Just Another Friday Night In Memphis - Part 3

The continuing misadventures continue.......

After a month I got a letter telling me to report to the Merchant Navy
Hotel in Swansea and they enclosed a railway travel warrant to cover my
fare.

The day I left I took Jean to work in Chelmsford and we said a sad
goodbye at her firms front door, I left her there with mixed feelings.
She had never shown me any deep affection but to be fair she was only
17yrs old so I probably expected too much of her. I had also been
mesmerised by ships and the sea from an early age and in the end the
need to go and see the world proved more than I could resist.

It took most of the day to get to Swansea and when I arrived at the
hotel it was full to bursting with sailors joining and leaving various
ships in Wales. There were about forty of us bound for Milford Haven
the next morning to join the flagship of the Esso fleet, the
ninety-five thousand ton 'Esso London', a massive tanker for it's day,
it was a bit bigger than the 'Queen Mary' but had a crew of only eighty
or so. We were bound for the Mediterranean to run oil from Marsa El
Brega in Libya to Port De Bouc, a few miles east of Marseilles in
France.

It was early evening when we got to the ship and everyone was allocated
a cabin and told to get something to eat in the mess after which we
would be advised of our duties etc. The mess was quite large, like a
factory canteen with long tables arranged in rows. It was empty except
for the cook, and a lone clean-shaven man eating a meal. The cook
greeted me and served up the evening meal, I sat at a table some yards
from the other man and scrutinised my plate. Another man, short,
stocky, and with a huge black beard came in got his meal and sat
opposite the first man. Neither of them looked at the other and I was
watching them intently when the clean-shaven one said to the other in a
Scots accent,

'You're a Glasgow hooligan!'

The bearded one didn't look up or stop eating but replied,

'I nay a Glasgow hooligan'.

'Yes you are, you're nothing but a fucking Glasgow hooligan!'

Carefully putting his knife and fork down either side of his plate the
'beard' pushed his chair back and rose to his feet and walked round the
end of the table. The other fellow didn't stop eating or look up even
though he must have seen what was happening. The 'beard' took an
almighty swing at the other guy, punching him in the side of his head
and knocked him clean off his seat. Within seconds the two of them were
rolling on the deck punching and tearing at each other like a pair of
wild animals. I started to eat as fast as I could and began to think
I'd made a mistake leaving the safety of home. I'd been on board a ship
for less than two hours and already men were trying to kill each other
right before my eyes! After a couple of minutes the cook, a massive guy
from West Ham, lifted the flap to his counter, walked over to the two
fighting men, looked down at them then turned his back on them and
dropped his full eighteen stone on top of them. They both deflated like
burst balloons, the cook rose to his feet and looking down on them a
second time said,

'Right you two, if you want to fight do it somewhere else, not in
here.
Neither man said a word, either to the cook or each other but they did
as they were told and left. I found out a couple of days later that the
problem between them arose when they both went ashore to Haverford West
to a pub the night before the incident, and the Glaswegian apparently
got pissed out of his head and returned to the ship early, the
clean-shaven man, a highlander from Fort William stayed until closing
time and made his way back to the ship the worse for wear. Coming along
the corridor he had entered the other guys cabin by mistake, this was
easy to do as they were all identical apart from a number on the door
and as the lighting was very dim it was hard to read them properly. The
Glaswegian heard a noise from the direction of his door and leaning an
arm out of his bunk picked up an empty beer bottle and threw it at the
door. He missed the highlander and the bottle smashed on the bulkhead,
the highlander beat a hasty retreat slamming the cabin door behind him
realising whose cabin he had inadvertently entered. The end result was
the confrontation in the mess the next day, I didn't see them together
again for the duration of the trip!

In Libya the oil terminal was nothing more than a series of flexible
hoses attached to buoys about a half-mile off shore. There was no town
or harbour there just a road disappearing into the desert made from
crude oil poured on the sand and baked by the sun. The oil field was
apparently a long way off into the Sahara Desert and was piped to the
coast. Nobody ever got to go ashore here as there was no reason, the
temperature was unbearable, almost always around 120F in the shade, and
the decks were literally hot enough to fry an egg. Anybody silly enough
to walk on the deck without shoes would have the soles of their feet
burned and need hospitalisation, I remember the skipper had a sign on
the mess notice board to the effect that anybody caught on deck without
a shirt would be fined a days pay, and sunbathing was prohibited; to
fall asleep in the sun would almost certainly lead to death as the
blood boiled and you fried alive; it was seriously HOT!

The complete cycle of loading, crossing the Mediterranean, unloading,
and returning for another cargo took exactly a week and it was our good
fortune that we arrived in France every Friday night and left on Sunday
around lunch time. The ship would be at anchor off shore waiting it's
turn to unload and we would go ashore in a 'liberty' boat that ran
every hour ferrying crew back and forth to Port De Bouc where we would
catch a bus or taxi into Marseille. I was lucky enough to be on the
'four to eight' watch which meant I worked from four o'clock until
eight o'clock every morning and every evening, as a consequence I was
free to go ashore every Friday and Saturday night and didn't have to be
back on board until the morning. To make the most of this I would sleep
all day after I finished my watch at 8am and get up at 3.30pm, that way
I could get through the night without any sleep. Marseilles was a
'wild' town during the sixties, the period and city that spawned the
movie 'The French Connection', a true story about drug dealing; at that
time Marseilles was the centre of drug dealing in Europe and gang wars
were common. It was what was known as a 'sailor town' and had all the
trappings associated with the label, apart from drugs there were
numerous bars and clubs and a very active 'red light' district near the
old harbour.

The 'articles' as the contract of employment for a voyage is termed,
were on this trip for six months, although they were what is known as a
'foreign going running agreement' which means if the shipping company
so wish they can keep you abroad more or less as long as they want. The
'Esso London' was a new ship and had not been host to the usual
commissioning party, held by company directors and wives for themselves
and VIP's of their choosing. It so happened that the managing directors
wife was eager to have the party before the normal end of the voyage
and so it was cut short and we were ordered back to Southampton. On the
night before our last trip to Libya several crewmembers went ashore for
the last time and two of us didn't make it back to Port de Bouc until
7.15am.

As the sun came up we realised that we had to be back on board in less
than an hour and we had missed the last 'liberty boat'. Walking around
the harbour wondering how we were going to get back to our ship, a
half-mile off shore, we spotted the skipper of a small launch loading
boxes of medical supplies onto his boat and after a long negotiation he
agreed to take us out to our ship, it cost us all our remaining cash
and two hundred cigarettes, still we were relieved, if the ship had
been held up because of us it would have cost us a lot more! The launch
pulled up alongside our lowered gangplank and we scrambled up onto the
deck. As we headed for our cabins I just happened to glance back over
the side of the ship and what I saw made me spit blood! The skipper of
the launch was unloading the boxes we had seen him load half an hour
before! The bastard was coming out to our ship anyway and we had given
him all we had to make the trip, he must have been laughing to
himself.

The chief engineer on the ship was a man by the name of James and he
liked to think that HIS engine room was the best run in the fleet. He
was forever insisting that the decks should shine and the brass should
gleam and one of the things he would do to impress head office was to
re-write the engine room log book in his own hand with the same pen so
that it looked uniform and classy rather than multi-coloured and
multi-styled. Towards the end of the trip he would have the 'real'
logbook brought to his cabin amidships where he would copy it into a
new book. Throughout the trip he had made a point of bullying the
engine room boys, young lads on their first trips; the lad on my watch
he particularly disliked and gave him a tough time at every
opportunity.

On the way back to Fawley, near Southampton, we were crossing the Bay
of Biscay in a terrible storm with twenty foot waves crashing over the
deck when 'Jesse' James, as he was called, phoned the engine room and
demanded the engine room boy bring him the logbook. The junior second
engineer who was in charge on the watch told the boy to take it to his
cabin but when he emerged onto the deck the storm scared him to death
and he came back in tears. James called again impatiently, and the
engineer explained that the storm made it dangerous for anyone to try
to make it across three hundred feet of open deck and suggested that he
wait until the storm died down. The chief was incandescent with rage
that anybody dared to challenge his decision and threatened
disciplinary action if his order wasn't obeyed. In fear of his job the
junior second told the boy he had to go, the boy by this time was
paralysed with fear and I decided to take a hand. I told the engineer I
would go with the lad and he seemed relieved and readily agreed. When
the two of us got to the deck seven floors above the engine room plates
I told the boy to hang on to me as tightly as he could and we ventured
out into the storm. I told him we were going to wait a few minutes just
outside the hatch hanging onto the hand rail and when we were both wet
I was going to throw the logbook overboard, we would then return and I
was going to tell the junior engineer that the lad was swept off his
feet and I only just managed to save him from being washed over the
side, continuing that, unfortunately the logbook was lost in the
attempt to save the boys life. At this point the lad would have agreed
to anything I said and I tossed the book and we returned to the control
plates. The engineer had to call the chief and tell him what had
happened, and the chief knew if he made any kind of fuss over it he
would be in trouble with the union and head office for endangering a
crew members life! He would have lost his job and never been allowed to
work at sea again. We never saw or heard from him for the rest of the
trip as he sat in his cabin having to make up entries for every watch
on every day of the whole voyage. Thirty-five years later I still grin
to myself every time I remember the episode.

Shortly after we docked in Fawley in the summer of 1966 there was a
seamen's strike, and all British ships in British ports were stood
down. The strike lasted about seven weeks and when an agreement was
finally made between the union and the Shipping Federation the ship
owners were given permission to man the ships, as long as no one worked
until midnight on the appointed day. I, along with eleven other men,
was put on a chartered jet liner and flown to Marseille to man a ship
that had been in dry dock during the strike being maintained. The ship
couldn't have been a bigger contrast, it was a thirty five thousand ton
scrap heap called the 'Esso Exeter', the oldest and worst ship in the
fleet. On it's previous voyage a generator had exploded killing an
engineer and the crew felt the ship was jinxed refusing to serve on her
again. There were still workmen on her with jobs to finish before we
could leave port and the ship was littered with materials and tools so
we spent as little time on board as we could. We had three days in
Marseille with nothing to do but get drunk and enjoy ourselves and we
pulled out all the stops in the pursuit of pleasure!
There were several young men of my generation on the ship and we would
go ashore together just as lads have always done on Saturday nights
around the world. We would frequently get back to our ship in the early
hours the worse for wear having enjoyed most of what was on offer,
although I never touched drugs.

I'll never forget one of the most bizarre incidents I ever witnessed
occurring in a seedy bar in the Rue Margiere. A shipmate and I stopped
in this bar for a late night drink before returning to the ship. It was
dimly lit and empty apart from a single customer sitting on a high
stool at the bar, dressed in what appeared to be a military uniform
complete with cap tucked under his epaulette, and a barman smoking and
reading a newspaper spread out on the bar some feet away. My pal and I
bought drinks and sat at a table at the back of the bar in the shadows
content to talk quietly. After a while a woman entered and it was
obvious from her demeanour and dress she was a 'hooker'. About thirty
years old and quite attractive although heavily made-up, dressed in a
low cut blouse and short skirt she approached the uniformed man and
spoke to him in French, he glanced at her shook his head and made a
curt reply. We deduced that she had approached him looking for business
and he had declined, but she wasn't going to give up so easily and
spoke to him again, this time resting her hand on his shoulder. He
smiled at her weakly and shook his head again but she persisted sliding
her hand down onto his lap and stroking the rising lump in his
trousers. After a further exchange she gently turned him round on his
stool so that he was facing her and as she continued to talk to him
unbuttoned his fly and exposed his, by now fully erect, penis. He gave
the impression of still not being particularly interested when the
woman hitched up her skirt, to reveal she had no underwear on, and
climbing astride him proceeded to turn her 'trick' whilst he was
finishing his beer. My mate and I watched dumbfounded, and what was
equally amazing was the barman didn't bat an eyelid, continuing to read
his paper. When she had finished she dismounted and as the man buttoned
his pants the woman apparently demanded payment for services rendered.
An argument then ensued and we reckoned that the guy was saying that he
hadn't requested her attention and therefore owed her nothing. Voices
were raised and at one point the barman looked up and made a short
remark, the woman glared at him and then looking back at the recipient
of her favours suddenly grabbed his cap from his shoulder and lifting
her skirt rubbed it vigorously in her crutch and screaming abuse shoved
it in it's owners face. Turning on her heels she stormed from the bar.
The barman carried on with his paper and the customer sat for a few
seconds looking in the direction of the recently departed hooker before
turning round on his seat and, leaning against the bar, ordered another
drink. The barman served him and the two of them shared a chuckle and
resumed as if the incident hadn't occurred.