Sam the Oiler

Little, stocky and looks as if he wants to burst into tears all of the time. During the first few days onboard I presumed that Sam, my Filipino Oiler was suffering aftershocks of some great tragedy back home or was being severely bullied and persecuted by his fellow seafarers.

I felt it my duty (after having been in his company for so long and feeling utterly miserable myself as a result) to take him aside and ask him what the problem was and if there was anything I could do to help him. This mission erroneously resulted in a mass of confusion whose end finally lay in the arrival of the Bosun who managed to put the jigsaw pieces back into the box - not quite in order but together at least.

I learnt from this slight misunderstanding that Sam did not speak one word of English, and that he liked to nod his head in agreement even though my talking had whistled right past ears without pause. This does go against current international law where the common language is English but then halfway across the ocean the last thing one can do is find a new Oiler and get rid of the old one.

The Failures of Sam

Through sign language and desperate callings of the Bosun to translate I did over time manage to gain some sort of routine that Sam could follow, one that I felt would not cause him to break out in tears, to hang himself from the engine room steps or to start chasing me around the engine room with a fire extinguisher raised high. I had simple jobs listed in order of importance, I had these translated into Tagalog (language of the Philippines) and explained to him and I posted these in large letters were he could not avoid them.

After a fashion this unofficial system worked and a semi-routine became the order of the day. He would come down as if he had just buried his favorite goldfish and I would leave him to his devices and the well prepared list. Certainly, when it came to giving him tasks outside of the normal it became an exercise in patience, often resulting in I doing the task myself to save time and popping a blood vessel in frustration. I would initially decide that the task needed doing; I would then go looking for my cry baby. And always he would never be where he should be, never be were I wanted him to be and my endless tours around the engine room often resulted in failure. Yet, half an hour later my sad Oiler would emerge from some darkened spot, covered in oil and with what could have been tear streaks disturbing the oil slick on his face.

I never did gather whether he had actually been cleaning some tricky spot or whether he had been having a fly sleep!

One close call came when first thing in the morning I explained to Sam that I wanted the scrap metal on deck to be disposed of. I did this through a variety of hand signals and grunting noises and after ten minutes of looking like a windmill I felt confidant that he had understood my order. Anyway, the day progressed busily as a day typically does and an hour or so later I was in the control room with the third engineer. Our heads were screwed under the main console as we tried to trace an earth fault that had been bugging us for a while. Out of the corner of my eye I noticed Sam toddling through the control room with a brand new diaphragm air pump clutched to his chest. I saw Sam on his latest mission, I returned to my work and it was a couple of minutes before what I had seen rang alarm bells in my brain. In actual fact the 3rd also clicked that something was amiss about the same time that I did and we both looked at each for an answer. Luckily the 3rd jumped up and rushed after Sam, managing to catch him outside and just at the point when he was going to throw this brand new Diaphragm Pump into the deep blue sea.

Very lucky were we!

It was at this point that I felt like asking him not to appear again down the engine room. I was never very sure whether he was purposefully being stupid, was in actual fact taking the "Mickey" out of me or if he was just totally useless but trying hard not to be. Not that the end result makes any difference but . I had to do something.

The Brain Reversal Technique

Many an Engineer would at this point of the game have the poor Oiler by the scruff of his neck, about to follow what would have been a Diaphragm pump to visit Davy Jones Locker. But these showing of strength, rank or anger never really have much effect except to alienate the victim even further - if that was possible in the case of 'misery' Sam.

I decided to put into action an age old technique of reverse psychology, with the view toward him being fired if this did not work. Later that day I passed Sam as he was emerging from one of his darkened corners. I looked at him with a massive smile and stuck my thumbs up in the international sign language form for "great". I did this again the next day and on the third I even slapped him on the back, gave him another grin and even shook his hand.

On the fourth day I had an unmanageable maniac on my.

The aftermath

Sam the Oiler, the stocky little ball of misery that skulked away on a permanent basis disappeared and in his place a wild-eyed monkey came. I would come down at my usual ten to eight in the morning, time enough to be down before everyone else and time enough to have a sip of coffee before the daily grind initiated itself. But this routine was now disturbed as my new Oiler was down before I, busy working like nobody has ever worked before.

I would enter the engine room to find Sam swinging precariously over engines with a scrubbing brush in his hand or dangling under plates with a paintbrush. One minute I would find a bulkhead covered in its usual off-white coat of paint, the next it had been stripped, primed and repainted white. Little paths around the engine room became roped off as floor plate stripping and chipping projects got underway, the work shop turned into a carpentry shop with shoe racks and hangers being issued forth with conveyor like insistency. We ran out of paint, we ran out of cleaning products. For the first time in history mops and scrubbing brushes became worn due to usage rather than the lack of it.

I even found him on deck in his spare time with an English language book in his hands!

He still, till the day I left that ship, walked around looking as if he had just received a Dear John letter from his loved one and I never did find out if that was just his normal 'face" or if there was in actual fact some real tragedy that stretched well past the usual periods of mourning.

Wow, this reverse psychology stuff does work after all. Sam the Oiler became one of the best Oilers that I ever sailed with. Not that we ever understood a word that either of us said, not that I could ever find him when I wanted him and not that I became assured that important items of machinery would not end up in the deep blue sea but he worked hard and that accounts for a lot in my book.

Ieuan Dolby
September 2004