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.
Published March 14, 2007
in Beer, Scottish and English, Cadets, going ashore, booze, deck and engine room, Scottish, pinch of salt required, From the ship, Singapore, flags and emblems, Shore leave and stating the obvious.
The continuation of Tims cadetship adventure.
The Rangers gang and I made a truce after about 3 months into my first trip, it got boring after a while and we made a deal, they would stop slagging me and stop calling me “Shaymus, Paddy, Mick, and Tim the Tim” if I stopped calling them “orange bastards”. And so an uneasy truce developed. For people who claimed they hated Celtic football club, they knew far more about them than I did, not very difficult I suppose seeing as I only got interested in Celtic as a counter measure. Truth be told I have never seen Celtic play live even though I own plenty football shirts and scarves and the like. I have however seen Rangers play in Cyprus, I was in the opposing Famagusta crowd with a huge tricolour and a bunch of mad Celtic fans who were there to burn Union jacks and generally cause the Rangers fans to go ballistic who in turn got battered by the riot police for burning a Greek flag. Result.
Anyway back to me and big Ewan, who loved drinking mcEwans, we became pals to an extent, I never met him again after that ship. Howver when we were there together we had a liberty in Singapore and a big gang of us got our going ashore clobber on and hit the clubs of Singapore. Ewan was ex-Royal Navy loud and got drunk fast, but stayed on a level of drunkenness close to but never reaching falling down drunk. His mouth was 100 mph non stop, we bumped into a bunch of US Marines in a club, and Ewan was dead set on aggravating them. In fact he wanted to get us killed. We started drinking with the yanks and swopping stories, buying rounds and having a good laugh, Ewan telling yarns about the Royal Navy and US Navy exercises, and how he had a truncheon on gangway watch and his American conterpart had an M-16, “how effective was that, bag of shite” then suddenly he says “What does USMC stand for?” one of the yanks had a tatoo on his muscular forearm, he replied ” Why its UNITED STATES MARINE CORP” in a loud proud voice. Ewan had a strange grin on his face and said “No it means U suck my cock”, all hell broke loose in an instant, there was a melee in the bar, I got a dig in the head and Ewan was on the floor with 3 marines on top of him, he was roaring “U suck my cock” as loud as he could, I thought we were gonners, when the shore patrol MP’s charged in and started clubbing their own men, Americans being beaten by American MP’s. He kept his grin on even though he was close to being beaten to death, how not to act in the presence of the Marine Corp. Some people live close to the edge, Ewan was falling over. We managed to get back to the ship in one piece, and of course big Ewan claimed “we nearly had them, they were lucky the polis arrived”…..eh, not really. The shore patrol would have gladly joined in with their own crowd against us, if they had not strict instructions to keep order, thats why they had to control their own men, luckily for us.
Recent Comments