Twenty Years Before the Antenna Mast

Trip: Thirty One and Thirty Two

Call Sign:

Company: CP

Specs: 29020 GRT 12000 BHP

Rank: R/E/O

Joined: Bremerhaven 16/12/79

Resigned Articles: Rotterdam 19/6/80

Departed: Ghent Belgium 5/7/80

I traveled by train (quite a new experience) from Offenburg to join this ship in Bremerhaven Dry Dock; it was a previously used (abused) ship that the company had bought cheaply. Later we found out exactly why it was so cheap. As it turned out, it was certainly no bargain. On joining we had no power, no information as to what was where and Yugoslav/Norwegian labels were on all controls and switches. There was no hand-over from the previous owners, so it was an interesting problem. How do you start up a ship! There is no ignition key like in a car. It took the engineers quite some time to work out that one. I had a nice old high-power SAIT AM valve transmitter (1Kw) with its high power modulator in the radio room. The SAIT receiver however was sick, and as deaf as a post. Unusually, I had Nife cell emergency battery and a massive typewriter that apparently predated Gutenberg.

A Huge emergency generator was situated in the bow, with various starting methods (battery, air, hydraulic), which ran the emergency lighting, radio room, bridge and navigation gear (radar etc). It was also used for some engine room systems as well as that most essential of equipment, the bridge kettle for tea/coffee! It took us ages to find out how to start it, (The generator I mean, and we could manage the kettle quite well without a driving license!).

And what were "nodlys"? They eventually turned out to be emergency lights, but we puzzled over it for days. The power supplied from the Dry Dock was quite limited and the Electrician and I quite often used to black out the ship by turning on a switch in the engine room which started a large piece of machinery, such as the air conditioning or one of the big pumps. As we could not read the labels, it was all very trial and error. There was then a long cold trek from the ship over to the dry dock powerhouse to turn the circuit breakers on again. These periods of total darkness did not go down well with the rest of the crew, so we tried to minimize any experiments as much as possible.

One of the Radar's that we had onboard was an S band (3GHz) Raytheon unit with a large blue/green display. It contained all valves, and was relatively old. The transmitter had an impressive output power of around 75KW and a maximum range of over 100 miles! The antenna was a huge 5meter array, which turned very slowly on the very top of the mast. It was powered by a large motor-generator situated next to the bridge. The Captain was on the bridge when we turned the radar on for the first time: he got quite worried about what caused all the noise! The other radar was a Marconi Raymarc, transistorized, simple but quite reliable. The scanner was also more accessible, being lower down. We spent quite a while getting the ship ready for sea. Like all Dry Dock stays, it was very uncomfortable for the crew. We had no toilets on board, we were not allowed to use the showers, there was no heating, limited electric power and a tremendous amount of dirt and noise.

The ship's hull was sandblasted then repainted. New funnel colors were painted on and quite a bit of maintenance was done all over the ship. A lot of repairs were done in the engine room, and we were trying to get replacements for some worn out bits elsewhere. I was trying to get a new typewriter to replace the ancient Gutenberg one I had to use in the radio room. The keys used to sometimes stick, which meant I could end up several words behind if I had to loosen-up a key when receiving Morse telegrams or weather messages. This was a rather nerve wracking experience and not easy. I had to wait until next time back to Europe before I got it however. Virtually all the navigational publications had to be replaced, as they were so old, and had not been kept up to date. (The charts of the English Channel for example, did not even have the latest buoys and navigational marks, so how the previous crew navigated was anyone's guess!) Hundreds of marine navigational charts encompassing the entire world (32 folios in all) were replaced as well as a complete set of pilot books (around 100 volumes!). We were told to dump the old ones at sea, but that was just too much for me. I boxed them up in the original boxes and had them sent home by train as freight. I salvaged some old charts too. We still have them at home and though old, contain a lot of interesting information.

We left the Dry Dock the day before Christmas, and had our Christmas dinner in the North Sea. We had not yet found out where all the switches were, resulting in there being no ventilation fans in the galley. Despite the smoke from the grilled steaks, the steam and heat in there, the cooks did a marvelous job!

We sailed up the UK East Coast, and around Scotland to Norfolk Virginia to load coal for Argentina. We took this route to avoid a storm nestling in the Western Approaches. Even so, it was quite a bumpy passage.

The first time we had to open the cargo hatches at Norfolk was a foretaste of things to come. The hatch covers were hydraulically operated. Several hydraulic lines burst whilst in use, showering those on deck with fountains of oil, and delaying loading until they could be repaired. I used to help the Electrician quite a lot on this ship, as he had more than enough to do sorting out the various electrical catastrophes that occurred. One example of such an event was a loud explosion in the passage outside my cabin one evening, then it all went dark. There had been several days of heavy rain and some water had found its way through a small crack on the monkey island above the bridge (two decks above!) running down some pipes and into a light fitting just outside my cabin, causing an electrical short circuit. It took us ages to find where the water came in and plug the leak. Until then we had no lights in the alleyway.

I remember sitting astride the main engine crankshaft, actually inside the crankcase, leaning against the piston connecting rod. (The engine was of course stopped, but it was still rather warm inside). I was being gently dripped on by warm oil as I changed engine temperature probes and checked wiring. It took several hours, checking all the cylinders, crawling in and out of the engine casing. Towards the end, I was getting quite worried… I was starting to LIKE it in there!

This ship had very comfortable accommodation for the officers, with cane furniture, indirect lighting, big picture windows and plants in the bar. We had also been given a very nice hi-fi system paid for by the company. We had built our own bar in what used to be the smoke room and were very proud of it. The ship itself however was a floating disaster area. The previous owners had skimped on maintenance and the condition of the hull began to give us real cause for concern.

During the first loaded trip from Norfolk Virginia to Rosario in Argentina, big cracks opened up in some holds during heavy weather and got us very worried. The cracks were inspected twice a day to see how they were spreading, not that we could do anything about them but watch. Towards the end of the voyage, the Chief Officer refused to go down as it looked as if that section of hold would collapse. It never did, but only I think because the weather moderated and there was then less stress on that section.

San Nicolas is about 200 miles up the River Plate from Buenos Aires. We first transshipped some cargo onto another ship so we were light enough to transit the river as far as San Nicholas. Even that didn't go well. The other ship (of around 10,000 tons) had problems mooring up to us and demolished one of its own lifeboats in the process, as well as denting ours. We then traveled further up river to Rosario where we took a week to load a part cargo of various types of cattle food. Even though these were mostly as pellets, it was still very dusty. Then down to Rio Grande Del Sul in Brazil to load more cattle food for Cape Town then back to Europe.

There was some worry that water would enter the cargo spaces and spoil the cargo due to holes in the hatch covers and leaky seals. Cattle food swells when wet and can exert tremendous pressure if confined. It can also give off large quantities of dangerous Carbon Dioxide gas if it ferments. We were lucky, but it could have been serious. We found that some hatch covers had holes in them which had been covered over with chart paper and then painted over to hide them! They were not of course particularly weatherproof and after the first few weeks at sea, started to leak badly. We were in Cape Town 2 weeks to repair hatch covers and fix patches over the cracks in the hull (according to the dockyard quote it should have been only 2 days). As the patches were fixed on the metal was found too thin to weld to so the patches had to be made bigger until metal of proper thickness was found to stick them to. The hatch cover drift pins were rusted solid! These were the pins which held the huge hinges for the hatch covers in place. It took a number of large hydraulic rams to push them out and much heating with oxy-acetylene burners then cooling down again to loosen the rust, plus considerable extra time to remove them.

During the voyage we used to joke that they should jack up the accommodation and put a new ship under it. At the repair dock it seemed as if they would have to! Whilst in Cape Town I of course made use of the free time and rented a car. I met up (as usual) with some of the local radio amateurs. One of them was a well-known doctor specializing in back injuries. Another was a local businessman who wined me and dined me like a king. I grew to like Cape Town, its environs and the people very much. It was very hard to leave after making so many friends but the repairs were finally done (as well as possible in the time available and within the financial limitations imposed by the company).

We then made our way back to Europe where I left. After I left the ship, I heard it had failed a US Coast Guard seaworthiness survey in the US. The forward double bottom tanks only had what looked like cobwebs where main structural members should have been. The Chief Officer reportedly looked pale and shaken when he came up after a before survey "look-see". The reported repair cost was over a million dollars! Approximately 3 years later, after a number of other problems, the ship was scrapped.