Tims Times

Subtitled Oil & Water Don’t Mix

On leave again and the posting is less frequent, home improvements to be taken care of, sinking a few cold ones now and then. My visit to St.Petersburg left a great impression on me and my travelling companion on the day who is a member of the Engineering Department, it reminded me also of when I was a cadet many moons ago. Back in those days the deck cadets had to work in the engine room for a few weeks to see how the spanners worked.

The ship is run on a departmental basis, theres the Deck department, the Engine room and the catering. Now I’m talking basics here, you can add a few more if you are taking cruise ships or survey vessels like the medical and radio operators and so forth. The two main departments and deck and engine. (others may argue the toss here)
There I was anyway off to down below or the pit for my two weeks of greasing and deafness induced by lots of howling machines, I was shown around formally by the second engineer, a Glaswegian, who had a deep mistrust of anyone from the deck department, and he hated the English mate, he pointed at various bits of machinery and roared something at me, had not a clue as to what he was saying, his accent, drowned out by turbines and boilers and me wearing hearing protection made it hard to understand, but fair play to him he did his best. We went back into the air conditioned control room after being out in 40 degree heat of the engine room, the boiler suit stuck to my skin wet from sweat and cold all of a sudden. In the sound proofed control room you could hear talking but still it was difficult, it felt like I was in a Gregor Fisher comedy version of Para Handy, the entire engine room was from Glasgow and points west thereof bar myself an Irish deckie. I was given a few tasks on the first day that included “buckets of steam” and “long stands” which I duly fell for then I was allowed to continue my time without further piss taking. Talking about steam, this ship was an old VLCC from the early 70’s with steam turbines, and all the deck machinery was driven by steam. If the deck wanted steam they had to call the engine room and ask politely for steam on deck at least 1 hour before it was required, to warm through properly. The Engineers controlled the steam, the Deckies needed steam for everything to work so it was a great source of entertainment ( the same source was boundless in it’s ability to provide hours of laughter and every time also) for the engineers to delay giving steam especially if the mate(my boss) was English and the entire engineering department was from Scotland.

One afternoon in the Gulf a hot, sunny 42 degree Celcius afternoon we heard the mate saying on the radio, “ask the Jocks for more steam, we can’t get this windlass turning any faster” the second was waiting for the call from the bridge, and I volunteered to open the steam valve being the keen young cadet I was, he asked “d’ya ken which valve ty’open?” I nodded he replied “only one turn”, so i found the big steam valve which was positioned in a position upside down on the deck steam line and I duly opened one turn and ran back to the control room and reported my task done. The second nodded and smiled. A few minutes later we heard the mate calling again “it seems to be even slower than before, ask for more steam”, the bridge replied “ok more steam” then the old man called down for more steam, the second said to me “one turn only” and away I went again.

I asked the engineers why we didn’t reply directly on the radio, the whole place erupted in laughter, and when the tears had stopped and the sighs sighed the second said, ” ach , son ye’ve a lot to learn” . Soon enough another call on the radio and subsequent call from the bridge, and I was away again to open another turn on the valve. We heard again that it was getting even slower, the second looked at me and said ” what valve are you opening” I replied -steam to deck, he said -are you sure, I said 100% sure, ok he said open it up full the mate will be getting heat stroke on top of apoplexy. I went out and opened full, even putting a wheel key on to make sure it was full open.

When I came back in to the control room, the second grinned at me, “what valve have you been at son?” steam on deck I said, getting a worried feeling in my gut, in the background I heard the radio and what sounded like the mate, my boss, crying into the radio,” the windlass has stopped , we need steam, more bloody steam”. The second said “you better show me what valve you opened before something pops”, out we went and I trotted after him striding away, we got to the valve and he nearly fell over with the laughs, I had of course shut the valve it being upside down and me turning clockwise instead of anti-clockwise.

When we got back to the control room after restoring full steam on deck, the second patted me roughly across the shoulders and said, “good man, you can make a good engineer one day, give the bastards on deck nothin’!” The whole place fell about laughing again. Relations between the Engineering and Deck departments continued at Cold War level thanks to my actions but the second engineer claimed the glory.