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Keeping the peace

Published July 30, 2008 in milk, deck and engine room, oil and water, About, Deckies, From the ship, Engineers and On the ship. 3 Comments

Sacred Heart

Note to self…don’t order fresh milk for the ship again in the hot summer months.

There were a few sour tempers between the deck and engine room departments today so I had to use all my skills as a mediator even though I knew that the spanners were to blame. I can’t take sides as I did before, even if I’d like to. It was a bit of a storm in the preverbial tea cup, but it had it’s lead up, minor words here and there and then an all out shouting match that would have the security guards charging in with riot gear.But we don’t have any security guards only me. I waited for the heckles to lie down a bit and then called a meeting between the warring parties. I asked for silence and said that I would speak having spoken to both sides individually. I could see in the eyes of the two factions that it would not be easy and for some reason I was having a hard time keeping a straight face.

The milk was probably standing on the back of a truck somewhere with the rest of the stores overnight, growing cultures of bacteria. The frozen stuff was Ok, and the fruit and veg, but the milk was off, again.

Thinking about the milk stopped me from laughing, I gave some bullshit about peace and harmony and threw in a few lines I’d heard on “The Wire” TV show about “showing me the love” and in the end they agreed to act in a more harmonious way. A compromise was reached and mutual respect was agreed on. Later the two individuals came up to me at separate intervals and said that the other guy was “mentally ill” and “a stupid f..cker” respectively….so much for showing me the love. Ah well as long as they don’t kill each other.

Now years earlier when I was a second mate, there was an incident on a ship that started off with an engineer slagging off a radio officer. Seemingly harmless gibes about being a “half deckie, half engineer” and “useless at both”. Now yer man the engineer was a Scouser and yer other man the R/O was from Limerick. If you know anything about Limerick people you don’t want to start picking on the wrong one, it ended up with the Scouser calling out to the R/O in front of the other engineers “hey Paddy I think the skipper needs you to wipe his arse” there was dead silence. And Paddy (not his real name by the way) went off quietly and said nothing.
Now as far as I knew this Paddy guy was an angel, in his cabin he had a picture of the Sacred Heart of Jesus on the bulkhead, and he had a photo of his mother beside the bible on his locker. He didn’t smoke and only had an occasional beer, always on time for work and did his job well….model citizen?
That evening at the dinner table in the saloon, there were steaks on the menu and just when everyone was busy scoffing down their prime beef, Paddy jumps up from his place with steak knife in hand and places it firmly up against the neck of the bould Scouser.
The place died. The silence was murderous. Then Paddy pipes up in a quiet voice…” you ya f..cker, if you ever look at me again I’ll f..cking well open you up” with that he went back to his place and continued to eat his meat. Our friend the engineer, didn’t have anything clever to say then and there, and he walked out of the room , very pale and with his tail between his legs.
The old man who had witnessed the entire proceedings said nothing, and neither did anyone else, there was a collective holding of breaths until Paddy left the room.
Now the gas thing was, we were weeks away from port, so the two of them had to work onboard until Paddy went home on “sick leave”. I don’t know what the old man did or said to either of them but the steak knife brandishing was the high point of the affair. (no pun intended), but it was amusing watching them meet in the alleyways and around the saloon. There was a magnetic effect, of opposition!

I’m glad I only have to worry about sour milk and a bit of shouting.

Plane drunk

Published July 25, 2008 in booze, Airports, Deckies, Engineers and Norway. 4 Comments

I was browsing a website called Utsira.com keeping an eye on what jobs are on offer in Norway, when I found a story about a Norwegian ships officer who ran amok on a plane to Kuala Lumpur, a quick translation reads that a Norwegian ships officer (it doesn’t say it was an engineer or a deckie!) drank a whole bottle of 60% liquor, and proceeded thereafter to run amok on a KLM flight to Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia, he had to be controlled by the staff on the plane and handcuffed because of his aggressive behaviour towards the crew and passengers hours before the flight was due to land. On arrival he was arrested by armed police and put in the drunk tank, (in a Muslim country!) He will probably get a hefty fine and most likely lose his job.
Others who traveled in the same group as the man however said that it was not so serious and that it was more of a storm in a teacup.

It reminded me of an old ship mate, (using the term loosely) Pinko got so drunk on a plane home from Brazil (click on the link for the Brazil story) that he got undressed and started to urinate in the aisle, he was dressed again by the flight crew and he passed out completely unaware of his behaviour.

The image of the drunken sailor is really helped by these kind of incidents, I don’t know what could possess someone to drink a whole bottle of booze on a plane, or how it could be allowed to happen. Personal responsibility? I ask you.

Icing

Published April 10, 2008 in Engineers, Beer, Ice, From Sweden, as gaeilge, Cork, Scotland, accident and From the ship. 2 Comments

I’m the one in the lovely orange suit, the deck cadet is in blue, he is the computer expert and it’d his fault I got into wordpress, however he was not the one complaining about the wireless internet. Anyway, we are rigging the gangway in anticipation of a visit from a couple of service engineers, and they do arrive by chopper and can be seen below. The engine started to act the bollix so we had to stop, and seeing as how the Baltic was frozen solid it was just a matter of turning the engine off and the ship parks itself. So two chaps from Rolls-Royce came to fix our problem, and they did it in no time and we up and running again. Of course Rolls-Royce make all sorts of stuff from jet engines to deck winches and luxury cars, but that division is small in the grand RR scheme of things.
I once sailed with an engineer who had worked as an apprentice with RR in Scotland, he was making a tool on the lathe and the metal was glowing white hot, when a tiny bit flew off and hit his overalls square in the groin area and burned through like a hot knife in butter, he told us that he felt a sudden extreme pain in his penis as the metal had burned all the way to the skin and left a pinhole scar at the top of the “helmet” area. He was going to show us the scar but we took his word, he was too eager to whip out the evidence so to speak for it to be a make belief story and who would make that kind of stuff up. His wife left him, and he needed consolation so he came to Cork and went on the hit and miss, I met him one night in a pub on the Coal Quay, Dennehy’s Pub to be precise, he went off to the jacks after a while and there was a fierce commotion, he had gone into the ladies, I immediately thought he wanted to show off the scar tissue, but the reason was more simple, Dennehy’s has the toilet names as gaeilge so he figures Fir was F for female and Mná was M for male, wrong. Innocent mistake for a Jock to make I suppose.

How to upset the English mate

Published May 30, 2007 in English, Engineers, Deckies, Scottish, Tankers, Irish, VLCC and From the ship. 6 Comments

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.

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