Port Suez

Our journey was taking us from Malta to the Suez, through and down the Red Sea and then right to India. A simple enough journey on a straight forward Platform Supply Vessel that was being transferred from the North Sea operating area to the Singapore area. A nice and relaxed slow-steaming voyage (to save on fuel and costs) and a good crew of twelve souls and fine weather above and around us - not hot just pleasant.

All was fine till we hit Port Suez.

Normally all clearance and formalities for Suez Transit can be dealt with at anchor and within a four hour period but for some unknown reason we were told to go alongside at Port Suez. Into the Port itself, to tie up and in fact spend most of the night. Ouch, not the best of places to be at all and especially not on a small ship with minimal crew to keep a sharp look out. Yes, a look out in Port and when tied up is essential here - will be revealed later.

Monday 7th April 2003 at 1200 hrs we arrived alongside at Port Suez. Well, we tied up stern to with a couple of ropes preventing us from being washed onto the scrapheap that seemed to be all around. Burnt out and rusted hulks littered every possible available space, a bow perched on one embankment the rest underwater, another upside down and many more jus left to waste like an overfilled graveyard. Not sure when or how these vessels came to such an end but from the picture I was getting these vessels had certainly been stripped of every possible fitting and machinery that had once graced them, leaving only the bare steel as a tribute to what had once been. Over the other side I could see a modern container terminal with working ships and equipment but next to us was a memorial to what once was.

Before arriving alongside we had formed a plan of attack to keep unwanted persons from entering the vessel. Our plan included the posting of watchmen; the locking of all doors to the accommodation thus leaving only one watched door by which persons could enter or leave. I was asleep when we arrived having worked the midnight watch but when I came down to the mess room at 1230 I knew that all of our great plans had been wasted. The shop-keepers were onboard and in grand style. The lead shop owner (the one with the largest and toughest family members) had taken over the mess-room, whilst the others where relegated to the corridors and the deck outside.

View of the Bitter Lakes
Photo Copyright © Ieuan Dolby, 2006

A little explanation of what this is all about may help here! It has long been a tradition in Egypt for shops to open up in vessels using the ports or the Suez Canal. These shops are typically run by families and some shops have been around for decades with the fathers passing the business onto their sons. These families or shopkeepers as I will now refer to them will arrive onboard the vessel with hundreds of tattered cardboard boxes kept together by odd pieces of string, plastic strips and pure will power. They will then fight and push to gain a good place in the vessel, preferably inside but if not out and once ground has been won will then set up shop and display wares. What is available and the quality of the goods is open to question. Anything can be bought from a ladies knee length leather coat to a battery operated drilling machine (industrial size). The goods will be draped over tables and chairs, will be hung on walls and parked on the floor. Those outside will have more space and they will place all of their goods on large blankets that they have for this purpose.

Certain shopkeepers will only have certain goods for sale. There will typically be the one selling watches and another only leather wallets and belts, another for souvenirs and one for tools and mechanical accessories. But the largest family operated business will cover the whole spectrum of possibilities and he will be the one inside and hogging up the mess room. No possibility for having lunch sitting down with this going on.

You look only, no need buy, only look. See good quality, no find other place like.

It is not actually the goods that cause any problems. Yes, they have covered every available space and so eating is a feat of juggling that takes place standing up and in the galley, but that is okay. The problem is the shopkeepers themselves! I am not talking here about the type of shopkeeper that sits behind his counter reading the latest daily whilst you look for what you want, here we have the one that goes out to find his customers.

As soon as a prospective customer appears on the scene he will be surrounded by about five shopkeepers all thrusting anything from original Dead Sea Scrolls to family size dinner sets into his path. The place is bedlam! When I entered that early afternoon I thought there was a fight breaking out in the mess room with people screaming and shouting and large banging noises (setting up his tools) coming out. But as I entered that thought was soon wiped away. I was faced by one Egyptian shopkeeper who seemed to have predicated my size in leather jackets and had three that I should try on, another thought I would be more interested in some souvenirs and was trying to put some in my pocket, whilst a third was wheeling a suitcase between my legs.

Each shopkeeper had their own personal style of gaining attention: each one had his tricks of the trade up his sleeve. The one with the Suitcase was the worldly-wise one of the bunch.

"Where you from"? "Scotland good, for you cheap price? You like dram, wear kilt?", "Scotland good country, I been there to Barra, my friend Angus Maccanus I visit him, good man. I speak German: was is lost".

The one who was trying to fill up my pockets used the interests of history to further his sales program.

"No pay to look, good eh?" "See, original papyrus from Egypt, Tutankhamen write here" Dead Sea scrolls all original I find yesterday in water.

And the one with the leather jackets was appealing to my sense of good craftsmanship by applying his lighter to the bottom of one of his wares supposedly as proof that the quality of leather was good. Unfortunately the smoldering edge of the leather jacket that he was frantically trying to extinguish had set the fire alarms off and so mayhem turned into one of catastrophic proportions as all crew rushed to their fire stations and the shop keepers were left to their own devices.

A shopkeeper alone is like a thief in paradise! Once we had gained a certain sense of proportion and once the fire alarms had been reset we returned to the scene of the crime to find all of our shopkeepers happily smoking with large cups of coffee and plates of biscuits in front of them. Goods that they had quite happily helped themselves to from our stores! That was what we could see. It was what we could not see that worried us but there was little that we could do.

As per usual we tried to keep a watch on our unwanted guests and to keep on working as required. I was down the engine room at one point when I heard this scraping sound behind me. I went to investigate and there in the workshop was an Egyptian man with no shoes on and with his head in a drawer. He also had a bag beside him that was filled with tools that where painted in a distinctive blue color - just like the ones we had. Well, as he was busy in the drawer and because the noise was quite loud from the machinery next door, I opened his bag further and removed all the tools that he had placed inside. Placing them on a shelf behind me I then coughed loudly in his ear. He jumped up, hitting his head on the drawer above and then turned around to be greeted by my smiling face. "Can I help you", I asked politely. He muttered a no, heaved up his bag and shuffled out, happy to escape without further ado and with the tools that he had appropriated. I would love to have seen his face when he got outside and found some lovely pieces of twisted metal that I had replaced in his bag for the tools that I had removed. I bet he was quite upset but then no complaints department for him.

Apart from the shop keepers there are certain other persona that come onboard and who want something from us. One of these is the Scrap Merchant. He is quite an annoying person and loves to wander around the Engine Room looking for possible stuff before coming to find the Engineer. He can then say what he wants with prior knowledge. He cornered me in the laundry of all places and he was a very large man - I felt trapped. He insisted on thrusting one hundred US dollars into my hands that he had taken from a very large roll of notes. "I give you 100, when you find something to give you give it me, I trust you". I kept on saying 'no thanks' whilst trying to avoid touching the money or allowing it to work itself into one of my pockets. This is quite difficult to do as his hand was everywhere with that note, shoving and pushing and reaching all over and around me, whilst I was ducking and weaving every which way but loose. For many reasons these buyers want you to take the money first, they then have a hold over you and one that they will then take advantage of.

I persisted in my efforts of evasion whilst he started to get angry. Kept on shoving harder whilst going on and on about not trusting him, trying to make me feel guilty. I eventually escaped intact and minus the money by saying in a very loud voice "no" and then ducking under his arm and out. The Scrap Man got to the German Chief Engineer later on. The Chief had decided to sell some empty oil drums that we no longer required. The man offered 100US for the drums and the Chief was happy with that. But later on when checking the payment received the Chief found out that he had been swindled. Somehow the merchant had palmed a five dollar note instead of the 1000 dollar note. Too late to go back!

Another man onboard is the phone man who rents out his mobile phone for crew to use all at great cost but probably the only service that sees satisfaction for all concerned. The Gulli-Gulli man also made his presence known. This man actually has culture with him in the sense that he is famous in Egypt and is well known all over the world. Not the one we had onboard of course but history goes to say that during WW11 an Englishman managed to make the Canal disappear or rather he managed to convince the Germans that the Canal was somewhere else so that they ended up bombing an empty strip of desert rather than the Canal itself. This led to a formation of hundreds of persons who could do magic tricks and so every ship docking in Egypt gains the services (for a fee) of a magician. Not that anything spectacular happens apart from a live chicken appearing from where it should not and goods from the ship disappearing from where they never reappear (this last trick is performed for free by all shopkeepers, scrap merchants and visitors alike).

A security guard is placed onboard all vessels for our protection and ostensibly to prevent shopkeepers from stealing our goods in their spare time. Our Security Guard was last seen walking off the vessel with a large black bin liner filled with what looked like cans and bottles of dry provisions.

We try to keep a good watch on these unwanted guests but there is far more of them than there is of us: we have no security guard to help us out, we are in their country and not ours and they have been doing this for many years whilst we just have the one day. A losing battle from the word go!

By 1930hrs when we are all exhausted from warding off the shopkeepers and their unwanted goods, from following potential thieves around the vessel and from kicking actual thieves out they decide that it is time to go. Home with all that they have appropriated and leaving us with hardly enough supplies to reach our next port. I went to the galley for a coffee and found none left, even the container was gone. There was no milk left and no cheese, no fruit and only a couple of limp carrots to fill the fridge. A while later we found out that the Hoover had been taken and that we would have to wash our clothes with washing up liquid or floor cleaner as all the soap powder had vanished.

A couple of people where happy though. The Chief Officer had bought a variety of goods including a leather jacket and a large suitcase. The Captain had loads of trinkets and souvenirs to pay tribute to his retirement and the crew had stocked up on socks and underwear for themselves and presents for the families back home.

And I was happy to have some tools still remaining in the engine room.