
At the half-way point was a giant 'Drink Coca Cola' sign.
When we ventured into the bondu, down the wadis, we always could rely on finding an ethnic palm leaf hut in the middle of nowhere with a local arab with a rifle selling bottles of ice-cold coke, or 7-Up.
A few years later, the sheikdoms became extremely rich...and the sand track has now become an almost 6-lane motorway along the coast joining the states.
Coca Cola gets everywhere...
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