Читать книгу Recollections of an Unsuccessful Seaman - Dave Creamer - Страница 8

What the Admiralty Sailing Directions say about the West Coast of Africa.

From ten o’clock in the morning till five in the evening a white man is seldom seen abroad; at the latter hour, the race-course and the premenade on the battery are frequented by equestrians and pedestrians; and, perhaps, no circumstance that strikes the attention of a stranger, makes so strong an impression on his mind as the general expression he observes of languor and debility in the looks of every individual he meets of European birth (with perhaps two or three exceptions) in the colony. The young and old, the acclimated even as they are deemed, who have had their seasoning, either in one fever, or the periodical return of that malady, and have survived these attacks, show plainly enough the baneful influence of the climate, which leaves the future without vivacity, and frame without vigour, and the whole constitution apparently deficient in vitality.

“The English oil-traders never live on shore. Vast hulks of East Indiamen, once floating palaces or stores, are the houses of the agents; while trading vessels sometimes remain three years in a river, their decks covered with a thatched roof. These ship-villages are governed by a council of captains, who punish thieves and mutineers, and act as a Court of Arbitration, there being a power of appeal to the Consul of Fernando Po, who visits the rivers from time to time in a man-of-war. Half a century ago the delta was merely a slave-exporting land; and the palm oil traffic is quite of recent date. In 1808 our imports of the oil did not exceed 200 tons a year; at present they amount to about 50,000 tons. In this Delta of the Niger, the refuge of reckless and despairing men, Death, as if sure of its victims, throws off the mask. Once enter that gloomy land, and the impression can never be effaced. The rivers filthy as sewers; the slimy mud stinking in the sun; the loathsome crocodiles lying prone upon it, and showing their white bellies as they sullenly plunge into the stream; the foaming, shark-haunted bars; the hideous aspect of the people, whose bodies are usually covered with sores; the traders with their corpse-like faces – all this can be remembered, but cannot be described. The tribes which occupy the lower regions of these rivers monopolise the inland trade, and their chiefs acquire considerable wealth.”

“Here a European must look after himself; for the inhabitants are so subtilly mischievous, that you will be betrayed before you are aware; and they are so barbarously cruel, that the parents sell their children, and the husband his wife, one brother and sister the other; and, in decency and order, are scarecely a degree above the beasts.”

This description was written in the seventeenth century, and we do not find the inhabitants have improved since that time. (1890)

Among the predisposing causes of sickness, one of the most frequent is the dread and prostration of spirits that pervades almost every class of people on their first visit to this unhealthy coast. The unremitting fatality of the diseases, united with the depressing influences of climate, have certainly gained for this part of the globe, an unenviable notoriety, which time can never dissipate. Notwithstanding the array of fearful drawbacks, individuals may reside in the majority of these regions, unimpaired in health and constitution, for a considerable number of years, by proper care and attention to hygiene considerations, by cheerfulness and confidence relative to future results, regularity and a tropical adaptation of diet, by a determination to resist hypochondriacal forebodings, or despondent impressions, by the appropriate employment of time in judicious mental and physical labour or recreations.

In those pre-war days from 1908 to 1913, when trade grew and changed enormously, a voyage from the Continent to West Africa was said to be one of the toughest in the mercantile marine. In the years I mention, there were no trade union secretaries opening harbours, for there were no harbours to speak of on that vast stretch of coastline, and there were no native kings emptying their bottles of gin on the beach to set a good example for their subjects!

There was hardly a coastal village from Dakar to the Congo that wasn’t visited by the company’s vessels. I was on all the different runs at one time or another – the creeks, the oil rivers, and the Congo. We sailed from Hamburg to the slimy and shark-infested Niger creeks, leaving a trail of trade gin at every little out-of-the-way factory (as these trading stations were called) from Sierra Leone to the Cameroons, and then down the fever-reeking Gabon and Muni rivers to load mahogany and other wood for the return voyage to Hamburg. Unlike the mail boats from England, we had none of the pleasures of orchestras, French menus, ships’ doctors, or other luxuries. On these steamers, we just made do with rum, bully beef, and pyjamas instead.

The steamship SS Mango, in which I sailed as second mate, was an old rattletrap engaged in the West African trade. In the two years I was on board she was commanded by five different masters: one too shaky to hold a sextant, one a card fiend who would play patience going through the surf, two who were really quite mad, and the last a teetotaller. As the second officer, I was reckoned to be a little crazy, but the chief officers were considerably worse. One took drugs and another consumed trade gin, or ‘methylated’ as it is known, a practice not tolerated even on this coast.

Sailing from Hamburg in the SS Mango is quite an experience. With many thousands of green cases of gin, a few additional trade goods loaded in her rusty interior, the lower bridge piled high with potatoes and other items for the captain’s private trade, and with a dozen dogs to be sold down the coast kennelled in the forecastle, the Mango swirls past the gay night haunts of St. Pauli,i down into the dreary lower reaches of the Elbe, and out into the teeth of a howling north-westerly gale. The old packet wallows, creaks, and groans under protest at her top speed of about seven knots through the bad weather and the nasty seas in the English Channel before she can enter the Bay of Biscay.

The deck cargo of heavy oil drums breaks loose from its lashings off Dover and by midnight what remains of the third mate, who had left the bridge to see what was wrong, has to be carried back to his cabin located in the officers’ accommodation under the poop. To cross the slippery decks that are continuously awash from the heavy seas with dry clothes in one hand and clutching the lifeline in the other is indeed a feat, not one of dry feet though. The third officer’s body is landed ashore at Plymouth. We lie at anchor for a couple of days windbound before setting off into the worst gale I had ever seen in the Bay of Biscay. With wicked grey-green curling monsters rearing high above the forecastle head, she dips down into the appalling deep troughs between the rollers, regular ‘Cape Horners’ I would call them, but more dangerously steep. For three days she lies with her nose to the shrieking wind, her cargo derricks swinging perilously and with the engines broken down. The skipper really thought the old tub was doomed and finished when the first mate was injured. By instinct, physique, brain, and mind, I am the conventional ‘office’ man if ever there was one, never as happy as when doing the accounts, manifests, and ship’s business. I find myself beginning to dislike the sea life, but it is too late now.

She didn’t go down though and hasn’t done yet as far as I know. A few years ago I saw her name on a sale board in a Fenchurch Street office: ‘The fine full powered steamer Mango.’ Evidently there are advantages in not telling the whole truth when it comes to advertising!

The skipper dashes me a bottle of champagne when we get her on a southerly course once more. After six-hour watches on that sodden lurching bridge and messing about with the sea anchor and oil bags in between, one needs a tonic. The German crew are steady and good workers, but they aren’t at their best in those conditions. After crossing the Bay, we arrive off Las Palmas where we lie at anchor on her rusty cable for a few hours before heading south to meander along the monotonous sandy coastline of Gambia and the swampy peninsula of Sierra Leone.

For people who are easily influenced, there is a great deal of romance attached to this part of the world. British philanthropists founded the colony of Sierra Leone in 1787 with 400 repatriated slaves and 40 European prostitutes. Most of them died from disease and fighting the local tribes, but obviously nature took its course because look at the number of people in the colony now. Personally I never want to see the confounded country again.

At Sierra Leone, 60 ‘Kroo’ii boys are shipped as stevedores to discharge the vessel’s cargo along the coast and to load her up with the logged wood exports. No accommodation is provided for them on board so they sleep on the iron decks. They work from early morning to nightfall and live on a diet of salt meat and rotten fish. The distinguishing sign of the tribe is the blue tattoo mark on their foreheads. Being the most intelligent on the coast, there are some good sailors in their midst. The headman is in sole charge of the crowd and in cases of insubordination or arguments amongst them, the offender is lashed to the rigging and soundly flogged.

From Monrovia, where the head customs official was caught going ashore with the captain’s cat under his very much gold braided uniform coat, we progress slowly down the Grain, Windward, Ivory, and Gold coasts,iii landing trade gin and cotton goods onto the sandy beaches where the Atlantic rollers ceaselessly thunder. Since the war, trade with the Gold Coast has increased tremendously, probably because it is the richest country in the world for its size, exporting half the world’s cocoa supply, a quarter of the manganese ore, and large quantities of palm oil, gold, diamonds, and bananas. In what was until quite recently ‘Darkest Africa’, 500 new motor car licences were issued in 1928 in the city of Kumasi.

With a harbour on the Gold Coast becoming imperative, Sir Robert McAlpine commenced work in 1921 building the port of Takoradi, a few miles southwest of Sekondi. The harbour is some 200 acres in extent and cost around £4 million to build, but at the time of writing, every ton of cargo is landed on the palm-fringed beaches by means of surf boats.

Here and there we pick up native deck passengers including many young dusky belles. They flaunt their high-heeled French shoes and open work silk stockings and are generally accompanied by half-naked black servants and howling babies. They always carry with them various household effects including that useful ceramic article of toilet-ware often found beneath the bed.

In the early morning mist the vessel anchors as near to the roaring surf edge as she can safely lie. With the rattle of her cable announcing our arrival, the surf boats leave the shore manned by half-naked boat boys paddling as a man to a fantastic chant. I must say it is as well to be on good terms with these boat boys as a capsized boat is a frequent occurrence. Aboard the Mango, the ‘mammy chair’, a box-like contrivance for landing passengers, is slung overside from the derrick head and filled with a laughing, fighting swarm of natives with their umbrellas, babies, pots and pans, looking glasses, poultry, and what not. The chair is swung clear of the rolling decks, the winch rattles, and they are deposited pell-mell into the heaving surf boat far beneath.

The first boat takes the third officer ashore, an experience that on a bad day he will never forget. From the steamer, it doesn’t look so alarming, but once in the boat, the crested white foaming walls ahead rapidly grow in dimensions. At a signal from the headman positioned at the big steering oar aft, the paddles cease for a moment. Waiting for a great green-capped roller to tower astern, he gives a blood-curdling yell and the paddles furiously stab the water. The heavily laden boat swinging high onto the breaking crest of the wave is propelled at tremendous speed into the safety of the shallow water, where a moment later a crewman will carry ashore the boat’s passengers.

The third officer’s duties are to wander around the beach, superintend the discharging and loading of the boats, and collect liquid refreshment and the signed bills of ladingiv from the various factories. Meanwhile, on the steamer, the first and second officers tally the cargo as it comes from the hold and then see it safely into the waiting surf boats.

Occasionally the surf gets too heavy for the boats to return to the ship, leaving the third officer stranded on the beach. This is no great hardship, for the hospitality ashore is generally good and wet. I was once hosted by a royal who was dressed in decrepit check trousers and a topper a size too large. He was a most hospitable old chap who gave me a warm bottle of lager and asked which of his three daughters I would like to entertain me for the evening.

In recent years, the ship’s officer’s duties have changed and they no longer do this kind of work. They have also lost the traditional perk of collecting ‘excessive luggage’ fees from the native passengers in exchange for a worthless piece of paper purporting to be the company’s receipt, a practice from which they innocently made a few extra shillings and, in my opinion, quite deservedly so.

It is hard work along this coast for the ship’s officer. The steamer can often call in at three ports in one day between the early morning and sunset. In addition to working in the day, the second officer keeps his navigational watch from midnight until 4 a.m. on the bridge whilst the vessel cruises along the coast to arrive off the next village by daylight. The middle watch at night can be four long sleepy hours. Although there is little sea traffic, the thunderstorms can be terrific. Sometimes glowing balls of fire seem to rest upon the mastheads and it is often possible to read on the bridge by the light of the continuous vivid lightning. It is said to be the most luminous part of the Atlantic Ocean with the whole sea surface appearing as if it were a sheet of liquid fire with the bow wave throwing a sickly glare through the broken water. The whole experience can be particularly unnerving and distinctly unpleasant for the novice watchkeeper alone on the bridge. In the wet seasons, the nights are dark and gloomy with a strong breeze and not a solitary star to be seen. The second officer must also superintend the lowering of the ten-ton steam launch that is used for towing the boats to the edge of the surf. When the ship is rolling heavily, this can be very dangerous work.

The voyage continues into the Bight of Benin, heading towards the dreary and depressing town of Forçados before carrying on up the narrow and tortuous mangrove creeks to Wari, Benin, Sapele, and Abonnema. The creeks are evil smelling and alligator infested, with screaming parrots flying overhead and inquisitive monkeys peering out from the mangrove branches. Hanging from some of the branches an old kettle or bucket can be occasionally spotted; they have been hung there as symbols of the queer native ‘Ju-Ju’, or witchcraft, and will have their very own mysterious meanings.

Some of the carved ebony ‘Ju-Jus’ for sale in England are from Birmingham. In 1928, ‘Ju-Jus’ became all the rage in the drawing rooms of Paris and London. Artists produced them and call it ‘Exotic Art’, but whilst they carved some of the female shape, modesty prevented them from including all of it.

The water is deep yet in places the vessel brushes aside the mangrove trees growing from the riverbanks. The native pilots have a good memory for the twists and turns in the channel despite there being very many blind creeks. A wrinkled old man clad only in a broken bowler and a smile gives us a wave as he fishes from a frail dugout. It never was a health resort around here, but for the old timers it must have been pure hell.

A local magnate goes swiftly past in his big canoe, the paddles manned by his numerous wives and with the chief himself sitting aft drinking his gin under the shade of a large green umbrella. In these parts, although native wives only clean and do other light work, they will probably have less to do than in many houses back at home and their lives will be that much easier than the majority of the poor women I have met in merry England, much to the benefit of their figures:

Ladies, if you want that slim and upright figure, then copy these native women. A few simple exercises walking in a state of nature through some wood with a soft article such as a few pounds of rubber on your heads and, if you have babies, these can be lashed on your back whilst you exercise. This will do the trick.

Wherever a horrible climate and good business profits combine, the Scots make the best colonists. Anyone who can survive purely on porridge in the western highlands of Scotland in winter can stand anything in this world and maybe even the next. Macgregor Lairdv was reportedly one of the first of many intrepid explorers to enter the almost-impenetrable Niger Delta. Although the climate was frightful and the natives about as safe as a tiger with the toothache, he managed to reach the fat old local king and exchange a double of the real stuff and a spare kilt for a boatload of ivory. A fair exchange when profits are concerned!

Nigeria is not a country in which to linger and is of absolutely no use at all to the prohibitionist. Brigadier General Frank P. Croziervi CB, CMG, DSO, writing in the Sunday Express, said: ‘the drink was appalling when he was in Nigeria’. When I visited that salubrious country, the drink was whisky and there was plenty of it.

When we round Cape Formosa the climate becomes most depressing. This coastline is more or less one huge interminable swamp and, without exception, the most deadly part of the whole west coast of Africa. We anchor in the Rio del Rey under the shadow of mighty volcanic mountains before heading south to the little rocky islet of Fernando Poo that was named after one of the three navigators who discovered it and two other islands. Cameroon is wild. The natives are enthusiastic headhunters and skull worshippers and members of the hemp smoker’s fraternity; not nice people at all.

We reach the Gabon River in the rainy season and it pours down continuously; a musty-smelling white mist shrouds the mangrove swamps. The vast country of Cameroon lies to the north and the French Congo to the south. This is a sad, dismal, and fever-stricken coast that has no attractions apart from the opportunity for an individual to make a bit of money, but even that will be done away with.

Within 24 hours of our arrival our second engineer dies of malaria fever whilst the third and fourth engineers and I suffer from frequent attacks. It is surprising the difference in effect a stiff dose of the fever could have between a big hearty German such as our fourth engineer, who is left a miserable wreck, and a skinny individual like myself who experiences little or no change. The chief officer, whose brain is affected, has to remain in a hospital further up the coast, leaving me to act in his place. We hope to call for him on the way back. The natives are by no means immune from the fever, and I find myself having to give medicine to the Kroo boys as and when required, which is frequently. They relish black draught mixed with Epsom salts and sip castor oil as if it were liquor. There are many complaints requiring attention: yaws, which covers the body with running sores; elephantiasis; malaria; and syphilis.

The ship lies at anchor for some three weeks at the entrance to the Gabon River, taking on board the rafts of logs floated down from up country. The third officer tows the rafts alongside the steamer with the steam launch, but sometimes the grass rope lashings part and a dozen or so logs escape in all directions in the eddying current, giving the third officer the job of rounding them up.

Hoisting logs, which can weigh anything from four tons to eight tons, on our shaky derricks is dangerous work in the extreme. With the great baulk swinging from bulwark to bulwark with the roll of the ship, the winch boy has to wait for his chance to lower it with a run into the hold below. Sometimes the derrick or wire rope will carry away and should there be a native underneath when the log comes crashing down onto the deck, there is a nasty mess. The officer must nail a tin tally onto the log and record its number in a book before climbing into the hold below to superintend its stowage. This is no easy matter with logs from 20 to 50 feet long, and often it becomes like a giant jigsaw puzzle to load the full cargo. And all the time it rains! Getting wet, externally of course, and staying wet in this unhealthy and fever-ridden climate is to court disaster. With a deck-load of logs aft and some space left to fill up homeward bound, the Mango has, at long last, loaded most of her cargo.

Whilst loading the logs we bought an alligator in the hopes of selling it for a good profit in Hamburg. Unfortunately, the beast had other ideas, and after it had escaped and chased the cook, we helped it over the side. We still have a selection of melancholy-looking monkeys and some shrieking parrots that we plan to sell to animal dealers on the Continent.

We leave the Gabon River and steam across the Bight of Benin towards Cape Palmas off Liberia, crossing the point on the equator at the Greenwich Meridian where both the latitude and longitude read nothing at all. Had we more cargo space, we would stop off at other ports on the homeward passage to pick up a few of the great whitewashed puncheons of palm oil, or some sacks of kernels or cocoa, or some barrels of stinking raw rubber, or even some dingy ivory tusks.

It is refreshing to all on board to get the good salt breeze again, but a dangerous time for the fever patients. It is said the soundings of the ocean bottom from West Africa to Las Palmas will only show a trail of human bones and empty bottles. We hear of a vessel that was rendered helpless two days after leaving Dakar, in Senegal, when the entire crew was struck down with malaria fever. It is not a pleasant business, this malaria fever.

We call in to the Sierra Leone River to take bunkers and to land the Kroo boys, who are paid off after receiving their present of a barrel of rotten salt meat and a cask of rum between them. A few days after leaving Sierra Leone we anchor off Madeira to load wine. The cargo is delivered to the ship in lighters with the casks ranging from huge hogsheads to the tiniest of barrels. With the arrival of the bumboat man, the chief mate becomes occupied with his own private business; in a very short time the crew are as drunk as owls and the carpenter’s tally of the wine casks being loaded closely resembles Egyptian hieroglyphics. The captain returns on board with the last lighter. I’m not much of a wine drinker myself and being quite sober, I find myself being very bad tempered at having to steer the ship alone in the first watch after sailing from the island.

After a 10,000-mile voyage, the ship arrives in Hamburg to discharge her cargo. Long before the vessel is made fast, the local wine and spirit merchant is on board selling beer for a penny a bottle and a good Scotch whisky for two shillings and sixpence per bottle. We go ashore later, some in search of beauty and some in search of booze. Some are looking for both, but they needed to look no further than St. Pauli, a suburb of Hamburg that has been described as the resort for sailors and is, without doubt, the most gay or some might even call it the most wicked of all the continental ports, bar none.

St. Pauli is the centre of Hamburg’s underworld. The glittering open-all-night cafes are filled with hundreds of women of all ages, mostly pretty and some quite beautiful, but where one and all are members of the oldest profession in the world. Fine string orchestras play real music throughout the night; under one of the cafes is a barber’s shop splendidly fitted out with soft layback chairs for a livening head massage, and bathrooms where you can take a bath, or even a jolt of dope should you feel so inclined. London nightclubs are a miserable joke when compared with those of St. Pauli.

The German women who ply their trade in this quarter are unusual in that they appear most ‘homelike’ and clean, a trait not to be found elsewhere. Imagine being in the middle of your ‘early morning’ lobster supper, sober yet having had a few drinks, when your girl companion invites you round to visit her flat in the evening so she can do any mending that needs to be done, or darn any socks that need to be darned. And she means it as well! I hear that these women make very good wives and that most of them are saving up to get married.

A luxuriously upholstered Chinese café is the meeting place for the pick of the younger girls who have come from all over the world. Here you can see a dainty Brazilian lady dressed in the latest Paris fashion, dancing with a placid and dapper Chinese man. It is sad but true that the young and attractive ladies have not yet realised that when age overtakes them, the café will no longer welcome them. The oldest profession is a tough old business.

When you walk the streets during the early hours of the morning, you will see another and more terrible side to the nightlife that is no different to any other city, but probably more pronounced here. You will be gently and politely accosted by dozens of women who have been sheltering in some dark doorway from the bitter midwinter wind that is far colder than in England. There is no warmth in their imitation furs and thin stockings; ask one into a small café for an icebreaker, or hot grog as you may know it, and she will show you hands that are blue with cold without any gloves and her knees will be like ice, yet they must keep at it. I can hardly write here what I should like to say, but the position of some of these women is very wretched to say the least. Their fortitude and bodily strength amazes me.

Hamburg is the city where most of our ill-gotten gains from the native deck passengers’ ‘excessive luggage’ fees changed hands and for a short time our voyage to the ‘coast’ was completely forgotten. You’ll probably be thinking I’m a nice old rogue, but the truth of the matter is that even when I was that much younger my interest in Bacchus was far greater than Venus. A pity you might say, but there it is!