Life in the Merchant Navy was very different from that in the Royal Navy. On the ships I had my own cabin, complete with a wash basin. A steward made up my bed and every evening left tea making material and sandwiches in case I had to get up during the night. The food was far superior to that in naval ships and as I soon discovered became epicurean when we had passengers.
On 31 January 1949 I signed on as second electrician in the Anchises, a sister ship to the Astayanax. They were quite new ships built after the war. Most of our cargo was destined for Labuan, a small island off the north coast of Borneo, and consisted mainly of bags of cement and galvanized iron window frames for an oil refinery which was being built there.
The first electrician, there were only two of us, was in his forties and had been at sea for many years.
Ships of the Anchises class carried 14 passengers; most of them were not travelling for pleasure but were employees and families of various firms or government departments. This of course was in the days before air travel became so common. We had two other passengers - race horses bound for Singapore. They were housed in two large wooden boxes on deck and did not come out of the boxes until we reached that port.
Dinner on the first night out astonished me; it was real luxury. Course followed course; soup, fish, entree, main dish, dessert and cheese and biscuits were served by the stewards. We ate in the saloon with the passengers but at a separate table and we were not encouraged to fraternise with them. Drinks were now dirt cheap. A double gin, a tenth of a bottle, was sixpence; whisky was eightpence and a small bottle of Bass beer sixpence. My pay was about one pound a day; a pound was 240 pence. I took a liking to gin and tonic and the first electrician and I had one every night before dinner.
The first part of the voyage, as far as Gibraltar, was the roughest I ever encountered but I was not seasick. We had a young engineer who had been to sea before, had given it up, and was now giving it a second trial. He hardly kept down a mouthful of food and was looking very frail by the time we reached Gibraltar. He left the sea again at the end of the voyage.
Our main work in the early part of the voyage was overhauling the winches and the switch gear which controlled them. They would be used to discharge and later load cargo. We had one helper, a Chinese man. The engine room crew was Cantonese but the deck crew and stewards were British. From our Chinese helper I heard the only Chinese I ever learned. As 10.00am approached he would look at his watch and say "Yum cha" (tea time) and disappear to the aft end of the ship where the Chinese crew was housed.
First stop was Port Said, prior to entering the Suez Canal. In the Royal Navy we hired a searchlight and an operator from the Canal Company but Blue Funnel ships carried their own. The searchlights consisted of two carbon rods mounted in front of a large concave mirror. The rods almost touched each other and when a Direct Current voltage was applied to them they produced an intense light. A mechanism ensured that as the rods burned away they were moved back towards each other so that their tips remained a constant distance apart. The canal was lined close to each bank by floating reflectors much like the cat's eyes we see on the roads, and the light from the searchlight reflected from the mirrors enabled the pilot, a canal employee, to keep the ship in the middle of the canal. One of the two electricians had to be standing by the searchlight when it was in use. I learned that it can be very cold at night in Egypt.
After a brief re-fuelling stop at Aden it was across the Indian Ocean to Singapore and then to Labuan to unload the bulk of our cargo. We then went around to Tarakan and Sandakan on the north east coast of Borneo.
Sandakan was in British Borneo but Tarakan was in what had been part of the Dutch East Indies and was now part of newly independent Indonesia. Tarakan was a poverty-stricken place; at the end of the jetty at which we were berthed we sold cigarettes for fistfuls of paper money but when we reached the township about all we could buy was some vile sticky soft drink. Many years later I saw a picture in a museum in Canberra which showed Australian troops landing at Tarakan during the war. I think few, if any, of our crew knew of this engagement.
At Sandakan we took several Chinese workers on board and went up a broad river to load logs. I wish now that I had enquired about the name of the river; all I know is that it was in the British part of Borneo. The tree trunks were floated down the river from the interior, two trunks of a lighter wood were lashed to one which would not float; I think the heavier wood was more valuable. There was certainly a lot of fuss from the British forestry official when one was mishandled and sank.
It was a nightmare job loading the tree trunks; they had to be lowered into the holds at an angle and in the holds there were ropes and pulleys to get them stowed. The Chinese workers from Sandakan were employed on this job. The first mate, who oversaw the operation, aged visibly in the several days we were up the river.
The logs were guided to the ship by pygmies from the interior. Nothing could persuade them to set foot on the ship; once they had attached the winch ropes to the logs their job was done. We were told that their main reason for doing this work was to get money to buy salt. Almost every day brought periods of torrential rain. When the rain stopped and the sun reappeared, clouds of steam rose from the dense jungle on the sides of the river.
The Anchises' captain limited us to four bottles of beer per day, and also limited the daily amount of spirits we could buy. The British forestry man told us we could have a case of gin at five shillings a bottle. For some now-forgotten reason I was the only one with ready money, so I bought the gin and the recipients paid me when we returned to Liverpool.
At last the logs were all safely stowed; we dropped the Chinese labourers, who had lived on deck in makeshift accommodation, back at Sandakan and headed for Singapore. We probably loaded cargo at Port Swettenham and Penang on the west coast of Malaysia. I have certainly visited those two ports more than once but am not sure of on which voyage I did so. Tin, which is mined in Malaysia, was an important cargo. Tin is very valuable and was exported from Port Swettenham. When we were loading it there were always armed guards watching. The port is named for Sir Frank Swettenham who was a colonial administrator in the area in about 1880.
Another important export of Malaysia was palm oil, extracted from nuts, which is used in soap manufacture. I think it was in Singapore that a large party of Chinese women, all dressed in blue blouses and shiny black trousers, boarded the ship to clean the holds which were to be used to hold the palm oil. They brought long bamboo poles which were lashed together to make scaffolding and from this scaffolding they thoroughly scrubbed the sides of the hold. It is necessary to keep palm oil warm, so pipes were laid in the bottom of the hold in which steam was circulated once the oil had been loaded. Long tubes accessible from the deck allowed a thermometer to be lowered to take the oil's temperature. The ship's carpenter had the job of doing this several times a day until the oil was pumped out in Liverpool.
But before getting to Liverpool we went to London to discharge the tree trunks. When the hatches were opened there was an appalling pong from the river water which had been unavoidably loaded with the timber.
I think we arrived on a Thursday and on the next day I got permission to go to the races at Kempton Park on the outskirts of London. I had a disastrous day; the only winner was the bosun who asked me to back a horse called Eclat for him and which duly won.
In the first race I saw Lester Piggott who was to go on to be one of England's most successful jockeys of all time; he was then 15 years old. In that race I backed a horse called The Accused, ridden by champion jockey Gordon Richards. Close to the post he appeared to be well in the lead and I was getting ready to collect my winnings. Then a red shirt flashed past him. It was worn by Lester Piggott on a horse called Tancred.
I consoled myself for my bad day thinking I would go again on the next day and recoup my losses by backing a horse called Peter Flower in the Great Jubilee Handicap. Peter Flower duly obliged but I was not there to see him.
By the time of the first race we were sailing down the Thames heading for Liverpool. The tree trunks that the Chinese workers had taken so long to load were discharged quickly by the London dockers who had the convenience of dock-side cranes instead of having to use the ship's winches.
I was paid off in Liverpool on 15 May; the trip had lasted about 10 weeks.
More memories from Cliff to come on Brigg Blog...
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