The worst ship you where on.

[Des Taff Jenkins]

Well as we can't write about one of the most talked about subjects now in vogue, Bollotices, how about posting about the worst ship you was on.
In my case it was the Baron Ellebank, Deck crew in one cabin with a stove in the middle, rattling anchor chains, Rod and chain steering, bloody hard work on the wheel, and to cap it off the trip was to St Johns for logs, wonderful , high deck cargo' all ready for a good storm to turn her over, but hey' I was on my first trip as an AB, talk about Dan Dare; nothing to it the ship skidding along a huge swell with me carrying a roll of toilet paper just in case.
Lets hear the worst, or even the best ship you where on.
Cheers Des

[j.sabourn]

I was on over 80 ships Des and about 4 of them I can’t remember their names so have my suspicions it maybe one of them , although one of the bad ones was the Glendalough the ex.Irish Elm a steamship , stories about her and people would think you were romancing , I walked off in Japan. But a ship is what you make it and was the only ship I never did fulfill the 12 month contract 11 months saw me out knackered. Have you got your new Gopher sorted out yet ? Cheers JS

[Johnny Kieran]

City Of Ely for me Des, absolute pile of ....e. Think I've mentioned my experience of it before. Although it was mostly the Ellerman company that made it so awful.

[James Curry]

Bibby lines LPG carrier Staffordshire, French built. Great accommodation, then you opened the engineroom door. A lot spent on accommodation and little on the engineroom.
Did several trips on her. , exploding generators, new Yanmars to replace the crappy Crepelle's.
We had the 4th Eng who cracked up and jumped overboard(thankfully we got him back 23 hours later)
12 hour days 7 days a week but usually longer.
Only saving grace was we had a good crowd onboard.

[Terry Foskett]

Worst ship was on MV Accra 1961. I was a cadet Purser. Endemic bullying. Totally undermined my confidence in myself. Got out after five months. Did not stop me from becoming Chief Purser on board best ship QE2.

[Des Taff Jenkins]

I was on over 80 ships Des and about 4 of them I can’t remember their names so have my suspicions it maybe one of them , although one of the bad ones was the Glendalough the ex.Irish Elm a steamship , stories about her and people would think you were romancing , I walked off in Japan. But a ship is what you make it and was the only ship I never did fulfill the 12 month contract 11 months saw me out knackered. Have you got your new Gopher sorted out yet ? Cheers JS

Hi John.
Watch this space, tomorrow is the deadline. Just to help me along' last night watching TV when everything went black thoughtt I had gone blind, but it was a huge blackout the whole of the Monaro. vermin had chewed through a line.
De

[Doc Vernon]

Although we have gad this one on before Des, onwards we go!

To mine, there were no worst Ships in all.

Every ship i was on was a good one , good Crew Members , well in my Department (Catering) and really first class First and Second Stewards on them all!
One in particular was as possibly a few will recall me talking about was a Second Steward Fairbrother, who was a good friend and if i recall Family Member of one Terry (Red Lead Ted)

In Memory ! Rlt (merchant-navy.net)
My late Brother Greg, me and Terence Fairbrother were good mates, and used to go ashore a lot together, had some really good times in Cape Town with him. Great days !

[Rodney Mills]

Mine was the Burries and Marks La Cumbre. My mate and I were told it was a Home Trade. We were sent across to Rotterdam and supposedly bringing the La Cumbre back to Hull. I was Catering Boy in the galley, and my mate Ginger was Catering Boy in the Engineers Mess. Come signing on, there's an uproar at the signing in station, the articles were deep sea. One of the junior engineers, on his first trip had just got married, and only wanted a short home trade to see if he liked the MN. Many others had reasoning not to go deep sea. Most like me and Ginger didn't have the money for the fare back to England. We were stuck and stuffed Royally. The chief officer called for quiet and told us it was just a trip to Quebec and back and pay off, as the La Cumbre was due for an overall in Hull. Yeah, I ended up doing ten months and passing England about six or seven times and delaying me getting my rating by four months.

Ginger jumped ship when we got back to Rotterdam and ended up getting drafted for his national service.

The ships cook was a homosexual and would grab me and try to touch me up, and when I refused and told it I was going to report him if he kept it up, It's reply was to burn the pots after dinner, so I had to work late, scraping them clean. It, was a right swine. However, he ended up with some medical complaint and was paid off and the second cook and baker became the ships cook and a new baker was sent out. Knobby, the replacement ships cook would teach me cooking and the baking too, and Knobby gave me a letter of introduction to Union-Castle, which in turn gave me great training. So, who knows what would have happened if I hadn't joined that rust-bucket in Rotterdam, or I had jumped with Ginger.

As for the La Cumbre, she broke down at least once a week and finally she broke down in a fierce Storm in the channel and I'm pretty sure it was a sabotage job by the young engineer who had just got married.

We were towed into Hamburg and paid-off and Burries and Marks leased a Dacota to fly us back to the UK and it had no air compression and I like most of the crew were deaf as a post when we got off in England and I had a horrible earache for about a week. The perfect ending to a miserable trip.

Oh? I forgot. I had the top bunk and Ginger had the lower birth. His replacement came aboard, he came into the cabin looked around and said to me "Out. You're in my bunk. " I apologized told him I was sorry and climbed off the top bunk and wallop him. I was so upset by the way 'It' was treating me and that my mate Ginger had jumped ship his attitude was the frosting on the cake, I am not a violent person by nature, but I really did a number on him. He was holding himself and crying and said to me "I'm going to get you while you're asleep." Now I really did a second number on him. you can imagine: how the next nine months of the trip went in our cabin.

Now it's pretty hard to top this one for a miserable ten-month trip on a rust bucket like the La Cumbre.

That was the end of tramp steamers and cargo boats. It was passenger boats for me, knowing when you leave and when you get back to the minute. Plus, I received damn good training. Which set me up for a great life when I swallowed the anchor.

Cheers, Rodney

[Kevin Murphy]

The worst ship I sailed on, was a small coaster called "pearl". Back in 1985 having financed my self throughmy mates ticket and come 2nd to the MCA (Nationally there was a 70% failure in the ship ops paper, which was rather frustrating), I was in need of work. I got the offer of a mates job, pay was poor butafter 8 months off pay, I needed some cash.
I met the chap I was releiving in Plymouth, on the quayside, (the ship was at anchor) where he told me not to join, he had already signed off so did not care, the ship was a wreck, and the soon to be regular Danish Skipper would be returning to the vessel. He had spent 4 months (May to 1st week of September), but he said, no way I would work on this in the winter, he rattled off a long list of issues. Well I thought, the year before college I had spent 4 months on a 32 yo Livestock carrier, Lebanese flag, but with all British officers, yes the ship was bad, but we were confident in our abilities. What this lad was telling me was another level.
We were taken out to the vessel, I think on the pilot cutter, he collected his bags & dissappeared ashore.

The current temporary Skipper (The regular Danish guy spent 11 months a year onboard) was a British Master-(retired due ill health, from a company I later spent over 3 years with) who was getting a bit of pocket money. Seemed a decent chap, We had a quick chat, I got some scran and got my head down as I was on watch at midninght, we were bound for Leixoes in Portugal.

We were underway when I got on watch, the radar is not very good says the Skipper, a bit of an understatement, the Eddystone Lt showed a faint return at 2 miles. We had a magnetic steering compass, no gyro, and the Standard compass (New in a box which me & the skipper jury rigged on the compass binnacle the next morning utilising an orange box (I kid you not).

Crossing the Bay of Biscuits the next night, perfect visibility, observing a low star right ahead, with the swell causing a bit of yaw, the star was going from about 5 degrees port to 5 degrees stabd, yet the steering compass was rock solid on its heading.
I popped down the hold next morning to see how the crew were getting on cleaning the hold. I gazed up in wonderment at what looked like a tropical night sky, only to realise that what I was looking at was the Macgregor hatch covers with so many holes on a bright sunny morning. The previous lad told me the hatches were covered with tarpaulins loaded.

The vessel was a 1965 built Dutch coaster, 60m LOA, 499gt, single hold with twin hatch, the tween deck was basically to the square of the hatch, so about 1.5 wide, basically proving strength, the were no tween deck boards. There were no emergency batteries, you had a valve under your sink to prevent water returning (direct draining!!) The Laundry was two big plastic dustbinns in the shower room, toilet flushed with a bucket, Vessel had Shaft Generator, One Diesel Generator and a harbourgenerator in the F'cle. Unfortunately the Genny Alternator was broken, so when we arrived in Leixoes on I think day 3 or 4, the tie up was interesting, running on the shaft Generator, you had to get two lines ashore very quickly, Stop the engine, the C/E had to leg it up to the f'cle quickly to start the harbour generator, so you could tie up.

The regular Skipper lived in Leixoes, he popped down to the vessel, we were loading Wood Pulp, the vessel had a contract to carry 10,000t to Corpach in Scotland, which was going to be a few voyages, however during loading we found that we could not load the tween decks, as they were about 10cm too short and we could not fit the bales in. So we were about 100tons light on cargo which we were expecting to load about 900t

Loading completed, tarpaulinns rigged, ready to sail about 2100 POB, black out, harbour generator fails. Sailing cancelled, now on a dead ship, I wander down the quay to a 30,000 t bulker to ask if I can get a shower, which they let me do.

We were 3 days getting the harbour generator fixed. My self & the skipper had a good chat, the regular skipper used to regularly overload the ship (He explained when he first joined he had to ring the owner & explain, just because the DWT is 1100tons, does not mean you can load that much, you need to allow FW & Fuel. The Danish guy had also had an extra steel plate welded to the rudder, when the ship was dry in Boston or what ever, as he thought the steering was not responsive enough. The Danish Skipper appeared again (he was going to rejoin in Corpach), next time down in Leixoes he was going to organise a team with gas axes & crop out the tween deck, so they could load more cargo in the wings.

We sailed that night, I saw the skepper at Midnight & said I was leaving in Corpach.
After an interesting voyage across Biscay up the Irish Sea, up the Channel between Islay & Jura using the C/E local knowledge (after we stopped his tap for 8 hours) then into Loch Linhe, at which point the unstabilized radar decided to start rotating around the screen, still with a max 2 mile reception, we berthed in Corpach, The New Master & Mate due that evening.

My releif turned up about 1800hrs, I told him not to join and laid out the issues, he said, I will stop to Dieppe, to give them a chance to find someone, I then showed him around, F*** this he says, I am not joining, so 1900 cargo finished, we walk up to the local pub to ring the very well known manning agency. Now this lad had just spent 4 months working on the cement boats working in the Nigerian creeks, which were terrible ships,but this was worse, ringing the agency on a payphone, he was threatened with never being offered another job etc (1985 jobs were scarce) he thought about it for a millisecond and said what they could do with the job.

About 11pm the Danish Skipper arrives, taxi is waiting to take The Scottish Skipper and my self to Glasgow (and my releif), The Dane is not happy as he finds that my releif will not join, anyway About 0100 the three of us leave in the taxi. I slept most ofthe way having been up since the previous midnight.

We eventually arrive in Glasgow station about 0400, having dropped the Scotish skipper in a village just North of Glasgow, getting my bags out of the boot, S***, my breifcase is missing. But there is another.
Realising the Scottish Skipper has taken mine, Luckily he had a very unusual French Name and the name of the village, armed with this, The BT operator found his number, we rang about 04:20, He went downstairs to check, Oh yes he has my breifcase, he jumps in his car drives into glasgow station, we carry out a briefcase exchange that looks like an extract from a spy novel. My relief & me went our respective way when the trains started about 0600

About 4 years later, I was in Belfast talking to the attending class surveyor, somehow conversation got round to the Pearl-The class surveyor had detained the ship the previous year, he went to the ship Friday morning to check on repairs, he was told to return Monday for hose tests of the hatch cover, Monday morning arrives at the jetty-No ship, the vessel had changed to Hellenic Register, had new certs faxed through and sailed to Cardiff on the Saturday, he got in touch with MCA and ship was detained.

One of the big questions from this is, how is a ship trading NW Europe regularly getting away with being up to 12 inches overloaded, the defects I have mentioned are just the tip of the iceberg?? I know its 40 years ago. Even now, its a great sense of shame to me that I did not report the ship to the MCA. I was just so happy to get off that wreck.
rgds
Kev

[j.sabourn]

Know how you feel , my bad memory was somewhat similar . The Indian 2 mate skinned out in the Kiel canal, the Chinese 3 mate was no navigator , the old man would not do a watch , went 11 months , ports of refuge were numerous due to lack of boiler water which boiler tubes leaked like a sieve . Chinese crew bosun spoke no English ,luckily he was the third mates brother who acted as interpreter .The list of faults too long to put on here , the ships boats were condemned so had no safety certificate. I managed 11 months but could not finish the 12 months so walked away from it in Japan . Still have the occasional nightmare about being on an unsafe ship . Cheers JS