Twenty Years Before the Antenna Mast

Trip: Two

Call Sign:

Company: Shell Tankers

Specs: 42162 Tons 22000SHP

Rank: 2nd R/O

Joined: London 1/1/

Departed: Stavanger 4/5/68

I joined at Shellhaven on the River Thames, not all that far from home and easily found. This was a really beautiful ship with fine lines and relatively new in years. She had split accommodation, amidships and aft. There was a very impressive double curved staircase in the amidships accommodation from the main entrance hall up to the Captains and Owners suits on the second and third decks. The bridge and radio room and the senior radio Officer's cabin were up a further flight of stairs. Engineers and crew were aft and the Deck Officers amidships. The bar and saloon were also aft, which caused some problems in heavy weather particularly after a few beers. We never lost anyone though but people occasionally got very wet. The Chief R/Os cabin was just abaft the bridge. It was roomy and close to the radio room. My cabin (as junior R/O) was situated two decks down, just across from the Officers laundry! The mid-ships accommodation was beautifully quiet, and when the ship was rolling, I could quite often hear the oil in the cargo tanks a few feet below my cabin gurgling or sloshing around.

My Chief was a Mr. A. J. Pennington (Anthony James-Pennington as he used to call himself but was quite happy to be called Tony). He was young but experienced and had recently taken the advanced Marine Electronics course.

We were powered by a steam turbine, which gave a very quiet vibration-free ride, especially amid ships where we were. There were two tall funnels aft, the large swimming pool being between them. Each of the bright red painted funnels had a huge shell emblem painted brightly on them, the trademark of the company. They could be seen for miles around.

The radio equipment was also better than the old Benhope, especially the transmitter which was a Globespan with over a Kilowatt output using AM and CW modes from a 3 x 4-400a PA, modulated by 2 x 4-400's. The usual Atalanta receiver and accessories rack with the Salvor emergency transmitter, Alert receiver, Autokey automatic keyer and Seaguard automatic alarm was fitted. The radar's were inter-switched Argus-Hermes, my first experience of inter-switched radar's. It enabled any radar transceiver, display or scanner to be used by any other component, by use of a very flexible cross-switching system. The radio antenna was also large and stretched high up, stretching almost the full length of the ship. It was a really super high T type, between the Fore and Aft masts. We could work stations on 500KHz and 2 MHz R/T, which other ships could hardly even hear. I even managed to work back to Humber Radio (GKZ) on 2 MHz R/T from the Persian Gulf, but signals were not good enough for a telephone call. He told me off for trying! He said I should use Portishead (the British long range HF station, which would have been much more expensive!) For my trial, the power reduction on 2 MHz was turned off and I was running the full kilowatt output of anode and screen modulated AM (around 4Kw PEP on 2 MHz!) I doubt that I have ever had more power at my disposal at any time since

The large antenna could however be a disadvantage when static electricity built up. One evening, I heard an intermittent loud crack when talking to the Chief outside my cabin. Curious, we followed the sound upstairs, and into the radio room. There we were led to the aerial switch box by the bright blue flashes and almost ear-splitting bangs emanating from it. The antenna was being charged up by static laden dust, which arced across to earth when the voltage was high enough to jump the gap inside the antenna switch box. Carefully making sure whatever we touched was earthed we turned the earthing switch around. As the contact got closer to the antenna the intermittent bangs changed to a deep loud angry buzz, then higher into a whine, finally ending in silence when the antenna was properly earthed. The initial gap, which arced across was fully three inches, so it proved the antenna insulation was good! The build-up of static charge on antennas is a re-occurring theme on all ships. Especially so off the West African coast, where a dust laden wind (The Harmatan) can carry Sahara dust hundreds (or even thousands) of miles out to sea, giving every ship it passes over a thick red coating, and a charge of several hundred kilovolts! This effect was to be experienced a number of times throughout my seagoing career.

When viewed from above, the ship had a huge seemingly almost empty engine room. Looking through the skylight, the apparently small white mound of the turbine could be seen far below, with its associated high pressure pipe work, all very well insulated and painted white too. There were two massive boilers at the foreword end of the engine room, completely filling it. These provided the steam at around 800 degrees for the turbines. Despite this, it was possible to stand right next to the turbine casing and high-pressure steam pipes without feeling any undue heat, due to the very thick insulation around them.

The turbine was connected to the propeller shaft by a huge gearbox that reduced the 15000 or so RPM of the turbine to the 120 RPM required by the single huge propeller. This and the air blowers for ventilation and supplying air to the burners for the boiler gave the most noise in the engine room. Under the turbines were the huge condensers for recycling the steam. They could maintain around 30 inches of vacuum to improve the efficiency of the turbines. The size and power of engine room machinery started to fascinate me, and I used to spend quite some time down there talking to the watch officers and looking around.

The crews were Hong Kong Chinese, who lived aft, underneath the engineer's accommodation. At Chinese New Year, which was their biggest celebration, we were invited aft to their party. Delicious food and booze flowed like rivers. One beer in the glass, one beer can open ready and one beer can "on standby" next to it. Then the dreaded "Yam Sing" with whisky. Drink it in one gulp, and the empty glass must be placed upside down on your head. Not to do so was to "lose face" with the crew. I didn't like whisky, but it was compulsory!

I don't remember much after a while, but I apparently took myself off. The Chief Officer wondered where I had got to and went amidships to see. He found me lying on the floor beside my bunk - asleep. He tried to wake me up to get me to get into bed. I reportedly got half way up, then said, "I'm quite comfortable here really" and flopped back down. He picked me up and plonked me on the bunk, where I woke up next morning, not remembering anything of it.

Our route was Europe to Curacao / Maracaibo and back to Europe with one trip out to the Persian Gulf. These ensured quite long periods at sea. We devised various ways to prevent boredom, and keep ourselves entertained. There was a spare cabin next to the Officers bar. This was turned into a Scalectrix model racing car track, complete with paper mache mountains and tunnels built on a huge sheet of plywood. Each officer had his own car, and we could race I think three at a time around the track. Each car was "customized" to make it faster or more maneuverable. Some had miniature lights fitted as well, so we could turn off the cabin lighting and still follow the race.

As radio officers, we were the all-important repairmen when a car started smoking, or its lights failed. The radio room carried a varied supply of fine motor winding wire, miniature light bulbs, motor brushes and small screws for quick repairs. The middle of the South Atlantic is not an easy place to get your model car repaired, and the call out charge is horrendous! The engineers never really trusted themselves to their own repairs. A heavy shifting spanner (their tool of choice) was not the best one for the job! These car races could become quite ferocious, the loser having to buy the next round of drinks! All tricks were resorted to, including beer cans as obstructions in the tunnels! Or the surreptitious short circuit!

At Mina Al Ahmadi, we were moored to a very long oil jetty, with virtually nothing ashore except tank farms and pumping houses. The hospitals in almost all the Arabian countries have a hard time getting blood for their hospital operations, the Muslim religion often forbidding the giving of blood. Foreign merchant ships are therefore an important source of blood donors for them, and frequently, a blood donor service is set up at the end of the jetty. At that time the donor received 5 Dinars (about 2 Pounds) for his pint of blood. I had just started to collect foreign bank notes and as I did not have any from Kuwait, I got a walk, a free blood test and a nice new 5 Dinar note that way.

The ships Gyro compass was a somewhat large, older model Sperry. It was housed in its own room together with a rotary transformer and control electronics, aft of the bridge, and next to the Radio Room. One day there was shouts of dismay from the bridge as the ship started to turn in circles. There was also a horrible howling noise coming from the gyro room. The bridge quickly switched off the Auto. Pilot and called a sailor to steer by hand using the magnetic compass. My Chief and I dashed into the gyro room to see what was happening to the gyro. We were confronted by this delicate piece of apparatus virtually standing on its head inside its cage, screaming loudly in distress as it was brutally pushed around by a faulty servo system. A bright flickering blue glow was coming from the control electronics rack.

It must be remembered that these older gyros contained a heavy 20 or 30-pound (10 - 15 Kilos) wheel, revolving at 5 to 10 thousand RPM. The whole thing suspended on thin piano wire on gimbals to lessen frictional losses and ensure freedom of movement. The forces acting on those thin pieces of wire when the system was driven around by its servo must have been tremendous. There were stories of faults that caused the heavy gyro wheel to break loose and wreak havoc inside the gyro room until its energy was expended. We quickly switched off the system, and waited outside until the wailing had died down before venturing inside again to take stock. The servo was driven by a balanced valve thyratron system. One of the thyratrons had gone short circuit causing the delicately balanced system to become massively unbalanced and giving full drive to the servomotor. A new valve, some quick adjustments and all was right with the world again. A sigh of relief from all concerned. There was no damage, and after letting it run up to speed and having stabilized the ship could be put back on autopilot.

At the time, this ship was classed as a very large crude carrier (VLCC), and only a very few tankers were larger. These days of course, it would be looked at as being comparatively small, there are now many larger ships plying the oceans. The process of docking such large ships however was, and still is, a problem. The pilot must be an expert in judging very slow movements, as bringing a loaded tanker alongside just a bit too fast could well result in a concertina shaped pier and pipelines, not to mention a bent boat! The inertia of well over 100,000 tons of ship, cargo and fuel is tremendous, and it takes a lot of stopping even when moving very slowly. Modern technology includes Doppler speed measurement systems and automated side thrusters on the ships to help, but even with these additions accidents still happen. The Modern supertankers are well over 400,000 tons displacement. You can imagine what could happen if they "nudged" a pier just a bit too hard! Steam turbine ships of this size required immense amounts of fuel. The one reason they have virtually died out today as a means of propulsion. The Solen burned around 120 tons of heavy fuel oil a day at normal cruising speed, and carried enough for several months between fuel stops. Heavy oil is one of the cheapest of fuels, being almost like tar, and has to be heated to around 100 degrees Centigrade before it can be pumped into the burners. Bunkering 10,000 tons of the stuff however, is expensive in anyone's language.

My first time in an aircraft was the flight home from Stavanger to London. Up until this time, I had never flown at all. All relief's had previously been in the UK and the ships were reached by train or taxi. It was a new experience and was to be the first of many, sometimes much longer international flights to and from ships. It was a good flight, but I was not so impressed by the raw fish (apparently a delicacy) which we were served on the plane as a meal. I was never one for fish (unless deep-fried together with chips and peas!)