First Trip

[Tim Parr]

Thirlby.jpg
I’m absolutely sure that we all remember our first trip.
This is my story.
1973, finished Engineering apprenticeship wrote off to different shipping companies (there was plenty to choose from) received an interview from Ropner Mangement in Darlington.
Turned up at the interview, the guy asked me a few rudimentary engineering questions, then offered me a position Junior Engineer and a ship MT Thirlby.
Absolutely gob smacked, flying out to the Persian Gulf in a matter of weeks.
Couple of weeks later (get this) a telegram arrives, “JOIN CREW MATES AT HEATROW I was only 20.. STOP. FLY TO KUWAIT . STOP. TRAVEL WARRANT TO FOLLOW STOP.
“Heathrow, Kuwait, (different planet)
Arrived in Abadan after travelling 24hrs. MT Thirlby registered in Hartlepool (bit of a rust bucket 30,000 tons) is ready to leave Abadan (where?) for somewhere else at dawn.
2nd Engineer had to drag me into the Engine Room, boy was it hot, ship had no proper cold tap!
The ships engine was the size of a semi-detched house, a Doxford.
Day two all stop, top piston nuts need tightening, so myself and Ernie (from Manchester, sat next to me on the flight out) stars to tighten the top nut, sledge hammer job, everything is roasting, can’t touch metal with bare hands.
Ernie keels over from heat stroke, despite everyone’s best efforts Ernie never regains consciousness.
Ernie was buried at sea at 4-00pm the same day, a sack cart carrying the body, chains around neck waist, knees and ankles.
I paid off in Falmouth five months later £3,300 richer, oh yes and a hell of a lot wiser.
Tim Parr

[Fouro]

Re # 1.

I am absolutely sure that before I was allowed to apply to shipping companies for employment as an engineer, I had to obtain a Pre-Sea Grading Certificate. To get this, I had to attend an interview at the Leith Merchant Navy Establishment. I was introduced to this gent (usually a retired engineering superintendent) who started to peruse my apprenticeship papers. Whilst doing this he asked me if there were any turbines in the mill, I said there was a water turbine and I was asked to draw a rough sketch of such. Unfortunately for me, the office girl who had typed my papers had made a mistake, which resulted in me having to go back to see him in a fortnight. After perusing my corrected apprenticeship papers and asking me to sketch a steam slide valve, he issued me a 2nd Class Pre-Sea Grading Certificate, which meant I then could apply to any shipping company for employment as an engineer.

Regards from,
Fouro.

[Tony Taylor]

Re # 1.

I am absolutely sure that before I was allowed to apply to shipping companies for employment as an engineer, I had to obtain a Pre-Sea Grading Certificate.

Regards from,
Fouro.

they would also issue you with a requirement of how much sea time you had to do before you could sit your ticket.

[Fouro]

Just thought I would have a look at my Pre-Sea Grading Certificate which I aquired 63 years ago.
I would mention a grade II (two) cert was the highest grade one could get without having a university degree.
On the reverse side of the certificate it states that grade II applicants may be granted a remission of sea service not exceeding 3 months by virtue of his workshop service.
I don't supose many of these certificates exist any more.

Regards from,
Fouro.

[Des Taff Jenkins]

Hi Tim.
After spending quite a few years to and from the Gulf I can sympathize with you, at least I got used to it sailing down the Red Sea before going up the Gulf. On one trip we where in Kuwait when about 8 seamen including a captain of various ships there died of heat exhaustion.
Des

[happy daze john in oz]

Hi Tim.
After spending quite a few years to and from the Gulf I can sympathize with you, at least I got used to it sailing down the Red Sea before going up the Gulf. On one trip we where in Kuwait when about 8 seamen including a captain of various ships there died of heat exhaustion.
Des

Des we had similar situation on the Paparoa going across the Indian ocean.
No deaths but many of the crew very sick due to heat exhaustion and only two pints of freshwater per day.
As we know shipping companies had one objective, profit at any cost, even human life it would appear.

[Captain Kong]

On The `GEORGIC,` we had 3,000 immigrants from Liverpool to Australia, in 1955.
In the Red Sea in June, five little children died of the heat and we had to sew them up and bury them, very sad, Parents taking them for a new life in OZ,
No A/C in those days.
Next Voyage we went to OZ Via the Cape as it was cooler.

[Jim McNaughton]

Hi Tim, joined the NZ Shipping Company in1965, my local doctor did the medical, no exam oral or written and no knowledge for the job at hand. Never packed a valve or kept a watch and, as a junior engineer , was a handicap to the rest of my fellow engineers. Most of them were supportive but there was one, 3rd, who always had a criticism of everything I did right up until I left the ship 7 moths later.
Pleased I never bumped into him again
Regards
Jim

[John Dick]

Good story, not the best intro onto the MN, hopefully you managed to enjoy sea going life or was that it for you?

[Ken Atkinson]

I’m absolutely sure that we all remember our first trip.
This is my story.



I paid off in Falmouth five months later £3,300 richer, oh yes and a hell of a lot wiser.
Tim Parr

THIRLBY (4) 1958 West Hartlepool, GB O.N. 180104, IMO 5358957, call sign MYDZ, 20070dwt, 13105.38grt, 7600.47net, launched 2/5/58 by Sir John Laing & Sons, Sunderland, yard 815 oil products tanker, 6cyl L.B. Doxford with 2 exhaust gas turbochargers, 8,000 h.p., 2 x Scotch boilers, 1 Spanner boiler. Aux. diesel & steam generators, electric & steam driven air compressors plus other equipment. 23-year Shell time-charter. 1982 sold to Greece renamed DIAMANDO, 1985 scrapped at Aliaga.

J/E 16/12/71 Greenwell’s dry-dock, Sunderland, 28/2/72 Seattle to 23/4/72 Liverpool 23/4/72 to 30/4/72 Tees, Cap. Colin Tingle C/E J Freddie Barron
Being 110volt DC the starter boxes were like sentry boxes if the parts were removed. The switchboard was open with only a rail to keep you away from the electricity. With a mixture of Doxford oil engine and a couple of Scotch boilers it was mucky and hot. At least there were no scavenge pumps but if it was raining in the engine room you looked up to see a top piston cooling hose snaking about. A steam reciprocating generator and other pumps were an education from a previous generation. There was no escaping the heat of the Caribbean in the accommodation with no air conditioning luckily there was a swimming pool aft and awnings fitted over much of the deck area. Cargo was discharged through two pump rooms each with two very large bucket pumps. Both maintenance and operation were dangerous as leaking glands allowed aviation spirit to slosh about and the fumes caused hand to eye co-ordination to deteriorate. Decision making became poor as frustration with bronze chisels and copper caused steel hammers and spanners to be used with the risk of sparks and explosion. Tots of rum were the counter to settle the fumes although that may have just aggravated the effects. Most desks contained a glass bottle containing petrol to refill zippo lighters. Putting steam on deck for cargo working was challenging as to avoid water hammer bursting the lines it had to be done slowly even though the valve area on top of the boilers was hot and breathing difficult. Two years after I left, in 1974 Thirlby came into Middle Docks in South Shields while I was preparing for 2nd’s EKs. I went on board to remind myself of the equipment and as I knew the Mate stood in his cabin doorway when a handful of my hair was pulled. The Mate’s pet monkey was perched in the pipework above waiting for the unwary which upset some and I did hear later that the crew drowned it in a bucket. The Mate told me that a few months earlier that the Chief had died while hammering a solid taper plug into a leaking tube which moved and he was scalded. Two plugs with a threaded bar would have been better.
We visited the nearest pub to Greenwell’s dry-dock in Sunderland and met Captain Colin Tingle and the local females who were on first name terms with him. My wife stayed a few nights with me in the 6/E cabin on the portside then at the weekend we got the Sunderland to Newcastle bus getting off in Felling-on-Tyne where we had a flat which was luxury compared to a ship in dry-dock with a toilet block on the quayside and no heating. Being in a British dry-dock we were not allowed to touch anything and Greenwell’s fitters were hired while the work was required so they were not the best or just did not care. All the ship side clapper discharge valves had been overhauled so they either leaked or did not work when we sailed so we had to re-do the work – pity they had not just left them untouched as 1/16 rubber insertion was a bit thin and cutting to the corners and folding the flaps in shortens the job but stops the clappers working.
We sailed through the Straits of Gibraltar but after a day we were told to turn around enter Gibraltar and take water and bunkers and head for the Caribbean. I went into Gibraltar for postcards and beer and asked if they could change English money which they thought funny. We continued on our way to Curacao which was part of the Netherland Antilles where Shell had a refinery and we were subject to a twenty-year time charter. After 13 years hard work as a parcel tanker she was showing signs of age with the two Scotch boilers no longer able to support all four steam reciprocating cargo pumps at once. Our berth at the refinery was close to the gates and just outside was a large bungalow with sliding doors for outside walls which was the club for everyone not on duty. A bit further away was a place called “Happy Valley” which had other entertainment so I was told. Earlier in the trip the mechanism of a steam pump had banged me on a finger causing a growth on the bone which was removed at the local hospital. In no particular order and using Willemstad in Curacao as our base we visited another refinery at San Nicolas in Aruba, and the island of Bonaire which together form the Netherland Antilles. In the dirt streets of San Nicholas I purchased a pair of white levi jeans, a pair of ginger patterned trousers and a small camphor wood chest – none of which lasted long. Paranam in Surinam and Lake Maracaibo in Venezuela. Santa Domingo and La Romana in the Dominican Republic or the Eastern part of the island of Hispaniola. Santo Domingo has to be the best jetty ever being sited at the end of a spit of land with a small ruined fort at the end once guarding the river mouth. At the foot of the gangway were some coconut palms about three deep and beach just beyond. A young boy near needed little urging to scramble up the tree and knock a couple of nuts down. We only had fifty tonnes of “gas-oil” for their nearby naval base but this took two days discharging into a four-inch line as gently as we could but still we burst their line three times. La Romana was a cutting not much wider than Thirlby in which we inched our way in and backed gently out. The town was only a few streets and houses which did not take long to explore. A long jetty at Point Fortin in Trinidad which we were not allowed or indeed wished to walk along so a shore boat was arranged.
We had one trip further afield to a terminal at Martinez twenty-miles East of San Francisco followed by Seattle. While in Frisco the authorities fined the ship for making smoke and burning soot coming out of the funnel both signs that the boilers could not keep up with demand and anti-social at refineries. They also suspected that we had been discharging oily bilge water into the Pacific Ocean and took samples of fuel from the port and starboard cross bunkers but could not prove it. They may have been more successful if they had sampled the centre cross bunker. On the way back we filled the tanks with fresh water out of Gatun Lake in the middle of the Panama Canal for use in the refinery.
The first port on the British coast was Stanlow Refinery on the Manchester Ship Canal near Liverpool where the articles were closed and the crew changed. Discharging the policy was no-smoking with a dock policeman to enforce the restriction to the ship’s smoke room. I asked him if that applied to the boiler room which he confirmed. I explained that normal practice in there was a pile of sand doused in diesel and lit. A long steel rod wrapped in rags at the end was doused in diesel and lit from the burning sand and inserted into a furnace. This hopefully caused the ignition of the fuel burner jet to cause a ten-foot flame to shoot along the furnace. This was repeated to all six furnaces. He agreed that a cigarette or my pipe was insignificant compared to this. In a later working life I re-visited this terminal as a consultant engineer to measure the components of the tank steps and handrails to provide re-assurance to HMRC who had to climb to the top so they could check contents and charge duty. Bowling Refinery near Glasgow came next followed by Shell Haven in Essex on the Thames. By this time the five donkeymen (boiler operators) had all been de-rated for various failings such as drunk on watch or incompetence such as on one occasion when I was duty engineer I looked in the boiler room and found the donkeyman missing as was the water in the boiler gauge glass. I shut the fires, rang the alarm for help and determined that the water level was just below the glass. I shut the valve to deck and tried to persuade the feed pump and hotwell supply to restore the gauge glass level with a falling steam pressure and was successful. When we reached Middlesbrough which was the last British port the Shipping Master asked if I wanted to sign on again to Foreign Going Articles but after 4 ½ months on a tanker I opted for leave. Typically, Ropners asked why I had left? As Thirlby was leaving early I went to the Dock Office to wait for my transport in the form of my father. Several females were also waiting for transport which is the only British port where I have observed this.