Tall Tales or Truth? This is how stupid I can get

I was working for a shipping company, with offices in Athens and London (in those days, London was safe and mainly British). I had worked for a boring four years in the Accounting Department and had five people working under me. I wanted to move on and I felt I was ready to take over as manager. The ship owner felt otherwise. Being his son, I remained adamant in my demands and finally I was offered a chance.

“You want to run a shipping office and yet you have no experience of life on a ship.” I did not interrupt to point out that neither did he, for I wanted the position. “You’ll join the ship in Italy and travel around Africa until you arrive in Kuwait. From there you will fly back. Three months at sea should offer you the opportunity to learn…if you make the effort.”  He knew I’m not very good at ‘making the effort’ so he did not sound convinced. It has never been that I am lazy, just that I get lost in my thoughts and drift off to other worlds.

When my parents conceived me, I don’t know where they ordered my skeleton from, as I was born without even one ‘practical bone’ in me. I’ve never complained about it, as I like who I am and feel sorry for those who allow gravity and life to keep them fixed to the ground.

The ship I was to travel on is worthy of mention, for it has a rare history. It was built in Germany, just before the second world war, launched, I think in 1939. It looked like an 8,000 metric ton freighter, with nothing warlike about it – unless you learnt a bit more about the way it was built. Generally a ship of that size will weigh about 3,000 metric tons. This ship weighed 8,000 metric tons! At the time the ship was built, most ships had a speed of 6 to 8 knots. Not this ship, she could cruise at 22 knots and for a short burst, do a bit better, I was told, up to 28 knots.

Why these differences? She was built to be a pirate ship! She lurked among the islands off Asia and when an Allied convoy rode past, it would join them at the tail end. Once it was close enough to be unstoppable, she would lower the British flag, replacing it with a black and white skull and cross bones (a Jolly Roger flag). She would ram the ship, pull back and then speed off as the rammed ship takes on water and sinks.

The odd thing is that I only learnt all of this when I arrived on board. I was shown my cabin (most freight ships have an owners cabin, with a few extras that make life a bit more pleasant). I went up to the bridge, noticed the clock and that was when the captain told me the history of the ship. She was fairly close to forty years old by that time. The clock had something like a medal on the face, with a swastika in it and an eagle with open wings above. In the center, between the wings, was a skull and crossed bones.

I had looked forward to seeing Gibraltar as we passed through the straits, but it was night, so I did not see anything. A few days later, alongside northwest Africa, the captain informed me that thanks to the sailor who’d caught it, I am going to have a rare treat, something very few people have eaten. It was a blue lobster!

When we crossed the equator, I learnt about an old practice. Ships carry stocks of wine which become very expensive back in Europe once they have passed the equator line twice – it is supposed to improve the taste or bouquet, I’m not certain. 

Now we get to the crazy part – not that I thought it was crazy at the time. The weather turned bad and we reached the stage where the waves would loom over us to the height of a two storey building or higher. It was exciting seeing the ship rise to the top, at the crest, balance for a second and then the prow would tip down and plunge. At the bottom it would dive under the surface and then break out again with a wild spray of water falling off the deck.

Watching this from inside the bridge was not exciting enough and I had an idea. At the prow there is a metal rod upon which ships at anchorage hang a black balloon so as to let other ships know their engines are off and thus cannot manoeuvre to avoid them. I reasoned that if I open my belt and close it again with the rod inside, I could cling tightly to the rod for at least one up and down  and a dive into the ocean.

Luckily the captain saw me working my way to the prow and sent two sailors to bring me back. He looked like he was about to have a heart attack and swore at me for many minutes. His main concern was that if the son of the owner dies on his ship, no owner will trust him with a ship again.

I imagined the crew must have the same opinion of me as their captain, but without me realising it, I had earned their respect and so they called me a pallikari (brave man, a warrior) for wanting to do something so crazy and dangerous. How did I earn their respect? You’ll laugh when I tell you. By eating fried eggs, bacon and toast for breakfast. Most of them would leave the dining room while I ate, as even the sight made them feel queasy. I’ve never felt seasick, so my empathy was not strong enough to convince me I should not have breakfast.

The next day, the captain sent an officer to ask me to go to the bridge. He had the map spread out before him and showed me that we are opposite the Skeleton Coast (Namibia). He informed me, his voice curt with anger and anxiety, that the First Engineer has just informed him that he is switching off the main engine – and that he refuses to obey the captain and keep it working! I asked to take the map with me and ran down to the engine room.

As soon as I entered, I saw why he wanted to stop the main engine. A brief explanation. In the engine is a crankshaft which is turned by pistons moving up and down in cylinders. The pistons are connected to the crankshaft by piston shafts. In this ship, the crankshaft was in a metal casing, as were the pistons, but the main part of the piston shafts were out in the open. As some of the  pistons were pushed down by an explosion, the flames were shooting out for a distance of about a metre! The engineer explained that the piston rings are broken and if he does not stop the engine, the damage will be un-repairable.

I understood his dilemma, but I drew him aside to his workbench and showed him the map. I told him about the Skeleton Coast, that it is fronted by sharp rocks which will tear the bottom off the ship, while, any who survive will only last hours, as the land is desert, one of the driest deserts anywhere. I told him that this is why it has the name, for when a ship runs aground in this area, all they find afterwards are skeletons.

He promised to try and nurse the engine for it to get us to Cape town. He succeeded.

Sometimes, when I am feeling low and my self-esteem has taken a nose-dive, as crazy and deep as the one I had wanted to try, I think back and wonder at how so many lives were probably changed by my being aboard at a time of crisis. The Captain and the First Engineer did not like each other and if he had switched off the main engine in that storm, with winds and waves blowing in the direction of the rocks and coast, would they all have died? 

Maybe in some alternate reality, I did not go with or the Captain did not stop me from trying my experiment?

So, you decide. If I see people like this first part, I'll post the other half.

Ciao

^{Jolly Roger Flag}