Hostile Waters

[Bob Garroch]

Hello George. I was the Radio Officer with you on that trip. My wife was with Me. Liz do you remember. We took you ashore a few times. Bob Garroch

[Keith Tindell]

Interesting post, i am trying to remember the rule of pay in a war zone, i never ever received war pay in my time, the only time we tried to find out about it was in the Cuba conflict, and we were told it was not a war zone as such, just a zone of 200 miles to check all those entering. kt

[Graham Shaw]

My ex shipmate Gulliver,who incidentally passes on his best wishes to a few on here,has passed on the following in reply to this thread.

'There were numerous incidents of course but Lloyds List mentions 25 vessels declared war constructive losses during the Vietnam/Cambodia(Khmer Republic ) conflict for the years 1966-1975.

A total of 31 crew lost their lives aboard these vessels plus 6 civilians aboard at that time.
They were mainly general cargo ships of Panamanian ,South Korean, Singapore or Vietnamese flags with just a couple of coastal tankers and the crews were mostly of Far Eastern origin.
There were three notable exceptions:

The U.S. steamship BATON ROUGE VICTORY .Mined by the Viet Cong on 23rd Aug,1966 whilst in the Saigon River. 7 of her 45 American crew were killed.

The Polish cargo ship JOZEF KONRAD was bombed in Haiphong harbour,N.Vietnam on 20th December 1972. during a raid by U.S. aircraft. 3 Polish crewmen died and the U.S.Sec.of State expressed "deep regret" over the incident to the Polish government.

The Russian cargo vessel GRISHA AKOPYAN was damaged in a N.Vietnam port on 10th May 1972,again by U.S.aircraft.The bosun was killed and the master injured.

Should you require any extracts from these lists of casualties I will be able to obtain them'.


Graham Shaw
R869457

[Keith Tindell]

Thanks for that post Graham, please pass on my regards to Gulliver, his informative posts are greatly missed, kt

[David G Sharp]

Spent 6 weeks(!) in Saigon 1967 on board RMS Deseado (Royal Mail Lines) as Junior 5th engineer having loaded meat in Buenos Aires and on arrival in Saigon told we would have to unload "a few trucks per day" as the Viet Kong Had blown up the refrigerated store houses! Consulation was that qwe got 100% bonus for this time! During return trip to UK via NZ we had a broken crankshaft on one of the generators. After unloading in London the Deseado was delivered to Harland & Wolfe in Belfast where she was later scrapped.

[Graham Shaw]

Thanks for the reply Keith,(your # 24).Will do.Glad you're well.
Graham

[Captain Kong]

Thanks Graham for your info. best wishes to Gulliver when you catch up with him.


In 1954/5 we got half a crown, Two and Six Pence, or todays money twelve and a half pence , a day Danger Money, in Viet Nam, when we were rescuing the French Foreign Legion, survivors of the battle of Dien Bien Phu who escaped and were pursued by the Viet Minh to the beach. It took us three and a half days to get them from the beach under fire. we didn't get the half a day money.

BUT..... Half a crown bought us three pints of Wrexham Lager in the Pig so we were happy.

[happy daze john in oz]

We visited Vietnam a couple of years back, good place to visit now.

Went on a tour of the tunnels and saw some of the traps they set for the 'enemy'.

If what we saw was an indication of how they attacked any shipping then I can well imagine how horrific it would have been.
The North Vietnamese at that time were merciless and thought nothing of dying for the good of the nation.

But few understand that the war between North ad South was in fact USA, in the South versus Russia in the North.

Vietnam was just the ground for the fight.

[Fred F Ravenscroft]

Further to my early post I was also posted to the Shell ship Hyria now this was a scary ship with two huge gas tanks on the forward deck a nice target for the viet cong the ship was running between the ports of Nha Trang Cam Ranh bay Saigon and the mighty citadel Da Nang. We were along side in Saigon about the time of the Viet Cong TeT offensive all scary stuff ( all this for double pay thats jack tar for you)

[Captain Kong]

Better than half a crown a day that we got.
Brian