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Published October 6, 2008 in Archives, Cadets, Singapore, VLCC and From the ship. 2 Comments

Back in 1994 before pocket digital cameras, and when mobile phones were still a yuppie luxury I was a deck cadet and had the pleasure of “doing” a drydock on a VLCC. It’s a bit like the way Americans “do” Europe size wise anyway and takes about the same length of time. To get this photo taken (note the pose and complete lack of any belly) I had to get permission from the Superintendent to bring my old Olympus trip into the tank. And I’m guessing it was the mate Jerry who took the shot, thanks Jerry old boy, well you must be old now, you were in your 40’s back in ‘94 and I am no longer a cadet. You wouldn’t get me near the inside of a tank these days unless it is absolutely necessary, back then I was ready to jump into any hazardous space going and crawl any length of cargo line without the slightest hint of claustrophobia. I get claustrophobic thinking about pipes now.
The condition of the tank was passable although it looks very rusty, and the ship had already carried a few 100 million barrels of oil before I ever was there and lived happily ever after until it got turned into razor blades and other recycled steel products a few years from the time of the photograph. Esso or Exxon decided to get away from the carriage of oil using their own name after a certain Exxon Valdez had a fairly notable spill in Alaska, I actually visited the Exxon Valdez after the event when they had renamed it Exxon Mediterranean, later on it changed again to S/R Mediterranean, and the Esso Kawasaki became Kawasaki. The powers that be going on the “out of sight, out of mind, out of the courtroom” policy and I’m sure it worked well for them.
Anyway back to the drydock in Singapore, it was without a doubt the most exotic place I had ever been at the time, and the benefit of being a cadet was that there was plenty of time off, the downside was that I had no money, and left the dry dock in severe debt. I wrote about one of the escapades a while back http://timstimes.net/2007/03/14/ewan-and-the-marine-corp/

VLCC prior to docking. Now I will have to try and dig out the other photos from that time and see if there are any of the finished product or if they have been lost in the wardrobe of time.

Suez Spam Bonus

Published September 16, 2008 in pinch of salt required, From the ship and On the ship. 5 Comments

Bonus the Jack Russell

I made the near fatal error of replying to an Egyptian Ship Chandler’s e-mail this evening. I should have just binned it, pressed the delete button and carried on with whatever else I was doing, but no. For some reason I sat down and read the e-mail offering best quality produce fresh and locally produced with 25% cash discount bonus. All very well and good Mr Egyptian Chandler but we are never in Egypt, we are only in the Mediterranean occasionally, you could be offering free beer and camels but we don’t go there.

So I replied please don’t send us any more offers we are never in Egypt. Thanks very much all the same.

Within minutes the mail box was full of e-mail again, the first one being an apology from yer man the chandler “Please Captain accept my most sincere apologies, and be sure to call us on your next call to Suez and get special bonus”

“NEXT????” the last time was never so what “next”, and what bonus? Then he must have passed the e-mail address to his spare parts friends who were offering top quality lifeboats only used once……

Delete

Do not reply ever again, I told myself. The only real bonus was that I remembered a story about an old man back in the auld times who had a dog with him on the ship. A little Jack Russell, and it used to sleep in a basket in his office and follow him around the deck every day cocking his small leg on the mates nice paintwork.

The ship had a visit from one of the senior superintendents, and he immediately asked “what do you call the dog?”

“Bonus” says our friend the old man.

“Bonus?” thats a quare sort of a name for a dog, and pray tell why did you call the dog bonus?

Because he is so small.

Mircea

Published September 6, 2008 in sailing ships, training, ship spotting, photos, Maritime and From the ship. 0 Comments

The Barque Mircea, seen in the Mediterranean the other day. She was motoring as can be seen by the lack of canvas and most likely heading for her home port of Constanta, Romania. Not looking too bad for a 70 year old ship too. Built in 1938 at the famous or notorious Blohm & Voss shipyard in Hamburg, she is the sister ship (among others) of the Nazi Kreigsmarines Gorch Fock built 1933 and taken by the Soviets after WW2, the Soviets even took Mircea for a while after WW2 but returned it to the Romanian Navy.
Source; Wikipedia which doesn’t cite any sources, but I know a few guys from Constanta who were able to tell me about her.
Mircea Homepage in Romanian
Romanian Navy Homepage
Romanian isn’t a far stretch from Italian, and is a Latin language so deciphering the homepages isn’t entirely impossible.

Be nice to the spanners

Published September 5, 2008 in practical jokes, Cadets, oil and water, deck and engine room, From the ship, pinch of salt required and On the ship. 3 Comments

Have lost contact with the muse recently and got entangled in the Wire. All 5 series seen now, and I feel like Jimmy Mc Nulty after a wake at Kavanagh’s bar. Still it’s a great show.

Anyway back to blogging. I heard one about a cadet who thought he was very clever playing pranks on the spanners, a deck cadet needless to say who got great pleasure one day leaning over the skylight to the engine room and tapping a chipping hammer off the coaming to the rhythm of the engine. The engineers thought that one of the pistons had a knock and a general panic ensued with spanners running around like headless chickens trying to find the source of the knocking sound on the main engine. The cadet nearly lost the run of himself with laughter and dropped the chipping hammer into the engine room, nearly braining the first engineer. Well on a ship, you can hide but you can’t run, and you can’t hide for too long. He got away lightly with a few digs and a severe warning on pain of death if he ever wanted to pull a stunt like that again.

This could have ended the tale, but one of the engineers wanted some proper retribution. No better night than when the fog was so thick that you couldn’t see past midships, and everyman and his dog was on the bridge keeping lookout and stretching ears to hear the sound of a fog horn. The old man was pacing up and down nervously as he had a bit of a nerve problem and was jumpy at the best of times, the radars were manned and the ship was on reduced speed in the English channel. Suddenly there was the sound of a fog horn on the port side, all hand on the bridge went into action mode, but with binoculars pressed hard against eye sockets and nothing on the scope, it was a mystery. Then all of a sudden the fog horn was heard again but this time on the starboard side,all hell breaks loose in the wheelhouse, the old man nearly shit himself with fear.

Then the second engineer walks onto the bridge with a clarinet in hand, grinning broadly. He said I think this belongs to the deck cadet and walked off.

Be nice to the spanners or they can make life nasty.

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.

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