By Harry Tobin
Copyright 2008 Harry Tobin
This is a voice from the aft. The true story of those last steam and motor ships, manned with the wandering souls of the seamen—the unique race of the men which, soon after the era of the steamship, disappeared forever.
All coiled down, an’ it’s time for us to go;
Every sail’s furled in a neat harbor stow;
Another ship for me, an’ for her another crew—
An’ so long sailorman—good luck to you!
—Cicely Fox Smith, So Long (All Coiled Down)
In Sea Songs and Ballads 1917-1922.
Chapter 4
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In the night I was awakened by the feeling that the ship was rolling, I felt how the small cabin rocked slowly from side to side; there was a vibration and the ship’s hull trembled and the clapperboard made a noise like a low tat-too. I switched on the light and lie on the bunk fully clothed. Then I heard a noise; there, outside of the cabin, some object was dragging along the deck; I heard a crashing sound as a wave hit the hatch in the bulwark and something was shovelled overboard. Suddenly there was a growing of voices and a great tramping of feet rushing on the ladder leading up to the boat deck, then there was a tumult, which sounded as if number of persons were gathered on deck, outside of my cabin.
I sat on my bunk and listened. What was this all about? When I unlocked the door, pushed it ajar, and peeped into darkness I saw two human figures standing near by the rail. The scene was illuminated by a weak lamp on the bulkhead making the bulwark lustrous with the wet skin of iron. Beyond the bulwark, there was the vast emptiness of the dark sea, from where the sound of the waves and the moan of the wind could be hear. One of these men wore an old military blouse and a woollen hat was pulled over his head. Another man, standing next to the first one, seemed have nothing but bunch of hair on his head. The man was half-faced to the light; he seemed to be a lean, lightly dressed Negro and was close to an ash-dumper that was attached to the bulwark.
The yellow wedge of light from the door cut across the darkness and hit the two men standing by rail; white eyeballs flashed and the white sweatband stood out with a clear stripe against the black skin of the Negro. I shut the door. I didn’t know what the time was and I lay down half-awake on the bunk. Later, how much later I have no knowledge. I was awakened by a loud banging on the door and there was a voice crying outside: “Wake up! Wake up! It’s six o’clock! Wake up, you!”
It was quarter-past six as I staggered into the mess room in which I found Rissa: she was sitting at the end of the table with a cup of coffee in front of her, smoking a cigarette. She was a large woman with dark hair; there was shadow on her upper lip as a fair moustache. When she spoke there was deep alto in her tone. She could have been about age of thirty or less; the strong eyebrows and thick dark hair gave her a stern expression; by all accounts she appeared to have a strong character. When she saw my entering, she glanced at me.
“I was told that you have locked the cabin’s door. Is it true?” she asked.
“Who told you?”
“The watch told me that the door was locked,” she said.
I nodded.
“You don’t keep the door locked at sea. Shore people locked their doors, but not seamen on the open sea. If something happens, you will be locked in there and will go down with the ship. Try to remember it. Now you must bring the coffee up to the bridge.”
At half-past six, under the direction of Rissa, I collected cups upon the tray; the moody minded and faced cook chucked two buns on tray and a full can of black coffee, then thrust it into my hand. Holding the tray in balance, I set out and started for the bridge, climbing up the ladder that led up to it; the way was steep and slippery. Step by step I rose; the higher I got, the more the ship was rolling. Each step asked for hard labour and all the time the ship rolled and plunged, while single-handedly I struggled up. It was hard work, but finally I managed ending up on the bridge and stood in front of closed sliding door of the wheelhouse. The chief mate, wearing a long fur coat, plucked the door open. I held the tra out with straight hands unable to move.
“What the hell you are up to? Take it in all the way there. Right away there.” At the same moment the ship swung and I plunged into the wheel-house, thrown by the impetuous inclination of the ship, and without reducing my speed I crossed the floor of the wheelhouse and was hurled into the navigation cabin. Then, under the ship’s reverse movement, I could stop and laid the tray on the chart table. As I slowly returned cross the wheelhouse, I had time to notice the steering wheel on my left side, and behind it, was, standing on the low platform, the seaman I had seen the previous night, talking with the black man on deck. Later I heard him called as Metros.
With greedy eyes I looked about the environment. The wheelhouse was panelled in teak and there was a brass binnacle near the front window. On my right hand stood the well-polished telegram machine; behind the row of numerous windows was a great view of the extensive sea. I went out to the wing of the bridge and stayed for a moment to look. It was good stage to view around; there was an almost unhampered panorama over the ship and far out over the sea. Leaning over the windbreaker I could see the whole forepart of the ship clearly in the grey light of the sky above the mast. Rolling slowly, the mast head made a gentle arc against the sky.
The general colour of the sea was grey, so was the sky above. I was struck by this infinite expanse around me. The ship rolled slowly from left to right and back again; the standing rigging and all the fixed wires and ropes rose diagonally up and were affixed to the mast under the black cross tree. Looking backward, I could see how the stern rose and fell at even intervals and the wake was visible with two white lines of foam behind the ship.
Through the cold grey sea the ship proceeded and the undulating wake behind it was as straight as an arrow. We were heading before the wind; followed by the grey waves that lifted their manes in the same direction. The black smoke of burning coal was drifting with the wind and was lowering down in troughs. It was quiet; the greatest noise in this environment was the sound of the raising and falling waves and the hiss of the bow wave. Aloft from the rigging I could hear slow hum of breeze.
I learned my duty; there was the daily cabin cleaning onboard. By following Rissa’s instructions, I began to clean the first engineer’s cabin.
The cabin was very scantily furnished; there was a tiny writing table, a short sofa and a high bunk, insulated by curtains, and the wardrobe in the corner. The cabin was bare like a cage; there wasn’t anything like a family portrait on view - no photographs of any kind, even a calendar with the pictures of half-naked girls, which were so popular among the sex-starved seamen.
Faint booming was heard from the floor; I bent down to see, then opened the bottom drawer under the bed and found there a row of empty Vodka bottles rolling up and down with the cycle of ship’s motion.
The door opened and first engineer entered the cabin. He was a stubby, strongly built man, with a flat nose; the corner of his eye was thick like a boxer’s, however on his moon-round face was playing with smile giving him expression; benevolent and disarmed. The man was Polish, and except his native language he was not able to speak any other; he has couple words of German and two or three words of English, just what the doctor ordered for his duty in the engine room. Lack of communication between the crew was not an obstacle; everywhere the work in ships, on the ocean or local trade, is similar—there is not need to speak. With the ship being at sea, there in the engine room, he hadn’t company with speak to; the stokers, shovelling coal into the greedy furnaces, were poor conversationalists, and if they weren’t drunk they were sick from the previous drinking-bout and very taciturn.
The engineer conjured up a bottle of vodka and poured right away full a glass of it then extended it toward me. I understood that he wished to toast for the newcomer. I swallowed down a mouthful of strong liquid, and then with pantomime gestures I told him that there still is lot of work to do and by lifting up my items from the floor I ran away.
During the same morning I met a man repairing the step of the officer’s mess-room; he was an elderly man and the ship’s carpenter. Having seen me, he, very benevolently, made enquiries - whether I had been afloat before or if this ship was the first one. Each person I came across on board the ship was asking me the same thing. Perhaps there was something especially humble in my presence that appealed to pity, or my ignorance, so that all aboard seemed taken me with a similar attitude as the officers of the Catty Sack were taken the Chinese orphan baby boy whom they found drifting in a small skiff in the Indian Ocean and whom they adopted on board the ship Catty Cark
Chapter 8
When the evening of the day of my new promotion came, and I had return into my new abode, with surprise I found a pitch-black fellow lying on the lower bunk. I said hello and sat down on the wooden bench under the porthole. With a side glance I examined the lad laying on bunk, and very soon got wise to two things; there was a white man under the black layer of coal, and the man was one of them I had seen standing outside my amidships-cabin at the first night at sea. I knew that the shipmate was the trimmer, a member of the black gang, and my roommate.
The crew was not divided into the black gang and the deck sailors and the deck crewmen were labeled a the able seamen, ordinary seamen and the greenhorns; a deck boy on his first voyage is not required to know anything about the practical work of the vessel, but an able-seaman must know all his duties onboard well and to perform the job as a professional seaman.
When I served on the amidships I could have easily got working as a day man; now it all had changed. And if I could have been taken like an orphan with pity, when at amid ship service, after joining the deck crew I was no more the adopted orphan; instead I was now treated as ‘ Sven Toove,’ the imbecile draftee of the Swede-Finnish poet Runeberg. When the order sent me forecastle, I went aft; the terms the seaman used were odd to me although I had great desire to perform all the tasks, and I was so confused by this strange lingo that I had to guess what they meant by all that.
I was everybosy's slave. Stiil I was young and strong and along the days I went, tirelessly running over the hatchways and up and down by ladders, trying to follow all those strange orders the bowman and the able-seamen were gave me on time.
Half past seven in the each harbour morning the night watchman brought the café breakfast from the galley into aft mess-room and routed up the wholly crew. And couple minutes before eight o’clock the third mate turned us out. He did it every morning in very strange way which seemed very odd to me. He was literally throwing himself into mess-room like mad, bellowing at same time out his command:
” Turn to! All out on to deck, work must be start! “, Then cursing he rushed out to deck and back again into mess-room with very restless habit , finally relaxed and sat down at end of the table grunted there in a choked voice while we get ready to stood up and out.
Chapter 10
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On the starboard side in the crew quarter was a cabin that belonged to an able seaman named Attila, he was the oldest able seaman on board and he was a shorthaired man, like a yard birds. He wore always a grey coat and broad belt on it, the knife was hanging back side of him, he bore it much by the same way as the sailors in the past. The AB was not strongly built, but one could see him being vigorous and hardened as a leather nail. He footed around with his angle boots and a Tartar cap was on his head. No one onboard seemed known - or heeded - where he originated.
I was working on deck with a red haired ordinary seaman named Penacook. We were on duty erecting the poles by the gunwale for supporting the deck cargo.
We laboured to set up the heavy poles with great difficulty when Attila hurried past, toward the amidships. Penacook gave glance after him then spat over side and said, “Look at him. He looks like a Russian from the Stalin’s camp.”
By the afternoon coffee time at three o’clock, a man in a grey suit with a briefcase appeared aboard. He made straight into the sailors mess room. Already in good distance he shouted out his questions. “ I am Pena Perkiö. Is there someone who has not yet paid his due for the union? Are all of your membership cards in order?”
“Who is this man?” I asked the able seaman who was called as The Hero of Seven Seas.
“It’s the Union man,” the Seven Seas said.
The Union man came and sat at the end of the mess room’s table and took out of his briefcase, a stamp and a small coffer. The seamen crushed down into their cabins to be back soon with a small blue membership card in one hand and money in the other.
“There is a rumour,” announced the union man. “That our fellow sailors aboard the icebreakers start the strike for better payment for our union’s members. The government has threatened to replace the merchant seamen with the navy men. If so, then we will not to follow the icebreakers manned by navy men. Since they are not professional seamen, and they have nothing to do with the merchant navy business. There will be risks of many sorts if we will follow the icebreaker manned by the navy men. So when the order comes to put the ship out to sea, don’t touch the mooring wire. All other work onboard is free, but the vessels will stay in port so long as this conflict is unsolved. Who will support the strike onboard the icebreakers?”
All hands rose.
“Well, nice to see that we will stand together.’
The union man stumbled the cards and there were the whole crew present gathered around him, there were some veiled ask around whether one could lend money for pay the due for union – to be pay back in the next port.’
On seeing Attila, the union man raised his eyes. ‘Aha. Is there no less than the red metros he? You still belong in our union, although you well know the rule; no politick on board the vessels.
‘I’m still here.’
‘Be careful. Not agitation on board, shut you face and keep it closed. We don’t want give to the opponent reason to call us commie.
This is a new candidate for membership to our yacht club.’ said the boson pointing toward me.
‘Good, said union man and took now out a small blue book, keeping on speaking at the same time as he began fill the page of person register and questioning me
‘There is word circulating”, the union man said. ‘ Our fellow sailors on board the icebreakers could be strike for the better payment for our union’s members. - What you name? Johan. What else? Are you born in the moon or on the earth? - The government has threaded to be replacing the merchant seamen by navy men. If so, then we will not to be willing follow the icebreakers manned by navy men. So when the order come put the ship out to sea, don’t touch to the mooring wire. - Put you mark or signature’ he stretched the paper and pen toward me and kept on his announcement. ‘All work onboard is free, but the vessels will stay in port so long as this conflict to be solved. And you.’ he added the words now to me. ‘ I tell you. If you think you could touch the mooring rope during the strike, I can assure that it will be your last deed on board any ship. Who will support the strike on board the icebreakers‘? ‘Well, is nice to see than we will stand together and there is not any rat aboard.’
All the sea folk; sailor and the stokers were moved from mess room to the poop deck. The union man had packed his items into his briefcase and stood a while on poop deck close by the ship’s second wheel.
‘If there will be a risk get fired, if ‘ Keep in mid if any oppression take place aboard and any crew member become kicked and fired I tell your; the gangway will be jut as long for the captain as it’s for the smallest deck boy aboard. I mean by that, that we have power enough to put on the gangway anyone, the master as well as the deck boy. Amen.”
After the visit of the union man there was great agree among the seaman on board the ship.
On next day the Bosum said me after breakfast: ‘You Charles go with Attila and help fix ready the life boat on the boas-deck.’ I went up to boat deck and joined Attila who was uncovered the starboard side lifeboat. The uncovered boat exposed the inside of the boat. There was seat running around the boat and across the boat as well.
The boat was cluttered with junk.
Attila leapt into boat,” Looks nasty. Bloody mess here”, he said. “Its the chief mate’s business takes care of the life boats. Where we get if things start goes wrong on aboard the ship? By God, here will be narrow escape then,” he then added.” This is criminal’s carelessness; you know the company is just thinking thinks like their freights, the business, profit, and the demurrage, everything else but the life of some poor seaman. So be it, things never change”.
We started fix the boat, making her sea shape, ‘the sea clearing’, as they called it by the usage. We took out gear and sails from the boat, piled that on deck. Many interesting things appeared which use I had no idea. The second mate came and took look over the brink into boat. “It’s leaky. You is going Plung, Plung, if your lower her down,” he said by his oddly usage.
And you too, I was thinking, but said nothing.
We calked and tied the slits with tow and tallow. “Is this your first ship”, Attila asked when he was straightened his back and had lit a cigarette.
I nodded. ”Yes”.
“Way you came.”?
“I wanted to be a seaman. See the world and the different port in the every corner of the world”,
“And the whore in the every port to call, and all that cheap drinks”, he remarked.
“Many of my fried have get to sea when they had reached the age require to sing on a seagoing ship”,
“I know there are plenty of young chap at sea.” Attila said and threw his half smoked cigarette over the side and stood up “Was told” he went on. “That the man goes to sea when they are not fit living on land. They come here when they are young, before they know the unhappiness of the life at sea. They had entered into doomed life, doomed wandering and drinking for ever, the only friend being another seafarer, the familiar company and the common style of sea life. There are many so called ‘first trips man’, whom has given up after the first trip. They are more or less saved. However the most part are back at the sea, continue they’re wandering, over and over, they return to sea as the habitual offender return into prison. The ship is goal for seamen, they haven any other home, and they sing on vessel of all sort. Until they died for alcohol or they go down with their iron cell to the Jones locker.”
“But here you eat regular, and the grub is good and there is the cheap export, duty free goods as well. Every time I have saw a sailor on land, they showed plenty money, and all that thinks which landsmen not have”
“Yes they have money, for short period. Attila commented, “But just for short period. Here seafarer has an advantage over a shore wage-earner in that he is practically forced to save a substantial part of his earning – simply because, there is not opportunity to spent money at sea, nine months of the years. Whilst the landsman decides to stop at the local bar for a few beers, or dance with the girlfriend, meanwhile the seaman in the middle of the ocean in expensive play card and smokes their duty-free American cigarettes, talking with his shipmates.”
This saying Attila ended the discussion and ordered me to put back into boat the gear we had unloaded from the boat. The repair with the lifeboat was ready.
Chapter 11
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One night I had an unenviable experience. The feeling that somebody was watching me awakened me. As I opened my eyes I saw a man’s head beside my upper bunk. The head wore a navy cap, the face beneath the caps was intoxicated dull and there was name of an unknown warship on the band of the cap; MSH HALENFRALD it read.
The eyes under the HMS HALENFRAL stared at me, “I m the terrible killer”, the man grunted.
The man stood there swaying slightly looking at me, he was tall man with rat chapped head that was no chin, he had a prominent Edam apple that jumped up and down, and I saw a military claps- knife in his hand. The trimmer who had before occupied the under bunk has gone ashore, I was alone with this lunatic. The man set up his fist with the knife, by instinctive I cowered away, by leaping down from the bunk and out the cabin, I hear loud laugh of the madman behind me when I fled. I stayed at companion stair for a moment to looking back and saw how the man in the naval uniform struck the knife through the door, he had get rage and was disgorge his rage to the door by beaten the door in sieve. I heard him howling there like beaten dog.
Then there was the tone of Attila and I hear him saying; “What’s up? You thing you can go round here, breaking the doors with you knife. You bastards, I’ll teach you to fly at people” and with the quickly kick in the belly of the lunatic he flattened the trouble maker at once and I saw him wrenched the knife from the man’s hand.
I went up to, deck then to amid ship.
I found Junky in his night watch post; he was sitting in the galley accompanied by a blond haired slim stranger who had open earnest face and soft voice.
I greeted them to saying that I have seen a tremendous killer in the aft. Some sort of homicidal.
“He is the new stoker. We were coming together aboard” he get mad, didn’t know that he get mad with few glass of vodka.”
“What’s about the uniform? Where it from?”
“He has stolen it from the limey warship. We were steamed her to a shipyard to be convert into passenger ship. He stole many sorts of things there, like the cap of the chief engineer.”
Rissa came with her vigorous heel naps on deck.
“Who is on cauldron watch down below? She inquired.
“It’s me”, the new blond stoker said.
“Rissa examined the man for a moment.” Are you all right?”
“Sure, I am ok.”
“Where’s the beast that had been sneaked all over here with his dirty hands.”
The man gestured toward aft. “There in the astern. He is free know, no duty.”
“Please don’t let the lunatic go down into engine room.”
Next morning I was sitting in the sailor’s mess-room among the other seaman as the Donkey man slide into mess-room and the nocturnal brawler put his head in the doorway, yelling after the donkey man “. How you run, you rat, you want to be the yes-man. What the mater with you. Didn’t ye get your score sack filled yet. You fucking toady. I’ll bet yer with the score sack at your head”
“Take away your bloody face from the doorway” Donkey snapped feeling save among the men in the mess-room.
The chief engineer came down in the after quarter and found the stoker standing necked in the passageway.
“You are fired” the chief said.
“I need money. I need the payment for seven days, because your will break the contract.”
“You must out from here. You have brawled here all the night, smashed the door and put in disorder the places here. You have pissed up your job even you get start it, you are guilty yourself to cancel the contract.”
“Don’t try to send me away with the wages no paid. I’ll raise a hell if you try to send away no money. I have the union behind me”.
“Get dressed,” the chief said, “Get dressed and I try to find some payment to you, to get rid of you.” this saying the chief turned and went on deck. “Ok go makes your accounting, I’ll get to dress”, the stoker hailed after the chief.
An hour latter, I found him crying half dressed in corridor. “I have get boot,” he moaned. “They kicked me out, Ou, that fucking bastard kicked me out”.
“It will teach you flay at people,” said Attila who goes up on deck.
Then there were the polices carrying the stoker ashore.
I was entering this two room’s office and found a female tapping a typewriter at the old fashioned bureau and as she saw me coming in she stopped her work and gave a hard look over me.
Se was staring at me until it looked as if she would to say; - what’s brought your here boy? What ever it is, you have entering now in wrong place, but as you’re already standing there what I can do for you?
I say that I am looking for the agent to get to the ship named Regulus. The woman still stared at me asked.” Are you seaman?”
“Yes. I m. The deck boy and I had ordered here.”
“The agent is not present, take a sit and wait, the agent will be here any minute”.
I sat down and it was more than quarter an hour as the door opened and a stout middle-aged ma, dressed in grey suit, entered the office. On seeing me sitting his eyebrow rose a bit and he asked “And this man? A steersman, I supposed”.
. “ I am the deck boy sent to the ship named Regulus.” I said.
“ Ah, I see, the deck boy to the ship Regulus”, the man said and went and sat behind the other bureau in the room. The agent took out some paper and I was watching a large oil painting hanging at the opposite wall, there was a steamer in this picture, labouring her way through a very roughly sea, the ship was smoking a lot and seem making not head way at all and the wind was tearing and driving her smoke long away, toward the hazy horizon.
“Well, I supposed you have all the documents what ever you need, so You can travel to the ship right away, The ship is loading in a small inlet off the coast no more than ten kilometres from here Klamella is than place, there is a sawmill and you will find the ship there.”
I took a taxi and gave the address to the driver and the car got underway.
The evening was getting dark as we reached the wooden water edge of that inlet, there was scarcely light still I could seen the wooden building of the sawmill and the long wooden wharf with all those barges tied alongside the wharf.
Out on the reach of this inlet was lying a ship, the anchor light was seen hanging at the fore stake and the after deck and the amidships was lighted.
I asked the drive try to which off and on the headlights of the car to making them know on board the ship my attendance.
After awhile the driver said he have to go and he started his motor and drove away. I was hungry and I had last cigarette in hand, the night was growing cold though the whether were still and the water smooth.
I sat down on a wood stack and prepared for long wait. After quarter an hour a rowing boat was coming from the ship. I saw the boat emerging from the dimness of the inlet and heard the oars slapping.
“ Ohoi,” I shouted and a single birth rose somewhere on its wings and set off flapping lazily over the water edge.
The boat grew nearer and I could see a boy pulling it. When the bows of boat touched the wharf I leaped down in the boat, the boat was small like a dory and the boy turned it around with a light movement.
“You are watchman aren’t you? I asked.
“Yes I am, and the boatman as well when we are riding”,
“Where bound”?
“For London”.
“Ou Yes”.
“What about the ship, have you made long on her?” I asked getting sat down.
“Just a trip, no longer yet. The ship is all right, the chief mate. You will get to see then”.
He pulled the boat toward the ship anchored at the inlet. A shadowy shape of the vessel showed up again the evening sky. Its silhouette was black and lofty.
The gangway was lowered down near the water lever; I climbed up and found nobody on deck but a solitary lamp burning on break of the boat deck. The ship was quiet and was of bare deck lever with her sheer main deck and the amidships and no poop. There wan no one in the mess room either and walked to aft and down by the company way.
At foot of the company way I hump into a man who was standing there and was speaking through the doorway into a cabin, the other party of this discussion was unseen and might be lying on his bunk in the cabin.
I asked to get known the berth belonging to the new deck boy. The man in the doorway stopped his talking and gave a glance at me over his shoulder.” For a moment he looked at me then raising his left hand said, “Over there”.
Over there was a two-bunked cabin in which had already an occupant, strongly build and red bearded an able-body seaman. I took the upper bunk that was provided with a reading lamp and single red curtain, and underneath the bunks, near the floor, there were tow drawers which could be pulled out. The table was fixed onto bulkhead and there were two wardrobes.
I settled on the upper bunk, and no one seemed taken much notice to my embarked. There were men moving in and out of this Kennel, between the cabins they went and came, saying a word or two each other, but still there wasn’t very talk activity.
However the sea is everywhere the same, the ships are similar, the work is similar everywhere aboard a ship still the ship company remains leery about a outsider as the shore people, even the new comer who could be sailor but not well known sailor, the rank must be at leas as height as the Bosun, the Carpenter or an old able seaman like an old stage, to be accept right away into ship’s company, all other newcomers will be regard as greenhorns.
I awaked early the next morning and got out from my buck and I when looked at my wrist it showed quart to six. The able seaman was sleeping behind the red bunk’s curtain; I got careful dressed trying making not a noise and went on deck. The shipboard was quiet except an occasional clink from the deck and some rope lapping in the breeze.
It was still dark and there was light breeze. I could see the increasing activities on the shore side and I knew that the longshoremen were soon coming with their barges.
I found the ‘rower’, who was been night watch and who was taken care of the boat, coming out of the galley, he was carrying a bucket full of ash, “I am late”, he said as he hurried past me towards the starboard rail where he halted for a moment, putting his hand out he was feeling which way the wind was blowing, then emptied the bucked into sea, there was a light cloud of white ash that went with the wind.
“ Jevalare saatan, the boy sweared. “I am late,” he said as he hurried back to the galley.
He had filled the coal box in the galley and now poured water on the galley floor then weeping away the black dust of the coal he clear the floor.
“It six o ‘clock” he said. I must wake up the cook”, I saw him vanished into alleyway advancing whit shot nervously paces.
I was sitting by myself in the empty mess room when a strange individual appeared in the doorway. This was an old short man with a fur hat on his head. The man was wearing in a sheep shepherd clothes, he has a vest made of sheep’s fur, and he had galosh in his feet. The man lifted his other foot on the threshold of the door and was resting his body on the up hoisted knee, and he had a dogface and was looking at me whit his small watery eyes.
“Jaa, hah,ha.” the man began. “And you. Who damn be you?
I told being the new deck boy the ship was asked to have.
“Ah,ha”.
The head then vanished from the doorway and the cook came with white clothes and with his wooden sabots, and there was tinkle and din of the pans and kettles as the cook began his job in the galley.
When you are not more than eighteen, all human beings more than thirty years old looked pretty old for you and you will call the as old chaps who are noting but worn with years, so looked to me Mr. Lind as well, the Chief mate of the Triton , yet not so old than the second mate, the sheepskin that I have met in the doorway of the mess-room in the morning.
The chief mate was dry, lean man with very earnest expression, he had watery grey eyes and there was colourless fishlike fixed stare in it, and I ever saw any hint of smile playing on those faces. This mate was aged, but how aged; it was difficult say to sure, because the age of an old salt is unseen. This man could have been well over fifty-fife or even sixty, but there was the expression on his face, and in the upright body of this old man, that made him ageless. The mate wore weather worn peak-cap and black duffel coat, which all in black gave him very nautical outlook.
The chief mate glanced at my seaman's book and said, “Your have been serviced as mess-room boy, aren’t your? So, get the deck cleared”. This saying he turned his back and started toward the boat deck.
I was deeply hurt to be called as a mess-room boy for I have served six month as a deck boy on my previous ship and I was not greenhorn.
I was sore and felt like outsider during the first week on board the ship at anchor where the loading took place. I was eager to show that I can perform the job on deck, and can know the difference between the windlass and the winch at foot of the masts, and what were the halyard and the kai. All that not helped me to make friend to the other hands on board the ship.
The mess-room was in the amidships and it ease the heated job to carry the food to aft for midday.
One of the deck boys was real inlanders, the son of farmer, dark and introvert. The other deck boy was named as Sven and he was the same who pulled me with the boat to ship and who had his turn to be nigh watchman, so he was sleeping in daytime and up in night. One of the two ordinary seamen was a tall fat young man and he liked drink and talk where it ever was possible. He boasted be fighter and ready to take a mach with anyone. He was called as moneyman for, when sober, he had custom sit at the small table in his cabin and spent his off time by counting the multitude changes he have collected from every country he has been visited. I soon realized that despite him regard being a bit of fighter he seemed afraid quite much the chief mate, who every time when this fighter pissed up – kicked him up like a dog with way very gruel and ruthless.
My room mate, or rather cabin mate, the red bearded able seaman wanted to be second mate and he said that he will sign next autumn on the nautical college and to be earning a certificate.
Every morning the ship lying at port, or at anchor, the regular working time began half past seven and the second mate turned to the hands. The old mate was called as sheepish and was very rudely treated by the chief mate, and was taken among the hands as a sheepish.
This old timer wearing his sheepskin and galoshes appeared in alleyway in good time before half past seven, walking to and fro past the mess room’s door waiting as the men in the mess room finished their breakfast.
“ What’s the matter with the Sheepish. Why in hell his is so restless?” I asked of the moneyman.
“Do you not know? I can tell you, the Sheepish is strengthening himself and try recall all his resulution to venture turn us to. Just wait a moment, he will be at the door in time” and as he was saying this, the old mate appeared in the doorway.
“To o’ the morning boys,” the mate said with awkward tone and grunted “Fine morning, aren’t it. Hoplly we get underway before midnight. Yah ha, is the time to work. ” Then the mate looked at me and said: “This new lad looked out strong enough to carry the coilers of tarpaulins what was let out of the hatches cover, to under the forecastle head”.
The second mate pranced with us all the day as we made the ship sea shape by flashing the deck cargo with heavy chains and secured it with wires.
We were lowering the booms of the derricks as the peak caped head of the chief mate peeped over the edge of the windbreaker of the bridge and voice cried: “Make it properly. There is sea running high out there”!
“That bloody ss man, can he never trust us”, the red beard muttered as he was hauling a wire over the deck cargo.
We prepared sail in the night, before eleven o’clock when the rain was walling with the darkness. The last barges were disappeared into rain on their way to shore, and the cargo bottles were given to the longshoremen before they descanted to their boats waiting at the end of the gangway.
I saw an older man in grey suit, standing in the outer alleyway discussing with the chief mate, it was the captain and I heard him saying:
”Put a frisk boy in boat and sent him to cast off the mooring from the buoy there."
The sheepish came over to me and said:
“ Your who are so strong man, go down the boat and get loose the mooring from the buoy.”
“No problem”, I said.
I descanted to the boat accompanied with the moneyman and the boat was bringing us to the buoy that was tilted by the press of the mooring wire. I easy leaped on the buoy and unshackled the mooring.
The buoy jumped up like a cork and tossed me into emptiness; I fall and felt the seawater being cold as ice. I went under, and with a flashing thought I remembered that I couldn’t swim a stroke. When I managed got my head on the surface I could seen the deck light of the stern of the ship shining far away, obscured by the rain and the waves that was breaking over my head. I heard a voice crying. “Hold on. Over here, take my hand!” It was the moneyman who was bending over the edge of the boat reached his hand far down trying to get hold of me. I was hauled into boat and I heard the boatman asking “Are you allright”?
The chief mate and the sheepish were standing on deck near the upper stage of the gangway as I was climbing up wet to skin the sheepish said” What the matter”?
“ Nothing. It does not matter”, I said.
“Can’t they do anything without walling into sea”, the chief mate snaped.
After this event I was well accepted by the other.
After the pilot was boarding we weighed the anchor and with the steam shining we steamed out. Once in the open we headed in the western direction. I had my turn at the wheel in the bare wheelhouse, there wasn’t too much apertures for the navigation, jut the compass and the radio bearing aperture in the navigation cabin behind the wheelhouse, and the eyes of the lookout man. The second mate hovered in the bridge going nervously out and in the wheelhouse trying evidently gets something in sight out side the ship.
Next day was Tuesday at sea. It was raining and the wind was blowing from the west. I was standing on the after deck and watching as the narrow thread of the land in the north was disappeared in the mist of the rain. I liked the rain and the soft grey light of the seascape; it made me melancholic and it have always been so. In some way I felt being young strong and happy and free from everything. I was standing on the deck of outgoing ship again and there was the word waiting me. I laughed into rain and threw the half smoked cigarette over said and turned in.
BOOK TWO
It was a lovely day in the Coos Bay; the air transparent and bright likes a crystal. By the night it went off and then there was the bad weather with rain and wind. It lasted all the night and the next day along. The weather seemed changed. No matter since we were washing the super structure of amidships using strong caustic soda mixed with brown soap and by aid of the heavy rain.
In the evening I got washed my clothes, too.
The good weather was back on Wednesday.
Regulus was a ship as a tramp of the ocean with her capacity of nearly seven thousand tons. She was called as a Canadian’s liberty by her sheer lines and was flaying Panamian flag and owned by some company of the refugee of Estonian. The interior of the sailors’ quarter was Spartan, the bulkheads being build of a naked iron and there was not a proper heater to be warm the cabins. The wages were in the lowest English tariff. I have been said up myself and I wanted paid-off in the Coos Bay on the last day of December.
There is a saying among the seafarers: ‘When the shore people have their regular fest as the midnight summer, or the feast of the New Year, at same time every year, the sailors will have their holiday and feast every time when they are going to sign on board a ship and when they are signing off the ship.
I was signing off with an ordinary seaman named Sven.
We remained aboard till the next morning, which was Tuesday, and when the sun rose we were well shaved and well attired and we said good-bye to our shipmates and friends aboard. Then we landed along the gangway carrying our gears on our shoulders.
There we were, on the shore of America, two young sunburned sailors, I was nineteen, and Sven was twenty. Been service for six months at the Ocean trade I had hundred and twenty dollars in my pocket. We felt free and relieved and relaxed thought there was a faint feeling of sad to leave our watery home once again. With our money we went spending the wholly afternoon watching the shop fronts and shopping around. I bought a new hat and Sven wanted have the wholly new silk khaki uniform. There were many strange things advertised but we couldn’t afford all them.
Looking no more backward we set off on foot to the Raymond Lodge. The road ran along the Pacific shore then through nice woodland, over the green hillocks. That new setting was welcoming alternation to hour eyes since we were so long accustomed to see the bare watery world round the ship. A first the walking was wonderful, to walking along the road on the steady soil.
It was afternoon of the next day when we arrived in the Gold Beach and was walking to Raymond Lodge where we picked up n a room. The room was costly, four dollars was pretty much money for couple hour of doze, but the modern convenience of the room was worth of it. As the Pistol River was distance of thirteen miles from Gold Beach, we kept moving after the short break and walked five of it.
Then there was long lift to the Brookfield, past the Ceresin City. The redwood looked good. It was really something.
It was two o’clock as we arrived in Frisco where we sat in the Showboat for a while, then taking a wall again and walking until morning. Sven said, he wants to stay in Frisco, so I continued my journey alone by Greyhound to St. Pedro.
It was early morning when I arrived in St Pedro; I walked around until noon and then found a suitable hotel by the Balos Verde’s street. “It makes seven by a week,” said the reception clerk as he checked me in.
Chapter 15
The next day was nice, and the sunny morning greeted me as I woke and got up for breakfast. I ate ham and eggs and washed all that down with a glass of milk. Then, out to town to roam around till five o’clock when I was back in my abode.
The shipping office has been closed for two days, and there were no jobs available. I hoped that the next day there would be some offer.
It’s no good to have nothing to do and to have the empty day ahead of you to spend all these idle hours roaming around along the crowd streets. There were many sorts of people there. I saw a man wearing a large, black hat who was playing the violin. The man played well and I recognized a sorrowful melody of Slavic origin and it made me long for home for a while. I threw a quarter into the tin on the street and continued my walk.
When you are far away from home, standing on a strange shore, and there is no longer the familiar ship’s company around you, and you are by yourself among the shore people and not connected to any society, then you feel very alone, and it hurts you sometimes, being as nobody, to belong nowhere, not a citizen of any city or country. Then you wish to see someone like yourself, to talk to and drink with.
One night I had a strange dream. There was a Chin man in my hotel room, the chain had been taken off the key from the door, but in the morning I found the key in the door inside the room. Very odd, but I didn’t much worry about it.
As I checked my purse I found sixteen dollars in it. I vas shocked, I had been stupid with the money, been wasted the money too much too fast.
No letters from anyone, not a job in hands either. I had been two week in the doldrums when I came across Bergen in the street; he was out at elbows and starved. “Sixteen day “he swore” Sixteen devil days I have had nothing but couple beers and bit of half rotten fish to eat, so that my belly thinks my throat is cut, no a job aboard any ship. No stand-by jobs on shore either. There is no job at all. I think better take a working passage to Europe on some lime –juice and travel to the Antwerp, for example”.
That idea didn’t sound good and we went into a nearest bar and I bought a meal to Bergen and a beer to myself. He was totally broke and I took room with two berths for a week by seven dollars. Bergen said he will be able to bums back five dollars from the street by afternoon but I didn’t heed it.
Next day we visited in the emigration office in the Terminal Island to ask more time to the Bergen’s ‘Permit of residency’. The official looked at us as thought he was weighing if we had intention to go anywhere, and then he said, “There is a large Norwegian tanker arrived in the morning. As far as I know she is short of hands. There could be possible apply for a job.” I thanked the official for the information and said, «Sir we are very pleasant of the information. We are seamen and off course we are looking for ship and this are more than welcome," then we hurried to the Long Beach’s harbor.
Chapter 16
The tanker was big Norseman and after boarding the ship we dropped in the mess-room to have breakfast. There was a coal-black character that refused to give us anything to eat, “No café for the bums.” he said and with very quick motion picked away the café coups from the table. We were upset. “What the hell?” Bergen began and went on;” I’ll tell you, you…mess-boy that this is the Norwegian ship and we too are square head sailors, you know. If your think your will be some kind of boss aboard here, you have got wrong your position on board and I think you better go back to your Jim Crow car. For we are sailors and will join to day.”
Bergen was delivering this speech with upset mind and he cruelly swore in Norwegian so that the mess-man who was little by his bulk, was give terrified glance with flashing eyeballs toward the doorway, as thought he was assured the way out.
This coolie fashioned mess-man was a new sort of seafarer. There have always been solitaries and comradeships among the international sailors, if some one of them were on the beach as the saying was, they were not calling as beachcomber, and was given eat in mess-room and provided with packed lunch by the other sailors, there is nothing to be deplorable in it, because many of the sailors in their degree had experienced and faced the same destiny, to be waiting the ship without money.
“Aha, Blimey. Sailors? You’re the sailors? The mess-man then said with remorseful tone.
Bergen said “Yes, and let we have our coffee in time.”
Even the mess-man was deeply sorry of his foolish beaver; we never forgot it and we renamed him as a monkey-nut. After this incident we went to amidships and found the cabin which door was decorated with brass label; Chief Officer read on it. I knocked the door and pushed it open. A lanky young man wore a khaki uniform was lying on the sofa in the cabin and he sat up as we entered. He answered our hello with a questioning look.” We are looking for a job”, I began.
“Which job your are looking for? Have your any papers? The chief mate enquired. We handed him our certificate of discharge. He read them and asked me “Are you Finn? And this other one is Norman? “He asked well knowing that the matter had been mentioned in the discharge book in his hand Yes,” I said. We got know that the ship was short of hands on deck and in the engine room as well, so, there were job available aboard. She was lack of men as an ordinary seaman, an Oilier and two deck boys. Bergen said he would take the job as ordinary seaman but then he decided want to be an Oilier and was looking for the Chief Engineer for sign as Oilier in the engine room.
The cabin was rather spacious and the floor was covered with green mat. I shared the cabin with a polish able seaman named Jonick and because I had the lower position and job aboard as an ordinary seaman, I naturally took the upper bunk.
When I gave up the hotel the clerk behind the counter was giving back six dollar from the advance-payment. There was not a letter waiting me as we leave the hotel
At the very beginning I began hate the grub of the vessel. Every morning the push-nut delivered on table porridge of some sort, white bread and eggs and tins whish contained sardines in oil, all this we washed down with the black coffee. On midday there was meal as a white porridge which could have been suited very well in a penitentiary, but not on the table of seagoing vessel, the white mess was cooked from codfish, yet there wasn’t any piece of fish to be see, or to be recognize as a proper fish. It was just bulk of pap with unseen thin bones. However, all these nationality of this Babel in the mess-room ate that grub without grouse, whilst I was full of grouse about the strange food, they ate wordless.
The boswain was a stout red-faced Scandinavian with light hair. He was real the set up man. He always explained and planed how the work should to be done. After my first breakfast in the mess-room, he said to me, as he turned to the deck crew; “You Finland, go with the Pole, and wait with him.” I joined the polish able seaman who was standing on poop deck waiting his daily order.
Few minutes latter the boswain appeared and making a sign with his forefinger he indicated us to come on and follows him. We went in row first along the main deck towards the forecastle and then down in the fore-dry hold. There was freshwater tank down there with an open man-hatch. “There is the job to do” the boswain said putting his head into the man-hatch. “At first you must scrape out all the loose material, then your clear and wash with water the tank, and do it properly, after we will coat it with cement, so than there will be clear fresh water to drink after all.
After the workday I was so tired that I remain all night in bunk.
In the next morning we continued slamming another freshwater tank and on Saturday we finished the work at noon.
In the evening there was not a drop of freshwater aboard the ship, as all the freshwater tanks were under repair. We marched along the gangway in a single and long row, down to ashore jut like the lascars of some the east-Indian lime-juicer.
At the night I get attired ashore and went with Bergen to the Long Beach.
On Sunday I visited in St Pedro dock to see off a sailor friend as the Sea Peron was putting to sea bound for Venetsuela.
The sea Baron was old-fashioned three islanders; she was jus set off when I arrived on the quay. From a good distance I could see that there was some confusion on her aft deck. Actually part of the deck hands running back and forth on the poop deck, seemed be drunk. Suddenly there was lot of hailing and blow of whistle. A man over board, a life buoy was thrown down and it nearly hit the man’s head in the water. The man down in water not heeded of it but started swim with long strokes toward the quayside. I saw the pilot boat rushing ahead and picking the man up.
The Monday morning was lovely, it was sunny and the air soft and clear. I was hanging out side the ship’s side all the day long hammering old rust off and rolling a new coating on.
At the same week we had the stand-by aboard, to be sifting and hauling the ship back and forth.
I, and two able seamen, plus two ordinary seamen, and one deck boy, all us belonged in the Chief mate’s party. As the stand-by was whistled on; we had taken our station on the forecastle head where the carpenter was operated on the windlass, while we were hailing and swearing, slacking and stopping the heavy lines and ropes by the instruction of the Chief mate who had his cap on his head and it made him look very determined. He was striding over the tangled ropes and lines on deck shouting out his inductions, “Afast hauling, Slag out you! What the matter with you? The rope! Hold her! Not let her rift so out. Make fast!”
After all that hustles and sweat there was the order from the chief steward to come and carry the provision aboard.
How much an oceangoing tanker can take the provision aboard for feed the men in her? Great deal, for we were carrying for an hour filling the ship’s stores. Fifteen of us were toiled with this task transferring large amount of provision from quay aboard the ship. I put aside ten pound of coffee and later in the evening I smuggled it ashore with Bergen. We offered the coffee for sale to the barman in the Four Winds and when the deal was done we gulped up all the money we got.
One day An Estonian able seaman joined to the ship’s company. I spoke to him in Finnish and he understood nearly all what I said. He told me been six year out of his homeland Estonia, living under the refuge status, first in Sweden, then in America, because he was seaman he naturally was looking for ship to sign on. At first there were the Panamian flag, old ships, owned by Estonia refugees. “Of course, I couldn’t speak any language but my native Estonia. So it was natural get to the ship where the language was familiar to me.”
This able seaman was wearing pretty much and pretty often and he did it by his native language, “Kurat”! He yelled. Oh Kurat I heard him cursing in his cabin and on the deck. His name was Eivar but soon, we, all the crew were given him a new name as Kurat. He seemed taken not offence of this new nickname.
As the ship was hauled into dry dock in the Terminal Island where she got under some sort of inspection and after that the repair carried out and the reclassifications took place since all the classifications has ran out, we were prepared to a long haul in the dry dock.
My old oilskin was worn and was leaked badly, I wanted pay a new before the ship will be putting to sea, and I went ashore accompanied by the polish able seaman named Janock and the Estonian Kurat the Chinese galley boy named Kim wanted join us and we all traveled by taxi to the Long Beach to be found all the shops there closed. Polack said he wants to stay in the Skipper Bar for moment for the couple of quickies, I refused to stay and he then asked Kurat to come along with him. I continued my way with the Chinese boy to ship.
A week shot by and at last the ship was ready to sea and we get sifted her to the loading quay and there was the information coming by the pretty surely way of the galley, it told us that our destination will be a place as Shimizu in Japan. The loading was complete half past six in the evening. Janock’s girlfriend was seen off Janoock and remained aboard till the last moment, and then she hurried ashore little before we were lifting the gangway up and the stand-by for the fore and the aft stations’ were ordered.
We left the loading quay about seven o’clock by assistance of the two smoking harbor tugs and when the pilot was doped off out side the mole, we were under way hearing in direction 260 degree, almost due to west, towards the Pacific Ocean and the Japan. I was peeping over the rail to see the pilot off and lost my grand new fountain over board as it was slid out from my breast pocked and I saw as it vanished in the water splashing past by the ship’s side, I was sorry for awhile about those two dollars what I lost with the pen.
Chapter 17
The sailor’s work on board a ship is not so honorable task as the shore people might imagine. There is very little that sort of work to do in a cargo carrying ship. Actually a deck-man goes his work wearing his trousers covered with old paint and mucky grease of the wire ropes. He bears his knife in his belt and his glove in his back pocked, since it’s foolish to go to work on the deck without these traditional instruments. The work is an endless and monotonies fighting against the corrosion and rust caused by the seawater and rapidly change of the climate. There is work to do as the constantly washing the white painting. Oiling the windlasses, greased the wire ropes and clearing the cabins and the decks and the corridors hanging under the bows more than seventy feet above the sea-level when the ship is moored and is reading height of the water.
At sea all but so called day-men, go to sea-watch.
I was ordered in the first dog- watch from twelve to four and I went to the watch with an able seaman named Ulle. As the autopilot was out of order we get stand one hour at the wheel, then one on the outlook out side the wheel-house, on the wind of the command bridge.
At my first turn at the wheel I found the ship being a bad sleigh to steer. She didn’t keep easy the curse we were hearing. When I was swinging the wheel, pin or two, she responded very slow to the rudder and then came and went over the compass line. I had worked hard to keep her going within five degrees variation of her real course.
The few fist days were sunny ant the Pacific Ocean smooth and the daily sea routine was settled, taken place with the daily program on board the ship, as painting the lifeboat, washing the carpets, greasing and oiling the wires and winches, four hours by day and four hours outlook and at the wheel on the bridge by night.
The next Wednesday, about two o’clock in the night, the wind strengthened and it blew pretty hard by the morning. Since the weather had been so long fine and hot I had put out a wind catcher from the porthole of our cabin, to be cooling the air in the cabin. The waves were braking in through the open porthole and as I retuned I faound the cabin flooding.
Bay next day the gale was blowing with full strength and little after the mealtime the carpenter brought a word that there was lot of water under the forecastle head. When the slow speed was rang to the engine, we carefully stumbled along the cow-bridge over fore deck which was washing by the over breaking waves.
The stores and the carpenter’s working shop was full of seawater, There was flooding and there was noisily bang each time as the bows hit the wave and more sweater leaked in. We were sure that there must be large hole somewhere in the bows, but then carpenter found the water coming in through the pipes of the anchor chain, and it was leaking also through the ventilators’.
By the evening the wind veered and at last blew from aft and we pumped out all the water from the fore stores by means of buckets.
It was raining and winding for days and the sea very rough all the time. I had a wild desire to bay some, out of use, lifeboat, then repair it and make it suitable for fishing in the Australia water. I talked the idea to Ulle and he soon get along. So we both decided to inquire of the master whether there were any of the lifeboats for sale in this ship company.
The captain said that the idea sound good and he would inquire the mater when he is at contact next time with office. There will be much to build in that boat, but that sort of boat is made very strong and seaworthy, length of twenty-four feet and seven widen.
The wind was blowing by night and by days even the day was sunny.
We were hearing at the course 2 75 degree to west, I was accustomed to the balky ship steering and held she easy on her course within couple degrees variation.
The day was Monday of January, which was wiped off as we crossed the day line, longitude 180degree. So we came direct into the Tuesday, which was a working day as the every other day of the week. In night during the look out as I was standing on the wing of the bridge a gust of wind took my hat and it flew over board, a words of an old drunken sailor came in my mind as hi lost his hat over board and I remembered his saying: -My hat is gone. Could I do any work any more aboard this ship?
After two days the gale was eased and there was the fog which blanketed the sea around the ship and the visibility was reduced to nil, so that the chief mate wanted keeps the look out by nigh and day.
When we had been two week at sea the gale began again. It blew with the air sunny and clear, the waves grew high and the splashing flew with the wing over the command bridge. By the next day we narrowly avoid hit the first cyclone, which passed by us on her northern track.
After the seventeen days at sea the climate changed and the days began felt cold and the air was full of chilly moisture and the wind was blowing with gust driving rain over the choppy sea. In the night outlook I catch a glimpse of a fishing vessel ahead the ship. Then I saw another one of them rocking in the night and showing a green light for us.
Heavy rain was falling during the following day and the setting around was grey and colorless like a winter day in the Baltic Sea. We were approached the coast of Japan.
Couple hour before entering the Bay the other cyclone hit straight us, it forced us turn around and hearing out again at the course of 023 degree to northeast. It was terrible night, full of flaying water and howling of the wind. The waves were breaking over so that no one of us was surely whether the ship was still on the surface of the sea or under it. We were stumbled partly along the white painted walls of the corridors and there was seen the footprints of rubber boots on the walls of the corridor after the storm. But worse was coming.
Little past four o’clock in morning a huge wave hit at the amidships. It was terrible blow, it broke all the window of the starboard side of the amidships and bushed the bulkhead two inch inward.
It was the bang indeed, the noise of the waves and the cold water rushing into the cabin of the saloon servant; it drove him into panic him being behind the broken windows.
There wasn’t much to do for the ship because the wailing storm was blowing with full strength causing the water fly so dense in the air that there was really hard to see anything, or even keep the eyes open. There wasn’t much talk either aboard the ship as the storm was blowing.
After that incident captain ordered the engine stopped and left the ship drifting along with the waves and wind.
In the afternoon the engine was started again and we were hearing back those hundred and sixty mils. The wind was eased by the evening and we roped the anchor in bay of the Shimizu under the high Fujiama. The air was biter cold but there was not the snow in sight anywhere but on the top of mountains.
I was asking five hundred jeni from the money list and went ashore with the Polack to shopping. It felt good to stand on the steady soil after all that rocking and surfing. I bought a new fountain, pair of sandal and a bottle of Sake. We were walking and looking around and fount it being good place, so well that I before never been, lot of beautiful girls, everywhere. “Seitshema” We sped the night on shore, sitting and drinking, too much Sake.
Chapter 18
Thursday, 15 October 2009
The
THE EMBARKING
The night was dark and soft and there was easy to feel the moisture in the air due to the vicinity of the great river. I sat on earth and one of the two ordinary seamen, Leo, was sitting beside me. The third of us - the second ordinary seaman stood little apart. He was a man with heavy bulk and I heard his name uttered, it sounded like Aki, or something like that, I at once found him be sullen by his nature and he has been cut all his hair off and shaving his head so that it shined in the sunlight like polished a egg. As Aki was red and robust, Leo was tiny and slim.
We all were sitting or standing waiting our captain.
There was the boatmen’s hut and our captain had been entering into it I understood that he was going to deal with the boatmen the drive up to the ship..
I was tired and sat double folded feeling pain in my stomach for been sitting so long time in that cramped plane, whole eleven long hours in that full loaded tube unable to move anywhere but toilet.
During those eleven hours flay the environment have changed dramatically. Twenty hours ago there has been white winter around us and the temperature in Helsinki 15 c below the zero. Upon arriving at the Mississippi the temperature showed 20c above the zero and I still wore my fur-winter boots.
Sitting there in green I was truck by the odour of the earth and hay and the moisture of open water, all those things after ice blocked sea and the frozen nature sterilized by the winter.
The door of the hut opened and in the lighted doorway was seen a figure of a man, It was tall slim figure of our captain in his khaki uniform accompanied by a boatman. I got on my feet and we started down to river, the boatman goes ahead and then our captain, we followed them in a single file and got into boat.
The ship was there anchored somewhere on middle of the wide river of Mississippi. The water looked black and there were sparks of the reflections of the lights on surface of the water. The boat drove into night and got rounded the lofty aft of the ship the aft structure dowering up like an lighted cathedral, then the huge black ship’s side ran past and then there was the gangway in sight been lowered down near the water. The boat stopped and everybody of us stood up to being stand-by to leap on gangway. The captain went first and then we limped one by one after him.
The night was dark and soft and there was easy to feel the moisture in the air due to the vicinity of the great river. I sat on earth and one of the two ordinary seamen, Leo, was sitting beside me. The third of us - the second ordinary seaman stood little apart. He was a man with heavy bulk and I heard his name uttered, it sounded like Aki, or something like that, I at once found him be sullen by his nature and he has been cut all his hair off and shaving his head so that it shined in the sunlight like polished a egg. As Aki was red and robust, Leo was tiny and slim.
We all were sitting or standing waiting our captain.
There was the boatmen’s hut and our captain had been entering into it I understood that he was going to deal with the boatmen the drive up to the ship..
I was tired and sat double folded feeling pain in my stomach for been sitting so long time in that cramped plane, whole eleven long hours in that full loaded tube unable to move anywhere but toilet.
During those eleven hours flay the environment have changed dramatically. Twenty hours ago there has been white winter around us and the temperature in Helsinki 15 c below the zero. Upon arriving at the Mississippi the temperature showed 20c above the zero and I still wore my fur-winter boots.
Sitting there in green I was truck by the odour of the earth and hay and the moisture of open water, all those things after ice blocked sea and the frozen nature sterilized by the winter.
The door of the hut opened and in the lighted doorway was seen a figure of a man, It was tall slim figure of our captain in his khaki uniform accompanied by a boatman. I got on my feet and we started down to river, the boatman goes ahead and then our captain, we followed them in a single file and got into boat.
The ship was there anchored somewhere on middle of the wide river of Mississippi. The water looked black and there were sparks of the reflections of the lights on surface of the water. The boat drove into night and got rounded the lofty aft of the ship the aft structure dowering up like an lighted cathedral, then the huge black ship’s side ran past and then there was the gangway in sight been lowered down near the water. The boat stopped and everybody of us stood up to being stand-by to leap on gangway. The captain went first and then we limped one by one after him.
Monday, 18 February 2008
An announcement
All this writing there exist as they are without the proofreading and final correction
Saturday, 22 December 2007
Copyright Harry Tobin 2007
Harry Tobin assert the moral right to be identified as the author of this site and is owner of all this written material and samples.
Harry Tobin assert the moral right to be identified as the author of this site and is owner of all this written material and samples.
Friday, 21 December 2007
Chrismas at sea
There is a small maritime museum in a small coastal town named Rauma, in Finland The museum still keep up the memories of that sombre Christmas eve in 1947 when the American ship named Park Victory went down off the south west coast of Finland taken ten crew members with her into wateri grave of the Baltick Sea.
In this museum you could find the dismal story of Park Victoria telling with those small remains and debris of that ill- fated ship.
On 9 of December in 1947 the liberty ship Park Victoria was arriving at Hampton Road to be load cargo as coal charity for Europe. Getting the loading completed, she 11th December left Hampton Road and sailed out to Atlantic bound for Finland. Captain Allen Luis Zeppin the master of the Park Victory hardly had any exact knowledge about that remote country in a far corner of the northeast Europe.
The ship had the crew of 43 aboard, all told, and after been crossed the pool she arrived at the northern Baltic Sea in the afternoon of Christmas Eve just before as the grey winter day of sixty latitude turned into darkness.
The ship was bound for Turku, a city that located on the mainland, seen from the sea, beyond a hundred of rocky isles. By five o’clock at afternoon the Park Victory was calling out the pilot from the Uto, the utmost lighthouse post of the southwest archipelago. When the pilot was boarding there was a new order for the new destination being now Helsinki. Mr, N. Linström, the pilot in duty suggested to the captain to anchor the ship off the island to be wait there the next morning and then continued the voyage to Helsinki, the daylight allowing better navigation with good visibility, for the region between the lighthouse Uto and the Helsinki, was still partly unclean of the mines, and there was just a narrow passage which need the daylight to be find.
The pilot remains aboard and the starboard anchor was dropped to the bottom near the rocky islad, not far from the lighthouse. By the night the southwest wind strengthen, the pilot who slept in pilot’s cabin, was wakened with the feeling that the ship was heavily rolling, from which he instantly understood that the anchor has loosened its hold, and the ship was drifting.
It was snowing and the gale was blowing with full strength, the temperature of air was lowered two degrees in minus Celsius.
The watch was turned to and was stand-by on the forecastle head ready to lower the second anchor, but the captain hesitated for the main engine was slowly propelling against the wind and he evidently thought the problem what the two anchors at the same time down could cause. The seas grew biggest and after two ours there was a bang as the ship touch the bottom in a trough . It wasn’t serious touch and there reported not damages. An our later there was more serious hit in the amidships and the ship was grounding. The blow broke the plates of the engine room bottom and the engine room rapidly flooded. To the next the ship suffered black out as the generator went off.
The order was given sent out the distress signal and lowered the boat.
On the Uto, inhabitants consisted of a fishing community about a hundred occupants including the military staff and the pilots.
As there was tradition among the islander to gather together every Christmas Eve in the stone chapel to be cerebrate and singing together, so was also in that particular Christmas Eve in 1947. When the oldest lighthouse keeper was delivered the sermon of the Christmas, and the occasion in this tiny chapel was over, the people returned to their homes without knowing that at the same time there was a ship in distress and the crew of it was struggling for their life in the dismal winter night, not far from the chapel.
Decades after the distress, a fisherman named Tovard Sjöberg, islander by born, and who must have been quite young that time, with accordance the interview in 1997 he still well remembered that very long night:
“When the alarm was given, it was half past three in the morning and everybody rushed towards the pilot station asking of questions to each other; what has happen? Or whether she is still aloft? “
The pilot boat set out to the dark stormy sea following by a small military craft under command of Tovard Sjöberg.
“ We were heading in direction where we assumed the ship been anchored, but there wasn’t anything to be seen but lot of tiny lights, floating on the waves. When we picked up one of them we found it being a life buoy. We criss-crossed the scene hopping to find something else, then we spotted a light from a rock and we steered towards it. We circled the small rock trying to find a place for safety landing but we didn’t found a suitable place get ashore. was too dangerous put right to shore With the gale blowing and the underwater rock surfing in the pitch-dark night, so I decided stay close by the rock and wait the morning to come, and the daylight with it.
With first rays of the dawn we made new attempt to come near the rock. It was little abated and we approached the rock from lee side and succeed got a rope over. There were fifteen men, they were spend all the nigh on that small rock being expose all that time to the winter gale and ice cold water. One of them was passed away by hypothermia. fourteen were alive but in bad condition. We hauled all them in by and by then retuned to Uto. There were many of survivors wore just a underwear and were chilled to the bone
There was another lifeboat of the Park Victory, been beached on another rocky, it was half submerged and it beat itself against the rocky there were sailors there sitting in water unable to climb ashore. In this lifeboat was sitting among the American sailors, the pilot who was boarding the ship a day before.
Among the first survivals was the master of Park Victory, captain Allen Luis. Many of the survivors were in bad condition for there was frost in air, so that I had many times cleared the windscreen of the boat to be able to see something ahead.”
The people of the Uto continued search the region hopping still find more survivors from the wrecked American ship. There was plenty of floating wreckage and debris beached the isle around but not a survivors. A lifeboat reported been found washed up on an islad far a way from the scene with the perished sailors in it.
From the forty-eight crewmembers of the Park Victory, ten were lost in the watery grave of the northern Baltic Sea.
The days after the disaster there could see the tip of masts and the white bridge of the vessel showing through the water in deep about ten feet. During the winter the moving ice lifted the wreck up in sight, and sifted the remnants into more deep and she disappeared forever
The text is so as it is, there lack of the edition.
In this museum you could find the dismal story of Park Victoria telling with those small remains and debris of that ill- fated ship.
On 9 of December in 1947 the liberty ship Park Victoria was arriving at Hampton Road to be load cargo as coal charity for Europe. Getting the loading completed, she 11th December left Hampton Road and sailed out to Atlantic bound for Finland. Captain Allen Luis Zeppin the master of the Park Victory hardly had any exact knowledge about that remote country in a far corner of the northeast Europe.
The ship had the crew of 43 aboard, all told, and after been crossed the pool she arrived at the northern Baltic Sea in the afternoon of Christmas Eve just before as the grey winter day of sixty latitude turned into darkness.
The ship was bound for Turku, a city that located on the mainland, seen from the sea, beyond a hundred of rocky isles. By five o’clock at afternoon the Park Victory was calling out the pilot from the Uto, the utmost lighthouse post of the southwest archipelago. When the pilot was boarding there was a new order for the new destination being now Helsinki. Mr, N. Linström, the pilot in duty suggested to the captain to anchor the ship off the island to be wait there the next morning and then continued the voyage to Helsinki, the daylight allowing better navigation with good visibility, for the region between the lighthouse Uto and the Helsinki, was still partly unclean of the mines, and there was just a narrow passage which need the daylight to be find.
The pilot remains aboard and the starboard anchor was dropped to the bottom near the rocky islad, not far from the lighthouse. By the night the southwest wind strengthen, the pilot who slept in pilot’s cabin, was wakened with the feeling that the ship was heavily rolling, from which he instantly understood that the anchor has loosened its hold, and the ship was drifting.
It was snowing and the gale was blowing with full strength, the temperature of air was lowered two degrees in minus Celsius.
The watch was turned to and was stand-by on the forecastle head ready to lower the second anchor, but the captain hesitated for the main engine was slowly propelling against the wind and he evidently thought the problem what the two anchors at the same time down could cause. The seas grew biggest and after two ours there was a bang as the ship touch the bottom in a trough . It wasn’t serious touch and there reported not damages. An our later there was more serious hit in the amidships and the ship was grounding. The blow broke the plates of the engine room bottom and the engine room rapidly flooded. To the next the ship suffered black out as the generator went off.
The order was given sent out the distress signal and lowered the boat.
On the Uto, inhabitants consisted of a fishing community about a hundred occupants including the military staff and the pilots.
As there was tradition among the islander to gather together every Christmas Eve in the stone chapel to be cerebrate and singing together, so was also in that particular Christmas Eve in 1947. When the oldest lighthouse keeper was delivered the sermon of the Christmas, and the occasion in this tiny chapel was over, the people returned to their homes without knowing that at the same time there was a ship in distress and the crew of it was struggling for their life in the dismal winter night, not far from the chapel.
Decades after the distress, a fisherman named Tovard Sjöberg, islander by born, and who must have been quite young that time, with accordance the interview in 1997 he still well remembered that very long night:
“When the alarm was given, it was half past three in the morning and everybody rushed towards the pilot station asking of questions to each other; what has happen? Or whether she is still aloft? “
The pilot boat set out to the dark stormy sea following by a small military craft under command of Tovard Sjöberg.
“ We were heading in direction where we assumed the ship been anchored, but there wasn’t anything to be seen but lot of tiny lights, floating on the waves. When we picked up one of them we found it being a life buoy. We criss-crossed the scene hopping to find something else, then we spotted a light from a rock and we steered towards it. We circled the small rock trying to find a place for safety landing but we didn’t found a suitable place get ashore. was too dangerous put right to shore With the gale blowing and the underwater rock surfing in the pitch-dark night, so I decided stay close by the rock and wait the morning to come, and the daylight with it.
With first rays of the dawn we made new attempt to come near the rock. It was little abated and we approached the rock from lee side and succeed got a rope over. There were fifteen men, they were spend all the nigh on that small rock being expose all that time to the winter gale and ice cold water. One of them was passed away by hypothermia. fourteen were alive but in bad condition. We hauled all them in by and by then retuned to Uto. There were many of survivors wore just a underwear and were chilled to the bone
There was another lifeboat of the Park Victory, been beached on another rocky, it was half submerged and it beat itself against the rocky there were sailors there sitting in water unable to climb ashore. In this lifeboat was sitting among the American sailors, the pilot who was boarding the ship a day before.
Among the first survivals was the master of Park Victory, captain Allen Luis. Many of the survivors were in bad condition for there was frost in air, so that I had many times cleared the windscreen of the boat to be able to see something ahead.”
The people of the Uto continued search the region hopping still find more survivors from the wrecked American ship. There was plenty of floating wreckage and debris beached the isle around but not a survivors. A lifeboat reported been found washed up on an islad far a way from the scene with the perished sailors in it.
From the forty-eight crewmembers of the Park Victory, ten were lost in the watery grave of the northern Baltic Sea.
The days after the disaster there could see the tip of masts and the white bridge of the vessel showing through the water in deep about ten feet. During the winter the moving ice lifted the wreck up in sight, and sifted the remnants into more deep and she disappeared forever
The text is so as it is, there lack of the edition.
Wednesday, 23 May 2007
The Pumping Home
Dear Mr Tobin
Thank you for your interesting article.
Due to our waiting list of 4 + years for articles awaiting publication, we are unable to accept at the present time.
Our editor did find your story very interesting and well written, and both he and everyone here at Sea Breezes would like to wish you the best of luck in finding a publisher elsewhere.
Many thanks for thinking of us
Thank you for your interesting article.
Due to our waiting list of 4 + years for articles awaiting publication, we are unable to accept at the present time.
Our editor did find your story very interesting and well written, and both he and everyone here at Sea Breezes would like to wish you the best of luck in finding a publisher elsewhere.
Many thanks for thinking of us
Sunday, 20 May 2007
The icy passage
BOUND FOR THE EAST
By Harry Tobin
Mr.Uno Orko was a man who might very well be called as a big man. He was big in two ways; he was six and two, with large bulky, with red countenance and an earnest expression. He has a custom to look straight into the eyes of the person to whom he was talking to, or who of he was listening.
The other thing made him big was the large property that he had collected during his life time. He had as a scrap yard business, and he never neglected to mentions that he was a fair fellow who had started his career from the dump and had been working with scrap since his youth.
It was wintertime when two tugs fell into hands of Mr. Uno Orko. Having little or nothing knowledge about the nautical business he handed the tugs over to an agent who he supposed to know more about that kind of business.
The both tugs earlier been in the service as harbour tugs in the port of Copenhagen had reached the turning point where the demand of the constantly increasing traffic in the harbour, - and the daily shortage of the horsepower, were cut them off and These old fashioned tugs had been replaced by modern and more powerful vessels.
The Fable was the smallest of these two vessels. She was a typical harbour tug with her low hull and narrow wheelhouse, powered by the Mac, main engine of 1200 horsepower, She very plain vessel, indeed. There were nautical apparatus on board as a VHF radio, the magnetic compass and the radar up there with the maximal range of six nautical miles.
She flew the Danish flag and was classed in the Germanisie Lloyds bearing class as A.1.which means that she was firm enough to travel in ice.
She was strong little vessel and I was sign as skipper in her. Upon visiting aboard the vessel Mr, Orko said that the tug seemed to be in good condition and probably easy manoer because her wheel faced aft.
The agent said he was connected in Moscow and had signed a contract directly with the minister of transport of the USSR which allowed him advantage to the assist in the business with the every Russian ship visiting Kotka the second eastern port of Finland. “We must not waste the time in putting this little vessel under way for Kotka to make money there.” he said.
I was young and eager to get underway. I had the crew aboard as the chief engineer, the mate and two sailors, no one of them as a seaman by their trade.
It was Tuesday and February and the winter was one of the hardest for a man’s memory, the ice that covered the sea was thick of a half a metre and in addition there was mantle of white snow on it.
The day of departure was bright and sunny and the thermometer showed 15 degrees C, below the zero point.
We left the harbour of the small town on the west coast of Finland. There was no one on the wharf seeing us off. I carefully took her out of the quay, and put her around in the fast ice.
It took twenty six hour to reach the outer light-house Utц, standing on the outer edge of the frozen archipelago.
Because I was the only skilful navigator on-board the vessel (to tell you right not so skilful and self-assured in that time) I decided take a pilot, so called long distance ice pilot. After couple hours waiting, the pilot came in full dressed and was smiling when boarding and found our means of transport being not much bigger than the pilot boat in which he was travelling. Heard his name, it was Lahtinen or something; I had forgotten the name within of an hour, for there was much other things to thinks and to be remember. If he was smiling upon boarding the tug, the voyage very soon wept away the smile from his slips and he remain rather po-faced until we were reached the destination of our.
Next day from the departure of Newstad we went out from the Uto and found the lean coloured sea being clear of ice before us.
We were full bunkered and the aft-tank was filled with ballast water by meant to get the hull down to avoid the propeller be damaged by ice.
We ran at full speed, first due south, then to east, keeping well offing from the grim sea cliffs. The wind was moderate from east and the low deck was washing lightly by the waves. Within the first hour the dusky shore line disappeared from sight and the radar did not indicate anything but empty water around.
At first there was a talk about to arrange the watch keeping in the wheel-house in turn, but when we had encountered the first drifting ice field, there was not a word to go below for rest.
We tried avoid run into ice by altering the course several times seeking for free water between the drifting ice floes. As the darkness fell the wind strengthened and there were the flying plashing in the air.
I asked the pilot whether he has any idea where we were; he said that after that kind of six saxs steering no one could say anything sure about the position of the vessel without have an instrument to take a bearing from some well known point.
It was dawning increasing clear to us that we were lost. How sombre could be the the grey cold sea with all these ice floes and flying plashing in darkness, it could only imagine. But worse was coming, for during the night we made frightening observation which revealed the fact that the vessel was carrying prolific ice cargo, been forming from the prolifting flying spatters and plashing.
The growing ice on the vessel’s structure at open sea is inhumane thing and demand quickly decisions. We had to take her in lee if we would hope to see our home any more, but where going to? We even didn’t know our right position. How long she could last, nobody knew it. Many questions haunted in our mind as we stood in the dim wheelhouse. What to do. The refuge in a port in the coast, the thought was impossible and there was not other ship in sight nor was a smallest light in darkness.
Something white was looming out in the night. It appeared being a large field of drifting ice. Without waste the time we altered the course and headed direct into that drifting ice field, and stopped her as soon as we got out of the flying splashing, then started hammers the ice out of the bulk wards and from the wheelhouse’s walls.
Spending all night in the shelter of this grating ice-field we silently prayed in our minds that the ice-field could keep in one piece until the wind will cased.
The wind cased before dawn and we continued our voyage keeping the course to east. Suddenly a glimpse of a light was seen, there was a ship. I hurried seek out the Addis and when found it sent out the A.A.A singala in the direction of the unknown ship, then asking; what ship?
Getting not answer of any kind I then hurried toward VHF and asked the ship who saw the light of Addis, to come on the canal 16.
“Was it you who showed the light?” Said the human voice on the canal 16
“Yes, it’s me. The tug Fable we are seeking contact” I said
Without any addition conversation the voice on the canal 16 burst out fresh and long report of the situation of the ice as far as he knew.
As I was inquiring the position of his ship voice said. “Juts a minute.” then he gave red and green, and numerical values which I cannot remember any more. “Plenty ice anyway” the voice at last said.
I looked at the pilot who was bending over the chart table the pen in his hand ready to take up the position.
“Did you hear it? That fool gives us the Decca. We haven’t the Decca chart here.”
The pride of the seaman forbids us to make more questions about the position, so we continued our run keeping the course to east.
The next light belonged to a big ferry and it passed us so close that the bearing and distance we got from there, to the Nais-saari light house, was taken on the chart with great presumption.
The bearing indicated that we were accurate on the track. More for the good luck as skill of our own.
The VHF radio reached now a conversation between icebreaker Hansa and the cargo vessels somewhere out there. The unseen icebreaker seemed shepherded by her radio all the vessels to assemble together within the point that situated ten mails from the Nais-saari lighthouse to west, to be reporting to the icebreaker every vessel arriving at the point.
We were hearing at full speed through the new light ice toward the point the icebreaker had ordered all ships to be assemble.
I took the phone and called the icebreaker and let them know that we will arrival at the point within of hour and will join the convoy.
“What’re you net tonnage,”
“I think we have not net tonnage at all. This is a tug. I replied.
“The size of the tug and the engine’s power?
I let them know all that information belonging to our vessel classification and her ice class.
“You mustn’t be here. Your must go back were you are come from. We cannot assistance a small tugboat. Here is terrible pressure in the backed ice.
I deny reconciled the fact that we must turn around and re-enter the same way back and re encounters all those troubles again.
“No,” I said, it will be risky return the same way back. There is danger of get in ice,
And I couldn’t see any severe ice here which could hamper us to making headway.”
“Not a pace longer. I tell you, there is no ice, the ice is here”, said the voice from the icebreaker, “The real danger lies ahead . The eastern part of the gulf is blocked by backing ice, and we have to assist every single ship by towing them by one by one over the gulf to the Porkkalla. The only way eastward is the inshore passage made in fast ice on the northern coast. Stay there were you are”
We were waiting among the large ships the decision of the icebreaker, whether she will give us the change or not, whilst we dropped below get some coffee and were up again jut to heard the icebreaker calling the large cargo vessel laying not far from us.
“Did you see a small tug there? The radio said.
“Yes I can see here one small vessel like a fishing boat of something.”
“Is Fable her name”?
“Sound real fable.”
The Big icebreaker came and took as a swan take her young, making way for us and there were ice there , sometimes the main engine would stop because there was no water under the keel and there was high pressure of ice against the hull.
The pale faced pilot muttered by himself, “Even to my grandchildren I have to tell…
We were lucky enough to getting escaped from the grip of the packed ice, and before all we were lucky boys be still in life!!!
By Harry Tobin
Mr.Uno Orko was a man who might very well be called as a big man. He was big in two ways; he was six and two, with large bulky, with red countenance and an earnest expression. He has a custom to look straight into the eyes of the person to whom he was talking to, or who of he was listening.
The other thing made him big was the large property that he had collected during his life time. He had as a scrap yard business, and he never neglected to mentions that he was a fair fellow who had started his career from the dump and had been working with scrap since his youth.
It was wintertime when two tugs fell into hands of Mr. Uno Orko. Having little or nothing knowledge about the nautical business he handed the tugs over to an agent who he supposed to know more about that kind of business.
The both tugs earlier been in the service as harbour tugs in the port of Copenhagen had reached the turning point where the demand of the constantly increasing traffic in the harbour, - and the daily shortage of the horsepower, were cut them off and These old fashioned tugs had been replaced by modern and more powerful vessels.
The Fable was the smallest of these two vessels. She was a typical harbour tug with her low hull and narrow wheelhouse, powered by the Mac, main engine of 1200 horsepower, She very plain vessel, indeed. There were nautical apparatus on board as a VHF radio, the magnetic compass and the radar up there with the maximal range of six nautical miles.
She flew the Danish flag and was classed in the Germanisie Lloyds bearing class as A.1.which means that she was firm enough to travel in ice.
She was strong little vessel and I was sign as skipper in her. Upon visiting aboard the vessel Mr, Orko said that the tug seemed to be in good condition and probably easy manoer because her wheel faced aft.
The agent said he was connected in Moscow and had signed a contract directly with the minister of transport of the USSR which allowed him advantage to the assist in the business with the every Russian ship visiting Kotka the second eastern port of Finland. “We must not waste the time in putting this little vessel under way for Kotka to make money there.” he said.
I was young and eager to get underway. I had the crew aboard as the chief engineer, the mate and two sailors, no one of them as a seaman by their trade.
It was Tuesday and February and the winter was one of the hardest for a man’s memory, the ice that covered the sea was thick of a half a metre and in addition there was mantle of white snow on it.
The day of departure was bright and sunny and the thermometer showed 15 degrees C, below the zero point.
We left the harbour of the small town on the west coast of Finland. There was no one on the wharf seeing us off. I carefully took her out of the quay, and put her around in the fast ice.
It took twenty six hour to reach the outer light-house Utц, standing on the outer edge of the frozen archipelago.
Because I was the only skilful navigator on-board the vessel (to tell you right not so skilful and self-assured in that time) I decided take a pilot, so called long distance ice pilot. After couple hours waiting, the pilot came in full dressed and was smiling when boarding and found our means of transport being not much bigger than the pilot boat in which he was travelling. Heard his name, it was Lahtinen or something; I had forgotten the name within of an hour, for there was much other things to thinks and to be remember. If he was smiling upon boarding the tug, the voyage very soon wept away the smile from his slips and he remain rather po-faced until we were reached the destination of our.
Next day from the departure of Newstad we went out from the Uto and found the lean coloured sea being clear of ice before us.
We were full bunkered and the aft-tank was filled with ballast water by meant to get the hull down to avoid the propeller be damaged by ice.
We ran at full speed, first due south, then to east, keeping well offing from the grim sea cliffs. The wind was moderate from east and the low deck was washing lightly by the waves. Within the first hour the dusky shore line disappeared from sight and the radar did not indicate anything but empty water around.
At first there was a talk about to arrange the watch keeping in the wheel-house in turn, but when we had encountered the first drifting ice field, there was not a word to go below for rest.
We tried avoid run into ice by altering the course several times seeking for free water between the drifting ice floes. As the darkness fell the wind strengthened and there were the flying plashing in the air.
I asked the pilot whether he has any idea where we were; he said that after that kind of six saxs steering no one could say anything sure about the position of the vessel without have an instrument to take a bearing from some well known point.
It was dawning increasing clear to us that we were lost. How sombre could be the the grey cold sea with all these ice floes and flying plashing in darkness, it could only imagine. But worse was coming, for during the night we made frightening observation which revealed the fact that the vessel was carrying prolific ice cargo, been forming from the prolifting flying spatters and plashing.
The growing ice on the vessel’s structure at open sea is inhumane thing and demand quickly decisions. We had to take her in lee if we would hope to see our home any more, but where going to? We even didn’t know our right position. How long she could last, nobody knew it. Many questions haunted in our mind as we stood in the dim wheelhouse. What to do. The refuge in a port in the coast, the thought was impossible and there was not other ship in sight nor was a smallest light in darkness.
Something white was looming out in the night. It appeared being a large field of drifting ice. Without waste the time we altered the course and headed direct into that drifting ice field, and stopped her as soon as we got out of the flying splashing, then started hammers the ice out of the bulk wards and from the wheelhouse’s walls.
Spending all night in the shelter of this grating ice-field we silently prayed in our minds that the ice-field could keep in one piece until the wind will cased.
The wind cased before dawn and we continued our voyage keeping the course to east. Suddenly a glimpse of a light was seen, there was a ship. I hurried seek out the Addis and when found it sent out the A.A.A singala in the direction of the unknown ship, then asking; what ship?
Getting not answer of any kind I then hurried toward VHF and asked the ship who saw the light of Addis, to come on the canal 16.
“Was it you who showed the light?” Said the human voice on the canal 16
“Yes, it’s me. The tug Fable we are seeking contact” I said
Without any addition conversation the voice on the canal 16 burst out fresh and long report of the situation of the ice as far as he knew.
As I was inquiring the position of his ship voice said. “Juts a minute.” then he gave red and green, and numerical values which I cannot remember any more. “Plenty ice anyway” the voice at last said.
I looked at the pilot who was bending over the chart table the pen in his hand ready to take up the position.
“Did you hear it? That fool gives us the Decca. We haven’t the Decca chart here.”
The pride of the seaman forbids us to make more questions about the position, so we continued our run keeping the course to east.
The next light belonged to a big ferry and it passed us so close that the bearing and distance we got from there, to the Nais-saari light house, was taken on the chart with great presumption.
The bearing indicated that we were accurate on the track. More for the good luck as skill of our own.
The VHF radio reached now a conversation between icebreaker Hansa and the cargo vessels somewhere out there. The unseen icebreaker seemed shepherded by her radio all the vessels to assemble together within the point that situated ten mails from the Nais-saari lighthouse to west, to be reporting to the icebreaker every vessel arriving at the point.
We were hearing at full speed through the new light ice toward the point the icebreaker had ordered all ships to be assemble.
I took the phone and called the icebreaker and let them know that we will arrival at the point within of hour and will join the convoy.
“What’re you net tonnage,”
“I think we have not net tonnage at all. This is a tug. I replied.
“The size of the tug and the engine’s power?
I let them know all that information belonging to our vessel classification and her ice class.
“You mustn’t be here. Your must go back were you are come from. We cannot assistance a small tugboat. Here is terrible pressure in the backed ice.
I deny reconciled the fact that we must turn around and re-enter the same way back and re encounters all those troubles again.
“No,” I said, it will be risky return the same way back. There is danger of get in ice,
And I couldn’t see any severe ice here which could hamper us to making headway.”
“Not a pace longer. I tell you, there is no ice, the ice is here”, said the voice from the icebreaker, “The real danger lies ahead . The eastern part of the gulf is blocked by backing ice, and we have to assist every single ship by towing them by one by one over the gulf to the Porkkalla. The only way eastward is the inshore passage made in fast ice on the northern coast. Stay there were you are”
We were waiting among the large ships the decision of the icebreaker, whether she will give us the change or not, whilst we dropped below get some coffee and were up again jut to heard the icebreaker calling the large cargo vessel laying not far from us.
“Did you see a small tug there? The radio said.
“Yes I can see here one small vessel like a fishing boat of something.”
“Is Fable her name”?
“Sound real fable.”
The Big icebreaker came and took as a swan take her young, making way for us and there were ice there , sometimes the main engine would stop because there was no water under the keel and there was high pressure of ice against the hull.
The pale faced pilot muttered by himself, “Even to my grandchildren I have to tell…
We were lucky enough to getting escaped from the grip of the packed ice, and before all we were lucky boys be still in life!!!
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