Читать книгу Recollections of an Unsuccessful Seaman - Dave Creamer - Страница 11

The ship’s bridge is like a salt shower as we battle our way down the English Channel in the teeth of a gale. It is Christmas Day 1915, and we have orders to take our cargo of flour to the Dardanelles and to act as a store ship out there. This news puts a dampener on the already damp crew.

We arrive in Gibraltar and berth in the dockyard under the shadow of the huge Rock. Just after midnight we are disturbed by the very loud sounds of gunfire. Dozens of searchlights flicker and blaze over the inky Straits whilst little spurts of flame can be seen coming from all directions. Shells moan and whistle overhead, sending up columns of golden spray where they hit the searchlight-lit sea. It is said a German submarine is sneaking through the Straits. Gibraltar in action is a fine sight.

A 12-pounder gun is shipped and we take on two naval ratings as a gun crew. I believe we must consider ourselves fortunate, for there have been several cases of a naval gun being mounted on a merchant vessel and then the ship being sent out to sea with her mercantile marine crew having but the vaguest notion as to how to fire the gun. We are now a fighting unit and may, quite fairly, be sunk on sight by the enemy.

For some strange reason a civilian, usually the second officer, is in charge of the gun crew and directs the range of fire. Two or three of the ship’s seamen are instructed to act as ammunition passers. Should the ship be sunk, no matter how, the wages of all hands, except the naval ratings, will cease automatically as soon as the vessel goes under. In spite of these conditions, these practically-untrained merchant service crews have been involved in some very creditable scraps against enemy submarines in which the gun has played an important part.

New orders are received to proceed to Alexandria instead of the Dardanelles. There being no naval escorts and with the convoy system yet to be formed, the voyage from Gibraltar through the Mediterranean is made without showing our navigation lights and with our portholes darkened. We arrive off the low-lying coastline 16 days after sailing from Le Havre. The ship is conducted through the breakwaters and into the harbour by a pompous Egyptian pilot carrying a childish telescope and wearing yellow gloves and a red fez.

The teeming harbour is a picture of life, colour, and bustle, with launches rushing about, old sailing craft lying peacefully at anchor under the lee of the boulder breakwater, and huge troopships landing Australian soldiers. A large hospital ship, snow white except for the broad green band on her hull, glides smoothly through the harbour entrance on her way out to sea; at night she will be a blaze of green lights from stem to stern with a big red illuminated cross amidships.

The Mediterranean has never before seen such a variety of ships. There is a fleet of North Sea trawlers engaged in minesweeping; a continuous procession of giant liners, tramps, colliers and tugboats that have puffed up the Thames and the Clyde; and south coast pleasure steamers that will probably never again take sweethearts for a sixpenny trip in the moonlight to view the shipping in the Channel.

After our cargo of flour has been discharged, the ship is moved to the anchorage abreast of the famous old yacht the Sunbeami to await further orders. One of those sheik-like fellows, who ply the harbour by the score in their fast sailing craft, will put us ashore for a shilling, but the curse of Allah will be upon us should we choose to ignore his demands for more money. The customs gate at the landing pier is lined with money changers pestering for business; immediately outside in the street one is surrounded by a yelling hoard of loafers, hawkers of postcards decent and indecent, hotel runners, curio sellers, cabmen, guides, beggars, and touts for whatever takes your fancy. You must push through and walk on for they will not follow for more than a quarter of a mile, and by then their prices are coming down with every step you take.

One persistent old cabman refuses to give up:

“See Alexandria, Captain, Pompey’s Pillar,ii the Catacombs,iii Kiedive Gardens,iv very nice place, Captain.” His fare has now come down from ten shillings to three shillings each. “You no like Pompey’s Pillar, Captain? No Sir, alright Sir. Very good, Captain, I know a nice pub, Sir! Plenty girls, fine young girls, Captain, only fifteen years old, very nice, plenty dance, plenty . . . . . . that’s right gentlemen, get in Sir, Kiedive Gardens, alright Sir, I come from South Wales near London, Captain, very good family Sir.”

His persistence pays off and we take his cab.

The Arab horses are woefully treated, with impatient drivers working their whips unmercifully to make them trot or gallop faster. Often the cab is overloaded with seamen or soldiers with little or no thought ever given to the tired old horse. They keep going incessantly around the streets with little or no rest between customers.

On our trip we see the local life: country carts built from wooden frames on enormously high and wobbling wheels, little donkeys ridiculously overloaded, and herds of skinny goats apparently eating the sandy road. We pull up at a small country inn on the banks of the Nile; the sand has given us a thirst and the beer is cool. We watch the dhows drift by on the sluggish brown stream, much as they have done for 2,000 years. Our cabman says it takes five days to get from here to Cairo on the river but, like the rest of them, he probably knows nothing at all about it. Very little has changed here in the past 2,000 years except the introduction of licensing hours and the beer which, I believe, was that much better than it is today and could be drunk from proper glasses and not the bottle.

We continue with our tour, passing one of the forts built by Alexander the Great which now looks to be in need of builders. Suddenly, we are transplanted from the sandy waste of the desert to the Khedive Gardens – Kew Gardens in summertime – which are a blaze of colour and sweet with roses; here and there are miniature ponds and waterfalls, and some genuine green grass.

The catacombs smell as musty as a disused forepeak, so we drive back to the Boursev with its fine shops and crowds of Australian troops. Sitting for 20 minutes at an outside café table will give you every opportunity for inspecting the wares of as many hawkers; several of their goods are of a kind quite unobtainable in Woolworths. The hawkers are one of the main features of Alexandria; they even spread themselves out to the ships in the harbour from the moment the anchor goes down until she sails.

Jock McPherson is a full-blooded Arab who claims to have come from Greenock. He will sell you anything from a box of cigarettes, where only the top two layers can be smoked, to a bottle of whisky that proudly bears the label ‘as drunk by the Royal Family’. I have my doubts as to whether the royal family will have ever drunk methylated spirit of the poorest quality. There is nothing Jock will not do or sell if there is enough profit in it, from scaling the ship’s boilers to painting her complete hull. These people would have the skin from their mother’s corpse if it were saleable, but I should say their business methods are a little more above board than many of our London ‘financiers’ or shipowners. At least the Arab will not cheat his own employees quite so much.

We sail from Alexandria and return to Gibraltar to land the naval gun crew and the gun which, because of their scarcity, will be transferred to another eastbound ship. It is now the middle of January and we are heading west in ballast across the Atlantic, bound for the dreaded Canada once again. A winter’s passage in this class of tramp, or should I say government store ship, is never going to be pleasant.

It takes us 19 days to reach Saint John in New Brunswick. There is no heating in the cabins and our bunks lie close to the bare steel of the ship’s side. In the Bay of Fundy the actual temperature is not as low as in other parts of eastern Canada, although with it being very damp any temperature below zero feels that much colder. No one has been fitted out with any warm clothing for these Artic conditions.

The weather grows colder and colder as the vessel punches up the bay in the north-westerly gale and the blinding snowstorms. The seas are steep and high with the spray freezing instantly as it falls onto the deck and the open bridge. Life must be very hard on the timber schooners and small barques that are also beating their way up into the bay. With the temperature ten degrees below zero, the ship becomes a white mass of ice and snow. Before we can anchor, a stream of boiling water must be played onto the hawse pipe and windlass. Chunks of ice have to be broken out and passed through the manhole door of the frozen freshwater tanks in order to get some water. Just think, three weeks ago it was almost hot in the Mediterranean…

The captain faces being hauled over the coals for a ‘questionable expense’ – buying some cheap paraffin oil stoves, which smell exactly like cheap oil stoves often do. These expenses must be reduced if the shipowner is to pay his shareholders their 150% dividend, but at least we are that little bit warmer.

You can guess that my opinion of Saint John is simply not printable when I tell you that whilst ashore one evening I slip over on the confounded slippery streets and break a good bottle of whisky. I am glad to be departing from this port after we have loaded a cargo of ammunition, oats, and hay. The ship – her decks piled high with a solid frozen mass of rubbish and coal dust – looks wretched under the clear moonlit skies that accompany these intensely cold nights. It is really beyond a joke to come off watch from the bridge and to see one’s frozen oilskin standing upright on its own after taking it off.

Three days later it becomes comparatively mild and the ice starts to melt. We have one bit of trouble on the homeward passage when a Spanish fireman hit a Russian over the head with a fire axe; caught up in the resulting melee were a Mexican, a Swede, a Greek, and a Malay. This cosmopolitan collection is typical of the British mercantile marine in the time of war. These so-called seamen are paid £8 per month, which is exactly the same as a certified and experienced British third officer, but the officers don’t have a trade union!

The daily press is quite concerned about the ruinously high rate of wages being paid. One newspaper actually stated that a ship’s crew had recently signed on with the enormous wages of £8 and ten shillings per month, the highest wages ever given to seamen in the history of the British mercantile marine. It thus raises the question as to how the company can possibly continue to reward its shareholders with their 100% dividend. No mention is ever made of the vastly increased cost of living, or the wretched position of the poor ship’s third officer, who has little choice but to continue working for the same wages as the seamen. Politicians talk of merchant seamen as being the ‘jugular vein’ of the nation, providing of course they keep on working properly and do not make too many wage demands.

By the beginning of 1916, ship owning had become a highly profitable business with generous dividends being paid to the shareholders. Mr Bonar Law,vi who was the Chancellor of the Exchequer at the time, had invested heavily in shipping and found his shipping dividends to be most gratifying. At least he had the courage to say so in his speech to the House on the subject. ‘I don’t like talking about my shipping investments,’ he said. ‘I am ashamed of them. My investments have been in ten different companies under different management. It is true they were all in tramp steamers, but I am not quite sure if they make more profit than the liners. The sum invested in these ships was £8,110. In 1915, the dividend was £3,624, and in 1916 I received £3,874.’

He continued his speech by telling the House that when one of the tramp steamers in which he had invested £200 had been sunk or sold, although he couldn’t remember which, he had received a payment of £1,000, despite having been previously paid a very handsome dividend. He also mentioned ‘a division of surplus capital’ from a shipping company that earned him £1,050 from an initial £350 investment.

Freight rates were tremendously high in 1916. In one instance, the value of cargo being shipped from England to the States was $1,050 yet the freight charge was $2,500. The shipowners netted between 100% to 400% return on their capital at the expense of the sea staff, who took most of the risks for wages that were insignificant when compared with the huge profits being made. When taking the cost of living into account, the wages from the captain down to the lowest paid seaman were not one penny more than in pre-war times. The men of the mercantile marine will receive no pension for war disablements because we are civilians and not soldiers, but a certified officer is of far more importance to the country than a soldier. The alternative would be to recognise the mercantile marine as a fighting force and then we would have the benefits of gratuities and pensions.

During this profitable yet dangerous period of the war, an appeal was sent out by the Merchant Service Guildvii to every shipowner in the country to raise a fund for their employees interned in Germany. The result of this appeal revealed the true generosity of these prosperous war profiteers towards their seagoing employees; the sum of £471 and eight shillings was collected, a miserly three pence per each dependent. The shipowner chose not to play the game then, has not done so before, and has not done so since, and that is the end of it. I apologise for having broken out with this tirade against the shipowner, for it may not interest you in the slightest and it does little good. A certain type of shipowner will only laugh at what I have said, suggest that I am a crazy fool, and go on overloading his ships and underpaying his employees just the same.

There being 40 steamers at anchor in Le Havre roads upon our arrival, we receive orders to proceed to Dungeness West roads through the Folkestone Gate, a narrow wartime channel through which all ships must pass to enter or leave the Dover Straits. It is surprising how many vessels can accumulate when the traffic is held up for a few hours. I have seen 150 merchant ships collected together in Yarmouth roads due to delays. We don’t stay long before crossing the Channel again to Boulogne and anchoring in the outer harbour where, with a valuable cargo, we will be safe once more. Unfortunately, this harbour is also full, so despite it being a dirty winter night with heavy snow, we are soon ordered back out to sea again.

When I come off watch at midnight, our baker is moaning that his bread won’t rise. I haven’t been in my bunk for more than ten minutes when a sharp metallic noise similar to that of a telephone can be heard followed by a huge explosion as we are hit by torpedoes from both sides. The shock throws me from my bunk onto the deck. My porthole is blown in, but the cabin lamp still burns with the glass intact. The pasty face of the baker shows up through the opening where my heavy teak cabin door should have been.

‘Well,’ I say, ‘did you get your bread to rise?’

‘Bread,’ he says, ‘yes, it’s risen alright, through the galley skylight. What’s wrong?’

‘What’s wrong? By the sound of the water coming in I should say she’s sinking fast. You had better hop it for your boat.’

I must say I am a bit confused; there can be no other reason for putting on my bowler hat and leaving my camera on the settee. I have planned for such an emergency by packing all my papers, a few treasured relics, a clean collar and tie, some tobacco, and shoe polish into a small attaché case. With this slung over one shoulder and my sea boots clutched in one hand, I run along the smoke-filled alleyway. A sixth sense warns me of imminent danger and I stop to strike a match. A yawning chasm is right at my feet; I catch a glimpse of a body floating on the coal-scummed water far below. The low side bunker hatches and coamings have been blown up and the deck split wide open. Nothing can be done, so I cautiously reach around the corner for the short iron ladder leading to the boat deck.

The stokehold watch below have all been killed instantly except for one poor chap who has dragged himself up the fiddleyviii ladder with his thigh bone protruding through his trousers. Some of the crew in running from forward to the boat deck have fallen headlong into the bunkers to be drowned like rats in a trap. The wooden Marconi house on the bridge has collapsed inwards leaving the radio operators to climb through the deckhead. There is no time left but to make for the boats. Only a Swede and the two wireless men are standing by my boat, which we quickly lower with the two operators sitting inside. The senior radio operator has the seat of his striped pyjamas missing; the junior operator is so nervous that he cut the boat’s painter as soon as it hit the water, allowing them to drift off, gesticulating wildly, into the snow and the darkness beyond.

‘Where’s the captain? Where’s the captain?’ I hear the old mate yell.

‘In the bloody boat, and waiting to shove off!’ someone answers.

There is no time to dawdle, for the ship’s decks are awash. I jump off into the pitch black and land on somebody’s foot to the sound of some horrible language. We shove off hurriedly, knowing that from this very moment our pay will stop until we get another job. It does seem a bit mean, but those dividends must be paid. The hard case second engineer, who had tried to be paid off in Le Havre, appears to be the only person happy to be getting off the ship. I get quite friendly with him because he is the only one in the crowd with any money.

Eventually we get picked up by a tugboat and taken into Boulogne, where the captain lines us up on the quayside for a roll call. We’re as cheerful as cold boiled rice on a winter’s morning, and it’s certainly one of those. Shivering on the quayside whilst the authorities fill out forms, the man with the protruding thigh bone now has a chance to die.

The third engineer, normally a cheerful soul but hurt about the feet after getting out of the engine room, has managed to procure a bottle of whisky from a steward aboard the hospital ship. I climb into an adjacent bunk and we make the best of what is left of an eventful night. The people on the hospital ship have little concern for ‘expenses’ and serve us brandy and Bovril to combat the cold and to soothe our nerves.

In the afternoon we make the cross-Channel crossing onboard a heavily escorted steamer that was blown in half and sunk on her return journey. There is some delay at Folkestone in examining us; we look like members of a raided nightclub after a fancy dress ball, with some of us in uniform and some in rags. The six-foot senior wireless operator is wearing a short flannel hospital coat with sky blue trousers, the junior operator is in uniform with my sea boots, and the third engineer has remained in his greasy boiler suit with a tasselled yachtsman’s cap. I look the most respectable with my bowler hat, as if I were some clerk going to work after a hectic night out. We are certainly a weird looking collection for a shipwrecked crew.

Outside the docks a gentleman offers to pay our tram fares to the station; God bless him and his family for a dozen generations, and the Canadian soldier who gave me a packet of cigarettes. Generally though, the people of Folkestone just stare and grin at us. I suppose they think we are some advertising stunt. On our arrival in London, the crew is sent to the Sailors’ Home for the night, but the place is so full with shipwrecked seamen that our lot have to sleep on the floor. I go home by the tube to North London. The ladies on the train eye me rather disdainfully, as if it were high time I was in khaki. I can’t say I can blame them entirely, for I don’t look like a shipwrecked mariner in the slightest.

The next day I drift into the shipping company’s office only to be asked by the manager with a fatuous smile whether I have come for my money; not one single word of congratulations at having got clear of their mouldy old packet. Perhaps I’m speaking out of turn, yet I cannot help but thank Germany for putting her under. Money with a capital ‘M’ is all these people can think about, and very sensible of them it is too!

I believe this company lost their entire fleet during the war, doubtless at a good profit for their shareholders. We are told by the press that the men of the mercantile marine are doing wonderful work and showing great heroism. I am so glad to be a hero, but my hat still fits! The mercantile marine is doing what it has always done, albeit with a few extra difficulties and a lot of unpaid extra work thrown in. It is our duty to swell the dividends first and feed the country second – this is called ‘patriotism’. Our only real compensation is that the ordinary pre-war monotony of sea life is relieved just a little.