Silas Parks and the Old Tin Can

This episode occurred around 1967, a time when I was at the very peak of my career, or at a time when I should have been at the peak but due to reasons not of my own making, I was not. Circumstances had made for me to leave my previous employ or face a case being made against me, so to keep everybody happy and in the interests of all concerned I looked for alternative work.

The company that I ended up with was a complete one horse outfit: a horse with three legs and chronic bronchitis. Some madman had decided to resurrect a vessel that had twice foundered, once sunk and currently lay nearly upside down off the coast of Scotland. I just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and feeling low and in need of some self-esteem I listened to this madman and accepted his offer of a job.

She was a wreck; I say that honestly and without hesitation, a wreck that should never have been allowed to set sail this time and the many times before. I stood by her during the dry-docking: a period of refit for a waterlogged tin-can and from the very beginning I regretted ever having accepted this job.

I Captain Silas E Parks, Master (Foreign Going) Class One, Captain of Cruise Ships, Flag Ships and New Buildings - now reduced to this thirty year old, 90 meter long leaking bath tub of a coastal vessel whose future I could not see!

At the interview this madman said, "Silas, you are the man we need for this job. You have the experience and knowledge to make a fine working vessel out of the nuts and bolts that we have here".

This was certainly a boost to my deflated confidence after my previous trip and so well puffed up and primed I sat there and took nothing in. "Of course", he continued, "as the vessel is not currently on the market we would not be able to pay you a full salary but we hope that you will enter this project as a partner and when the ship is up and working we can reimburse you with extra".

I accepted this rosy offer and to this day regretted my hasty decision.

After the dry docking and whilst laid alongside in Newcastle my future crew started to appear like tramps around the town clock. Shuffling and without interest they heaved and winched themselves up the gangway and with hardly a breath for a "hello" they disappeared into the warren of an accommodation. Over time, certainly they pulled some straws out of the hat and thick black smoke started to puff out of the stack and good smells emanated from the galley, but this crew had certainly been drawn from the local prison, from the bars and watering holes dotting the dockyards and from the gutters around.

It was at this point that I took a nip of the old stuff, just a nip to keep the cold out and the feeling that I had made a big mistake at bay.

SETTING SAIL
Taking a ship away from port is not a difficult job, not for me anyway. With one engine and a rudder it does not require a degree in mathematics to work out which way either should go. And so on a fine winter's day, I moved the things that needed moving and we left Newcastle and the Tyne River with very little ado and plenty of billowing black smoke that I am sure had the port authorities scrambling for their cameras and the housewives for their umbrellas. I had by this time come to know a few things about my crew and the knowledge had me aching for my bottle of gin and the off-license for more.

We left the bay and the deep blue sea with me and the mate on the bridge and the Chief Engineer asleep in his bed (he seemed to assume that the engine room was not a place for him).

We left the UK bound for Balboa on the Spanish coast to load grain back to the UK. A pleasant enough trip it would be if the Bay of Biscay behaved with the weather and the Chief had loaded enough fuel for the voyage, I would not be surprised if the engine ground to a premature halt half way across the bay! The mate himself seemed to be a willing partner, although when I offered him a beer in my cabin he started to shake and nearly fell over the side in his rush to get away. Not at all sure about that one but apart from this upset over being offered a beer his navigational skills seemed in order and he can talk which is more than I can say for the chief snoring in his bunk.

Down in the galley below things were not as rosy as had been first thought. The food that was served did not do justice to the smells that had wafted up: the over boiled carrots and the undercooked potatoes that somehow 'blobbed' together on a rubber shoe sole tasted worse than it looked.

AT SEA
Sailing across the ocean in this reconditioned block of rust certain aspects of the vessel started to come out and they kept us busy for the duration. Just little things like leaking tanks, that had somehow missed inspection and pumps that never worked that had missed the Chief. Salt water showers became an everyday occurrence (certainly saved the cook having to salt his boiled carrots) and hourly fire alarms had us all running like rabbits - except for the Chief who wore his earmuffs twenty-four hours a day as a result of the noise.

The cook managed to deliver up some of the most amazing disasters I have ever seen out of food that had seemed decent and usable when delivered to the vessel. The Second Engineer, a big brute of a lad who seemed enthusiastic as far as the engine room went started to mutter threats against the cook should he not improve but I suppose he was only voicing what we all felt and so at the time I thought nothing more of his aggressive threats to the thin air.

The mate carried on talking to me and seemed to go peculiar every time he saw me with a beer and I carried on living a life and dreaming of the money that may or may not be going in the bank. I managed to keep on going through a mixture of gin, dreams and sleep that took me from one day to the next, and should I have ever looked around at the vessel or at the crew onboard I would have saved myself the bother and have topped myself there and then.

WHEN THINGS STARTED TO GO WRONG

The Mate
I cannot actually state when I noticed that all was not as it should be. Maybe just before we arrived in Balboa or maybe just after we had left. In retrospect I am sure that if I had known that disaster was about to break before we had arrived I would have done something about it before we left, but truth be told we sailed and that was that.

I suppose it was in the morning of the day after our departure from Balboa that I noticed that something was not quite as it should be. When my alarm clock buzzed in the early hours of the morning I found myself gripping the backboard of my bed tightly to prevent myself falling onto the floor. The vessel was sailing along at such an angle as to suggest that we were either sinking or that we had a serious problem with the ballast pump or tanks down below. I would say, at the moment of deciding whether to walk on the wall or the floor, that we had a thirty degree list on the vessel. I may be exaggerating but with the vessels rolling and the effects of my drinking the night before I am not certain of the exact figure. But regardless of its size I knew then that we had a serious problem and upon immediately phoning the mate on the bridge (to try and find out why we had such a list) I became aware that the problem was larger than the leaning of the vessel.

This is how my conversation went with the mate as far as I can remember it:

"Jon, what the **** is going on?"

"Hi Captain", said this strange person in a breathless and highly excited voice, "do you like the fairground?"

It was at that point that I rushed along the walls and the deck to get to the bridge, arriving their in my underpants and little else. The mate, if that was who he still might be, was standing at the steering wheel and taking the vessel through a zigzag course that would have made WW11 convoy leaders jealous. He was weaving through the oceans whilst holding a conversation with himself: sweating profusely and wearing a pair of green and blue Donald Duck pajamas (he had certainly not been wearing them when he arrived on the bridge last night).

I deliberated on whether to push him away from the steering wheel and taking control or trying to sweet-talk him away. The talking never got off the ground as an extra large wave, our extra large list and a 'zig' that bore no relation to the 'zag' sent us all flying into a jumbled heap against the port bridge exit. The mate continued to lie curled up whilst mumbling something about dragons and fairies whilst I took myself as quickly as possible back to the steering wheel to try and salvage something of the disaster that had hit.

It surprised me greatly at the time that nobody else had come to the bridge to see what the problem was, but after this latest attempt to visit the seabed the Chief Engineer did stick his head around the door (still with ear muffs in place) and to grunt in my general direction. I must certainly have looked a right site with my hair sticking up straight in the air and clad only in my underpants. And to do damage to an otherwise terrible situation, the wildly chatting mate in the corner dressed in his night gear may have led anyone believe the worst of me.

The Chief did not grunt further and disappeared with his muffs back to bed or wherever he came from. I slowed the vessel down and stuck the auto pilot on to get us back on a straight course and then started to look at the next step of the problem - our excessive list.

The Second Engineer ..
I didn't recognize the Second Engineer when he came onto the bridge so complete was his body armory of oil and grime. He came up to the bridge leaving a river of oil streaks and dirty hand prints that would put a smile to any forensic experts face and thumped himself down in the chair that I had once called my own. I looked at him without much hope and enquired politely as to what the problem might be.

"We seem to have a slight problem here Sam", I said as calmly and restrained as I could.

"Yep", he replied from his slouched position amongst the oil spill. "We certainly do, I have knocked the cook out and so there will be no breakfast this morning unless you cook it yourself".

I was thrown considerably away from my previous state of acceptance into a jumbled heap of confusion upon his statement. I could not for the life of me work out how the cook had any input to the list that the vessel was laboring under. Pictures of the cook shifting his stores from the port side to the starboard side did not conjure up more than a one degree list and the idea of him annoying the second by entering the engine room just seemed impossible.

I decided at that point to enquire further into this mystery if only to clear some of the now choking cobwebs that were enveloping my tired and overloaded brain.

"Sam", I said as calmly and clearly as I could, "what about the list"?

"The list" said Sam

"Yes, the list" said I trying to exercise undue patience in the face of extreme adversity.

"Yep", said Sam whilst levering himself out of the chair that now resembled a 200ltr drum of waste oil, "must go and look at that".

The Chief Engineer .
After Sam had left on his mission to solve the problem of our excessive list I decided to call my chief Engineer: to try and get some increased action on the problem. The telephone to his cabin produced no result, as did my call to the engine room. After a glance at the Chief Mate blubbering on the floor I decided that a quick visit to the chiefs Cabin would be in order.

He was draped across his day bed, propped up by a lifejacket and three pillows and with his ear muffs taped to his head for better insulation - I left him there and proceeded to my cabin for a can of beer and a cigarette! The latter habit having only recently been picked up on .

The Cook .
The list did in fact get better. It did in fact improve from about 30degrees to about twenty five and although it was by no means perfect it was in the right direction. I was busy taking a fly nip from my bottle of whisky that I had stashed amongst the flags in the locker when the bridge door crashed open. Turning around whilst attempting to disguise the bottle as the National flag of Jamaica I couldn't see anybody. Further peering downwards and I saw what looked like the cook, covered in blood and dragging himself across the floor like a beggar with no legs.

I pulled the cook upright and made sure that his bleeding was not life threatening. He was blubbering away like a baby"he hit me, he hit me, he hit me!"

From the other side of the bridge I could hear the mate joining I the fuss "he hit me too", was his repetitive voice over.

I now had on my hands two total madman. I had one madman covered in blood and crying like a newborn baby and the other repeating everything that the first one said. In fact whilst repeating everything the mate was busy leaping like a frog around the confines of the bridge. Very upsetting to say the least! I would have welcomed a bit of help from someone with an ounce of brain in them but that was not to be.

The door did open whilst I was attempting to prop the cook up but it was only the Chief who suggested that I should keep the noise down before he disappeared back down from whence he came.

And again a few minutes later whilst I was attempting to remove the Mate from the chart table so that I could gain some perspective as to our position did the door open. This time it was the Bosun who informed me without pause for breath that the crew had gone on strike - something about not receiving overtime pay! And then he disappeared - job done successfully!

Not soon after that we ran aground. With a large crunch and what seemed at the time a notable starboard list we hit rocks and breached the bottom of the boat. The starboard list was I presume a result of the Second Engineer having forgotten his original task and whilst pumping the ballast let it run longer than it should have. I do remember one point when we where upright but I was busy trying to stop the Cook stabbing himself with the chart table calipers and the Mate from helping him achieve this.

I myself ended up without a job and an overdraft deeper than the boat I had just left. The once-kindly manager blamed me for everything that had occurred and so did not feel it necessary to reimburse me a penny for my troubles. The cook left and decided that he should come out of the closet, in fact the Second Engineer forgave him and they are now living together in Selby. The Chief Engineer slept through it all and I am sure never actually realized what had gone on - maybe to him the final crunch was just part of his dream.

And the mate? Well, he just walked off the vessel and more or less toddled up the gangway of another - life goes on.

And I took the blame for the whole disaster.