A voyage of a lifetime

Introduction

I have had the intensions of writing about my first voyage in a vessel belonging to the British Merchant Navy for many years. However, what with one thing and another I have never got around to it. Nevertheless, the story of that momentous stage of my life, my emergence into adulthood has never been far from the front of my thoughts. Having now, for some unknown reason, reached the age of sixty years, another momentous stage of my life, I feel the time is more than ripe.

I had been born in the North Yorkshire town of Scarborough at the midnight of the 10TH/11TH of May 1948 and officially my date of birth has always been recorded at the 11TH of May. The only son of Alfred and Dorothy Trotter I had begun my escape to the sea at a very early age, when possibly aged but two years I had made my perilous way from my home in the town’s St Thomas’s Walk [now the Corporation car park in North Street] to the beach, where I had eventually been found by a member of Scarborough’s Constabulary apparently digging a large hole in South Bay beach.

Appropriately apprehended by the law I was taken to the police station located in St Thomas Street and my distraught parents had been called for and duly warned that if it happened again I would be taken into care. Nevertheless, despite numerous other ‘escapes’ I had remained with my long suffering parents and had eventually been able to be allowed out on my own to find what would perhaps lay in store throughout the reminder of my life.

Always attracted to the sea and the vessels that had plied that magical kingdom of the unknown, I had at first hung around the town’s pleasure craft, and especially a motor boat that had been ran by a grizzled old seaman named Billy Wood. Known universally by Scarborough’s ‘bottom end’ fraternity as ‘Blondie’ despite his bluff exterior Bill had been my mentor and teacher of the ways of boats and the sea throughout my childhood and had been one of those people that one would never tire of throughout life and we had remained friends until Blondie’s untimely death many years later.

A pupil of Scarborough’s Graham Sea Training School from 1959 to 1963, I had originally hoped for a career in the Royal Navy, but colour blindness had denied this ambition and I had eventually enrolled for training as a ‘Catering Boy’ in the Merchant Navy. Sent for eight weeks of training at Training Ship Vinicatrix, the National Sea Training Schools establishment at Sharpness in Gloucestershire, I had had endured the rigours of life there whilst learning how to lay tables and serve food using silver service, skills that had been of no use during my first trip to sea. I had left the ‘Vindi’ in a flourish of euphoria during the summer of 1964 equipped with a travel warrant to my adopted ‘pool’ port of Middlesborough and very little else. The rest of my journey into life follows.

Warning; A tale of a common sailor my book contains a certain amount of swearing that may easily offend the weak of heart and if you are amongst those who are easily offended by bad language my story is not for you.


Setting my sails

My train had eventually steamed into York Station. Feeling terribly homesick, for an instant I had been of the mind of chucking the whole notion of going to sea overboard to make my way to the safety of home barely an hour’s train ride away, but this had drifted from my thoughts and I had elected to seek adventure, a cup of mother’s tea would have been most welcome though.

Having known little of the existence of Middlesbrough before joining the M.N., I had been unaware that the place had even had a port, and would have much preferred to have had Hull as my ‘Pool Port’. A city I had visited on a couple of occasions I had often glimpsed the massive Blue Star Line steamers that I had imagined had sailed off to all the exotic places in the world and I had imagined myself standing at the rail of one of these fine ships has she had steamed into a distant harbour, but Middlesbrough? Where the hell would ships sail to from this seemingly god-forsaken town?

Anyway I had duly arrived at the city’s railway station and hefting my uncle’s borrowed kit bag I had set off to find the British Shipping Federation’s Office located in a now long forgotten street. I had eventually found the small brick office close to the waterfront and to my surprise there had been many vessels of all types moored in the slow flowing River Tees awaiting their turn to come alongside

To unload their cargoes whilst a number of dock cranes had been busy unloading those fortunate to be alongside.

Feeling decidedly nervous I had launched myself through the door of the ‘Pool Office’ to join a number of men I presumed to be seafarers awaiting their turn at the desk. Much like a Labour Exchange, the ‘Pool Office had had a large blackboard on a wall containing the names of all the vessels in Middlesbrough that were in need of crew members, ad whilst I had awaited my turn I had spied the board to imagine which ship I would end up in.

However, my reverie had soon been cut short by the bespectacled officer at the desk who had motioned me forward with the flick of his finger. Dressed in the uniform that I had been issued with at the Training School, a navy blue battledress jacket, woollen trousers, shirt and tie, and cardboard ‘Vindi boots, topped by a beret, I had felt distinctly out of place in the room full of men dressed in casual clothes, it did not take a genius to gather that I was new to the game, nevertheless, the obnoxious man behind the desk had called; ‘What are you standing there for? Get yourself over here. ‘Straight from the ‘Vindi’ are you? Yes I answered in a rather meek voice. Eying my brand new Seaman’s Discharge Book and me up and down from behind his glasses the thin man had continued ‘got a proficiency badge too, what did you get that for? I had actually got it for making a good cup of officers tea, but I had elected to lie and say that it was for ‘good work in general’. ‘Well, the old boy had replied, we had better get you a good ship!’

Eying his large blackboard the officer had said; ‘ha the very vessel, the Tucurinca is almost two years old and needs a galley boy, she’s in dry-dock at the moment so I’m going to send you home for a week, I will then send for you and you are to report back to me and I will tell you where to join her. Is that understood’? Yes said I, glad to be able to spend sometime at home before actually putting to sea [in training school we had heard terrible stories of boy’s going to their pool offices and being shipped out straight away without home leave].

Armed with a travel warrant for my homeward journey to Scarborough, I just been about to leave the pool office when I had overheard two seamen talking in the doorway. One had said to the other ‘I see bastard Benfield is on form today, the other had replied ‘fuck it, I’ll come back tomorrow, perhaps he’ll be in a better mood’. The three of us had duly left the kingdom of ‘bastard Benfield’ [I would meet Mr Benfield throughout the rest of my career in the Merchant Navy and he had never been in a better frame of mind].

So I had spent a week at home luxuriating in my mother’s home cooking and the knowledge that I did not have to go to sea for a whole seven days. During this period of ease I had inevitably hung around town with my friends. Some had already been strapped to work in factories and shops; whilst a number had not yet found work [one or two had also been missing due to them being incarcerated at ‘Her Majesties pleasure’].

During my week at home I had savoured the last of my days of adolescence hanging round with my chums ogling girls outside the Odeon Cinema along with places such as Alec and George’s Amusement Arcade. Located in Eastborough, this place is now just a Bingo Hall with a few slot machines, however, during the sixties ‘A & G’s had had one of the best Juke Boxes in town and we had hung out in there listening to all the top hits of the time, which in my mind had been any Beatles or Rolling Stones tune. The two old boys who had run the amusements had been pretty lenient towards our gang of reprobates, but I remember once having kicked on their fruit machines that had not paid out after I had scored three cherries in a row. This had caused Alec to go ballistic and he had thrown the lot of us out barring us for life until brother George had intervened by saying ‘you can come back tomorrow, but if you kick our fucking machines again you will never set foot in our place again’. I never did kick their fucking machines again.

I had duly received a telegram during that Saturday afternoon telling me to report back to Middlesborough on Monday morning and for a final fling my chums and I had elected to go to the St Peter’s Club dance on Sunday night. Situated in St. Nicholas Street, St Peter’s Club had been the forerunner of the soon to become famous ‘Penthouse nightclub’, and had been very popular place for teenagers during the early sixties. In those days drugs had not yet been heard of and we had generally got high on a couple of Woodbine cigarettes and a pint of cider from the White Horse pub which had been located in St Thomas Street, which had been given to us by a friendly barman who had turned a blind eye to our obviously tender years. Anyway fired up with a pint of ‘scrumpy’ we had gone to St Peter’s and had been enjoying the sounds of one of the many local bands when a fight had started, which had almost inevitably happened every Sunday night.

Of course my chums and I had got stuck in and I had been doing all right until I had been whacked in the eye by a mighty smack either from a chair or the kick of an elephant that had sent me reeling. Badly wounded and with blood pouring from a gash above my left eye, there had been talk of calling for an ambulance, but in the event I had opted for a towel soaked in cold water that had soon turned to the colour of crimson. That had been the end of my stay in Scarborough. Battered and bruised our gang had walked the three miles over Oliver’s Mount to our various homes in the Eastfield estate of the town where I had said goodbye to the chums that I would not see for eight months, by which time we had all changed forever.

Nursing a massive black eye on the Monday morning my mother had been horrified to see the state I had been in. Mum had been of the opinion that I telephone the pool office to say I was unable to report for duty that day. Bravado on my part however had insisted that I was alright and after a cooked breakfast of eggs and bacon washed down with a strong cup of tea I had collected my already assembled kit and launched myself through the door Kissing mother goodbye I had once again walked out of her life turning back I had seen her still waving from our front door tears rolling down her cheeks. Thankfully father had already been at work and I had been saved the embarrassment of having to explain how I had got the black eye.

It had taken over two hours for the bus taking me to Middlesborough to reach its destination. During that time we had threaded our laborious way through every village between Scarborough and the city. Nevertheless never having taken that route before, the journey over the Moors had been pleasant and I had enjoyed looking out of my one good eye at the undulating heather covered plains as they had sped by my window.

Eventually arriving back at the pool office once again dressed in my uniform I had looked decidedly out of place amongst the crowd of casually dressed seamen that had also were also being assigned to various vessels that day. I had been glad to find ‘Bastard Benfield’ had not been around that morning, nevertheless, his deputy had been a carbon copy of the obnoxious officer and this one had seeming gone to ends of the earth to prove it. ‘How did you get the black eye’? Had been his opening remark, ‘I’ve been involved in a fight last night, I had replied’. Well, he said if you are a fighter you have no place at sea’ your best bet is to go back home and get yourself a manager if you want a career in the ring’. I had then gone through the whole rigmarole of the story of how I had gone with friends to the dance and had become involved in a fight that was not of our making. The old boy had listened as if he had heard it all before, and at the end of my tale. He had merely shrugged and said not to appear in office again in that state. ‘What sort of impression do you think you are going to make turning up at a ship looking as if you have done ten rounds with Joe Louis?

Anyway, the old boy had eventually been given instructions to join a ship name the S.S. Tucurinca, a ‘banana boat’ owned by Elders & Fyffe’s Fruit Company, which at that moment had been moored ‘over the river’ at ‘Grey’s, another place I had never heard of. After a cursory glance at my still pristine seaman’s books I had been give five shillings for the bus journey to ‘Greys’ and directed back into the centre of Middlesborough where I had found a bus that had taken me over the dirty River Tees towards the first ship of my seafaring career.


The ship

Looking out of the bus window I could see nothing but lots of smoke belching factories and other installations amongst a stark landscape of nothingness until I had eventually spied three merchant vessels moored almost head to stern to a distant dockside. Much like ogling the girls of Scarborough I had imagined which I had fancied the most, and which had been the Tucurinca. The first in the line of three had looked rust streaked and unkempt and I had hoped this was not she. The ship on the end of the row had looked a little better and I had thought she hadn’t looked too bad, but the best of the three had been in the centre of the line. Painted white with a huge buff coloured funnel this beauty had stood out from the others like the proverbial sore thumb and I had preyed that she was to be my new home.

Soon the bus had dropped me off at the gates of this isolated dockyard, and hoisting my trusty kitbag onto my shoulder I had approached the guard on the gate of the complex that had let me through with barely a glance at my seaman’s papers. As the three seemingly huge ships had got closer I had noticed the names painted on their bow. The first had not been my vessel but the beauty in the middle, to my delight, had been the Tucurinca, and soon I had been climbing the steep accommodation ladder towards the deck of this fine ship.

Named after a river in North Western Columbia and built in Germany, Tucurinca had been two years old by the time I had joined her in the summer of 1964. Constructed for the Surrey Shipping Company of London, she had been the youngest of six vessels with names beginning with T’’ that had generally been known as ‘T Boats’. Flying the House Flag of Elders and Fyffes in 1964, she had been under the command of Captain Edward Whitehouse. Weighing 6,738 tons gross, my new home had had a length of around 137 metres with a width of 59 metres. Powered by two steam turbines engines the Tucurinca had been designed to carry her cargo of fruit at around 23 knots comfortably, but having been built on the lines of an ocean greyhound she had always had the tendency to roll, as the old hand’s had so rightly often said ‘on a wet fucking lawn’.

I had been met at the top of the gangway by a soft-spoken grizzled old seaman who had turned out to be Tucurinca’s Seychelles born Boatswain. His name now lost in time the chief of the ship’s Petty Officers had asked my business and had eventually led me into a carpeted alleyway, which, lined with cabin doors bearing the nameplates of the Tucurinca’s officers, I had assumed to be ‘officers country’. Eventually led to the cabin of the ship’s Chief Steward, I had found a gentle giant named Mr. Peter Castrey. Amongst the finest of people I have had the fortune to meet in my lifetime Mr. Castrey had been the epitome of the British gentleman and had been my ‘boss’ throughout that first trip.

After a short interview Mr. Castrey had been taken down another flight of stairs into the Officers Saloon, where, according to my now battered Seaman’s ‘Discharge Book, I had duly signed my name in a large register known as the ‘ship’s articles’, on the 27TH of July 1964. Rated as ‘Catering Boy’, and the youngest person in the ship, I had been number ‘42’ in a crew of forty two officers and men and had committed my life to the vessel for the customary two years, or until the ship had once again docked in a British port in return for food, clean bedding, and as much work as could be crammed into a twenty four hour day, and all for the princely wage of seventeen pounds per month.

Having signed my life away the Chief Steward had taken me into the ship’s Galley where I had been introduced to the ship’s cook, Mr. George Sowden. Amongst the few people whose name I have never forgotten in over forty years of life, the broken nosed ‘Scouser’ had been what one could safely call a proper bastard, and for some unknown reason this God forsaken person and I had never got on and throughout the eight months that I had been in his hands I had undergone sheer torment.

With stainless steel bulkheads [walls] and deckhead [ceiling] the Ship’s Galley had been little more than a stainless steel coated box. Fronted by three brass barred portholes the compartment had been dominated by a massive cowled cooking range in its centre, whilst the sides of the box had been filled with various stainless steel work surfaces and shelves filled with pots and pans of all sizes. In a corner had also stood a huge food mixer, whilst against another bulkhead had stood the mouth of a huge chute popularly known as ‘the shit chute’, which had been securely closed whilst alongside, which would be opened once at sea, down which all the Galley’s refuse would be tipped. Standing next to this had been a potato-peeling machine that I was to become well acquainted with during the forthcoming voyage.

Left in the hands of Sowden his first words had been ‘a fucking first tripper eh’? Yes I said, ‘well let me tell you I don’t like first trippers’ the Scouse git had replied and shaking his head he had gone on to tell me of my duties that I would be expected to do which had turned out to be everything other than actually cooking the food. Sowden had then taken down another flight of ladders to the storerooms situated on a ‘flat’ that had had access to the engine room, where he had shown round the spacious food refrigerators and vegetable locker. ‘These will need fucking cleaning as well’, the boxer faced cook had told me in his soon to become never to be forgotten bluff Liverpudlian accent, ‘and guess whose fucking job that will be’? Feeling decidedly ‘3F’ by this time [‘Fed up, Fucked up, and Far from home’] I had thought of ‘jumping ship’ right there and then, but then I had thought of the no hope alternatives of working in dead end jobs in Scarborough and had decided to stay, no matter what that fucking idiot had thrown at me.

With few of the crew aboard at that time Sowden had begrudgingly given me that day off, and I had been shown into a three berth cabin on the Starboard side of the ship’s accommodation that would be my home for the ensuing eight months of my life. Having packed my few possessions away in a locker in my cabin I had elected to take a look around the ship, come and take a look with me.

Perhaps the most striking feature of my new home had been her massively flared bow. Sloping at an angle of perhaps forty-five degrees, standing at the very tip of the ship and peering over the side nothing had been under me but the very dark water of the Tees. Leaving the forecastle I had walked back along the ship’s grey painted deck passing her two forward cargo hatches and massive foremast festooned with lights and cables attached to the winches that had operated four forward cargo derricks. Climbing the ladder back into the accommodation block I had walked under one of the two ship’s lifeboats, hoping that I would never have to sit in one. Climbing up more ladders I had arrived at my ship’s magnificent buff painted funnel that had encased a jungle of exhaust pipes from the engines far below. The bridge door had been locked and I had been unable to gain access to the vast array of instramnets and the large ship’s wheel that would eventually steer the ship to her various destinations.

On the afterdeck there had been another two cargo hatches each with their attendant derricks and winches. Passing these I had arrived at a small deckhouse on the ship’s poop that I had eventually found had acted as steering position in times of emergency and as a bridge for the officer taking charge of the after part of the ship whilst she had been docking. Standing right aft I had stood on the Tucurinca’s beautifully curved cruiser stern and had gazed up at the large Red Ensign that had fluttered in the breeze of the afternoon and wondered what my out of work mates had been doing at that moment.

Inside, the crew accommodation of Tucurinca had been divided into two halves that had been dissected by a recreation room in the after part, and various toilets and showers in the middle of a housing whose watertight doors had led down into the ship’s engine and boiler rooms. On the starboard side of the accommodation had been situated a small hospital and the cabins belonging to the staff of the catering and engine room departments, whilst the deck crew and petty officers such as the cook, bosun, and ship’s carpenter had resided on the port side. At the forward end of the accommodation had been situated the officers saloon, galley, and crew mess room a spacious area that would eventually be the hub of the life of over twenty ratings whether the ship be in port or at sea.

I spent my first night aboard in my cabin with the door firmly locked. With few people around there had been little sound other than the whirring of a generator and the tinny noise of a radio being played in some other part of the accommodation. I must have dozed off, however, because at the crack of daylight I had been awoken with a knocking at the door and the voice of someone telling me to get dressed and ‘turned to’, whatever that had meant.

After a quick wash in the nearby crew toilets and shower room known as ‘the heads’, I had duly reported to the Galley where Sowden had already been traying up rashers of bacon and sliced tomatoes. ‘Peel some spuds, he had said in his usual gruff manner. ‘How many’? I had replied, turning around from his task the bastard had said; get a sack up from down below, open the fucking thing and start peeling, I’ll tell you when to Fucking stop’!

Heading down to the veg room as instructed I had taken a sack of potatoes from a large pile located in the corner of the large room, and after locking up I had returned to the galley up the ladder with the sack on my back. Inside the kitchen I had found Sowden talking to another ‘scouser’ however, unlike the cook, this fellow had been much more jocular and friendly.

Looking like Groucho Marx with his large black bushy eyebrows and moustache, the bespectacled Jimmy Martin had been the Tucurinca’s Second Steward; however throughout the voyage I would only call his ‘Sec’. A born comedian, Jim had made me laugh from the outset by saying ‘stuck with this miserable bastard are you’? I had mistakenly replied ‘seems so’ which had inevitably caused my new boss to almost turn crimson with rage. Jim, had however, seen the signs and had quickly launched into a chorus or two of ‘Maggie May’ to the accompaniment of much pan bashing with a pair of wooden cooking spoons the impromptu entertainment a delight to me, but seemingly an annoyance to Sowden who had returned grumbling to his task of preparing breakfast.

Sat on an upturned bucket just inside the doorway of the galley I had begun my task of peeling the sack of potatoes with a sharp knife. Soon I had been joined by the comedian Second Steward who had said; ‘I known a good way of getting the eyes out of potatoes without even touching them’. Intrigued, I had replied; ‘how do you do that then’? The ‘Sec had duly given me a large wink of his eye and had said ‘put them in a bucket of water with a couple of onions that’ll make them cry their eyes out’! Before I could reply the Steward had been walking down the corridor whilst bellowing with laughter. And this had only the start of the voyage!

Throughout the remainder of my first day of work Sowden and I had not only thrown a breakfast but also a dinner and evening meal together and by the end of the day I had been totally whacked. However, having already washed two sets of kitchen utensils I had also to ‘strap up’ after the evening meal and in addition scrub the deck of the kitchen before I could call it a day. This had been the time, when dog tired; I had asked Sowden what I should do with some waste food that had been laying in the bottom of a pan. Sowden had told me to ‘Throw it over the fucking wall’, and not realising that the cook had meant throw it [illegally] into the Tees, the wall surrounding the dockyard had come to mind and I had duly marched down the Tucurinca’s gangway with my pan of rubbish and had, after a couple of futile attempts I had eventually thrown the pan over the said dockyard wall.

Returning to the ship empty handed the cook had obviously asked where his pan had gone, and had gone ballistic when I had told him of its fate. ‘What the fuck have you done, as if not quite understanding what I had said. You’ve thrown a fucking pan over the dockyard wall! Wait there; the Chief Steward has got to hear this fucking tale. Mr. Castrey had duly returned with Sowden and with a big grin on his large face he had said; well ‘Gal’ [short for ‘galley boy] what have you been doing with the Chef’s pans? I had launched into my tale of asking the chef what I should do with the rubbish and of he having told me to ‘throw it over the fucking wall’--- so I had done’. Finally bursting into a thunderous bout of laughter, once the Chief Steward had been able to catch his breath he had said; ‘Very good, you had merely done as you had been told and I admire your throwing abilities for that wall must be over ten feet tall’. ‘Yes’ I had replied, ‘it had taken a few attempts, but I had finally got it over on the eighth try’! By this time even Sowden had been laughing and I had eventually been told to get my head down for the night. The story of this escapade had been the source of much mirth throughout the remainder of the trip. However, no one had ever told me to throw anything over the wall again.

Throughout the next few days various other members of the crew had joined the workforce aboard Tucurinca. Stewards, Able Seamen, Ordinary Seamen, and Firemen Water tenders’ [engine room crew] had begun to arrive aboard the previously silent ship’s alleyway ringing to the sound of predominantly Geordie voices. One day a young Ordinary Seaman named Dave Brewins had also joined the ship, and although a couple of years older than I, Dave had become a friend with whom I had shared most of my adventures as the voyage had progressed. Also amongst those that had joined the ship had been a moustachioed ‘Second Cook and Baker’ whose name now escapes me. I remember little else of this fellow because as soon as we had reached our first foreign port he had when he had deserted, or ‘skinned out’ from the vessel.

By the end of my second week aboard Tucurinca had almost completed her refit, and with the day of her departure growing ever cdloser, the Chief Steward had allowed me, much to the chagrin of ‘chef’ Sowden, to go home for the weekend. Still in an page of time without the ‘mobile phone’ I had had no communication with my parents since I had left home almost two weeks before, and so I had jumped at the chance to return to Scarborough for a couple of days, if only to boast of my adventures as a ‘veteran seaman in the British Mercantile Marine.

Back in the 1960’s my mother had been working in Scarborough as a housekeeper in a family run hotel located in St Nicholas Cliff called ‘The New Imperial Hotel’. Now a block of flats known as ‘Mc Bean Apartments’, the hotel had been one of those whose patrons had returned year after year, and as mum had worked there since I was very small everyone had known ‘Dot’. As my bus had arrived in Scarborough at about lunchtime on that hot Saturday in July I had known that lunch would be in the process of being served, and with a hot meal in the offing I had hightailed to the hotel. An unexpected visitor my mother and the remainder of the staff of the New Imperial had been overjoyed to see me, and after a large number of embarrassing hugs and kisses I had been sat at the kitchen table enjoying a plate of my mother’s renowned homemade steak and kidney pie accompanied by all the trimmings.

Of course everyone had wanted to know how I had got on since I had left home, and leaving out the episode of the chucking of the pan over the dockyard wall I had related all my activities aboard ship in between mouthfuls of mum’s delicious pie. A good dollop of home made apple pie and custard had followed, and by the time I had finished my lunch I had told my story. Well used to washing up by this time I had eventually helped with the washing of the hotel’s lunch plates and cutlery. However, mum could not resist taking me up to the dining room to meet the hotel’s guests, many of whom had known me since I had been very small, and once again I had had to go though the torment of being hugged and kissed by those lovely people, who, over a cup of tea had insisted that I go over my story of shipboard life.

Later that afternoon I had jumped on the bus going to Eastfield Housing Estate and soon I had been reunited with my father. A man of few words Dad had had little to say other than ‘ello, how long are you stopping’? Replying ‘just the weekend' he had soon returned to watching hors racing on television and I had also slumped into a chair to join him in watching the ‘gee gees’. However, word had soon travelled round our street that I had returned home, and within an hour of stepping through our front door I had been washed and changed and out on the street with my chums. With little money between us we had eventually set off walking the three miles into Scarborough, but a friendly motorist had shortly picked us up to give us a life into town.

Back in A & G’s Amusements, my chums and I had been joined by a group of local girls that we had often hung around with. I had especially ‘fancied’ a girl who I shall name Rose, and eventually her friend had said ‘Rose don’t half fancy you’. My face had instantly flushed the colour of blood and my mates had given their customary chorus of wolf whistles and any other saying that had been guaranteed to embarrass.

I had eventually plucked up some courage and had spoken to Rose, telling her that I would soon be returning to sea, but if she gave me her address I would write to her. Rose had scribbled her name and address on the back of a cigarette packet, but somewhere along the line, by the time I had got back to Tucurinca I had lost her precious address and we had never met again until years later, when it had been too late.

On Sunday night my chums and I had scraped enough money together to once again go to the dance at St Peters. Buoyed up with our customary one pint of cider each, we had listened and danced in the packed room to songs that had been played by one of Scarborough best bands, ‘The Mandrakes’ whose flamboyant singer, a certain Mr. Robert Palmer, would eventually become a famous rock star. However, still bearing the scars of our last visit to the club, we had elected to leave before closing time, to walk the customary three ragged miles over Oliver’s Mount to our homes in Eastfield.

I had duly set off for Middlesborough once again on Monday morning. Promising my parents that I would write soon I had boarded the bus bearing many people destined for work in Scarborough that morning in the knowledge that soon I would soon be in an exotic country far from the monotony of their drab nine to five jobs.

Arriving on board later in the day, I had found that I had acquired two cabin mates. Both of them rated as ‘Assistant Stewards’, Bob had been a morose thirty something Scotsman who had brought a portable record player with him along with a large collection of Country and Western records that would soon be heard at all hours of the day and night throughout the length and breadth of the ship’s accommodation, until someone had ‘accidentally’ smashed his infernal record player. The other man had been Irish. Inevitably named ‘Paddy’ he had been in his sixties and according to him he had been sailing the seven seas before the outbreak of war in 1939. However, the worst thing about Paddy had been his disgusting nocturnal habit of urinating in the middle of the night in anything that had come to hand, shoes had been his speciality, with clothes drawers coming a close second in preference.

Changing into working gear I had ‘turned to’ to find the Galley sink packed high with dirty pots and pans awaiting washing. Sowden had been busy cooking lunch when I had arrived but he had soon called over to me; ‘and when you’ve finished washing that fucking lot there is a load that needs washing in the pantry. Nothing had changed since I had been away.

We had sailed on Tuesday. With the vibration from the ship’s engines making the pans in the Galley vibrate, once the large dock gangway had been removed from the ship’s deck, and all her moorings had been ‘slipped’, a tug had helped the Tucurinca move out of the dry-dock that had been her home for over a month, and swinging round to face the sea we had begun to steam down the Tees towards the sea. Passing numerous shore side installations and houses I had watched from the ship’s rail as my home county had gradually slipped away from me. Glad to be on the move at last, I had returned to the galley with an excitement in my heart that I had never experienced before continuing with my work, However, the galley floor had shortly begun to rise as we had reached the mouth of the great river, and Tucurinca had placed her graceful bow tentatively into the salt water of the North Sea. With no cargo in her holds the ship had been light and had soon assumed her characteristic rolling motion. Which had been so pronounced at one point that the majority of the midday meal had ended up on the deck. Sowden had been so taken aback by this catastrophe that he had merely said; I didn’t believe it when I had been told these fucking ships would roll on a wet fucking lawn, now I know its fucking true’! The Second Cook and Baker and I had hid our laughter by turning our backs on the fuming chef and we had duly helped him to set up a vast array of ‘stove bars’ across the top of the ship’s cooker that had been intended to stop cooking utensils from sliding off the stove again, we had never taken these off again until we had reached England eight months later.

At sea Tucurinca had been a different ship. At night alongside the dock she had been silent, but at sea there had always been the sound of creaking, which to a first tripper like myself had sounded as if the ship was a bout to break up, but I had been relieved to find that all ships creak as they bend to the motion of the sea, and apparently the time to start worrying is when they stop doing this.

A few hours after leaving the Tees I had been working in the Galley when I had received a summons to report to the bridge. Climbing the four flights of stair to the wheelhouse I had wondered what I had done wrong to be called to this hallowed ground. However upon my arrival there I had been greeted by Captain Whitehouse who had asked if I had wanted to take a look at Scarborough as we had sped past. Taking the Captain’s proffered binoculars over in the distance I could see the myriad of coloured lights lining the foreshore of my town and had even seen the windows belonging to the dining room of The New Imperial Hotel, behind which my mother had in all probability been preparing to serve that day’s evening meal. Wondering if my mum had been thinking of me at that moment. Fighting back my massive pangs of homesickness I had duly thanked the Captain for use of his binoculars and with a large lump in my throat and feelings of being so very far from home, I had returned to my duties in the Galley.

Later that evening the Chief Steward had opened the ship’s Bonded Store for the first time. Packed with all the popular brands of English cigarettes and cases of beer, I had bought a carton of two hundred Senior Service cigarettes for fifty pence. Sadly aged under eighteen I had not been allowed to buy alcohol and had contented myself with two cans of Coke that I had later exchanged with my mate Dave for two cans of Tennants Export beer, which I had drank far from the eyes of prying officers right at the stern of the ship, which had been my favourite part of the ship, and where I would spend many an off duty hour watching the wake of the Tucurinca as it had snaked back into the distant horizon.

Our first port of call had been Rotterdam. Arriving in that great port the day after we had left the Tees, Tucurinca had soon been steered by tugs towards a pier, where once we had been secured alongside her cargo hatches had been opened to allow the loading of our first cargo, a load of fertiliser smelling strongly of ammonium, that had generally been regarded by the crew as ‘horse piss’. Before we had arrived in port each man, including myself had been given a ten pounds ‘sub’ from his wages and once the gangway had been in place many of our crew had disappeared ‘up the road’ in the direction of the nearest bar.

There had been no such luck for me for there had inevitably been another meal to prepare for and I had remained at work until around seven when I had quickly changed into my ‘shore clothes’ to take a look at my first foreign country. However, unknown to me our ship had been berthed miles from the nightlife of Rotterdam and after a walking a few miles through a seemingly endless stream of industrial installations I had I had given up the ghost and had turned around to head back to the ship, which by the time her tall funnel had hove into view had been a welcoming sight.

I had slept alone that night, my two cabin mates having gone ashore. However, during the early hours I had been awoken by their arrival back at the cabin, and although these two had soon fallen into a deep slumber I had not been able to get back to sleep and had witnessed Paddy’s first nocturnal foray to the toilet, my locker! In a flash I had jumped out of my bunk and had dragged the old bastard out of my belongings before he had done any harm. Mumbling something incoherent the old Irishman had staggered off to the heads where he had eventually fallen asleep [or collapsed] on the tiled floor.

Whilst we had loaded our cargo of horse piss the routine of the ship had continued. I had invariably begun work at around 6am each day with the cleaning of three 56 pounds bags of potatoes; these would be followed with the preparation of all the vegetables that would be needed for that day’s menu, which had invariably consisted of a cooked breakfast, a full meal at lunchtime, and a cooked tea in the evening. All the pots and pans that would be used that day and all the work surfaces and floor had had to be cleaned before I could call it a day which had generally been at around 9pm each day. During that time, apart from the time I had taken to eat a hurried breakfast, dinner, and tea, I would have only had one break, which had been the two hours between four and six each evening, when the serving of the officers and Crew’s evening meal had begun.

During our second day in Rotterdam I had badly scalded my hands in a sink of hot water that had seen me being taken to a hospital in Rotterdam where my painful hands had been bathed and eventually bandaged by a very pretty English speaking Dutch nurse before being returned to the ship. Excused work for three days, I had been amongst the mad rush of seamen, including my chum Dave, that had boarded a ‘water taxi’ that had flitted between the various vessels that had been moored nearby picking up knots of expectant seamen along the way.

My fellow crewmembers and I had eventually been landed in a notorious sector of Rotterdam known as ‘Chinatown’. Leaving Dave and I to our own devices the other seamen had gone their way whilst the two of us had eventually been enticed into a bar by a semi naked girl who had been dancing in a window of the gaudily lit music place. Resembling one of those saloons that I had so often seen in old western movies, the Coco Bar had been filled with smoke from perhaps a thousand cigarettes and had a hive of activity and to my young eyes had seemed to have been packed to the walls and ceiling with drunken cavorting seamen and women. Over in a corner we had found a table around which a number of Tucurinca’s crew had been sat. One of the ship’s men had already passed out, his head resting on the table; he would occasional mumble some incoherent word. No-one else at the table had seeming bothered with this man, each engrossed in his own alcoholic world.

Sipping at a bottle of coke, one of our seamen had asked me ‘what the fuck is that’? Replying ‘Coke’ rather timidly, the bottle had, in a flash been thrown against the wall, and the sailor had said ‘if you sit with us you don’t drink fucking coke’. Now either get a beer or fuck off’! Returning to the crowed bar I had bought a bottle of the Dutch been known as ‘Oranjeboom’, my first taste of alcohol in a foreign land. Cool and clinging to the glass like nectar, one Oranjeboom had followed another and before too long, like the rest of the men around the table, I had been ‘pissed’.

Around us brightly painted women had trailed around the tables their comely smiles offering a ‘short time’ for fifty guilders. What a ‘short time’ had been I had had little idea, however, a group of these women had eventually arrived at our table and soon a young ‘dusky’ woman of around twenty years of age had been sitting on my lap. ‘You want to come to my room’? The woman had whispered in my ear. ‘What for’ had been the only words that had escaped my mouth. ‘For to fuck me’ had been her reply, and before I could reply she had whipped out one of her breast and placed it in my hand. Thus far in my life I had barely touched a girl on her arm, never mind having had a breast in my hand. Visibly trembling with, was it fear or anticipation I still don’t know, but with very little money in my possession I had had to reply, ‘no thanks’ to which she had replied ‘bastard’ and had shortly retrieved her breast and moved on to someone else. Oh the wonders of youth!

During the early hours of the following day a group of us had found our way to the deserted jetty from where we should have found a ‘water taxi’. Upon reaching the empty pier on of our number had shouted; ‘here we are boys all aboard the skylark’ and had promptly dropped into the oily grey water. In the fast flowing water the unfortunate seaman had soon been swept away from the jetty and only by swimming with all his might had he managed to reach the harbour wall some distance away from out astonished group, The guy, by this time fully sober had eventually squelched his way back to our little band and had said; I could have sworn there had been a fucking boat alongside’! By this time I had also regained some common sense and I had begun to realise that I was indeed in the company of a bunch of lunatics.

Arriving back at Tucurinca we had been met at the top of her gangway by the ship’s Third Officer. Ignoring the majority of our drunken band the officer had singled me out and had asked if I was drunk. ‘Of course not’ said I, nonetheless the officer had smelt alcohol on my breath and had given me a pretty severe dressing down for having the odour of alcohol on my breath; Having been aged under eighteen I had officially been under the legal age for drinking alcohol, and being under age I had officially been under the care of the Captain, who could, if he had wanted, have denied me any sort of shore leave until I had been aged eighteen. Dreading the thought of being aboard ship for the next two years of my life I had promised not to touch another drop, and had duly been allowed to go to my cabin. However, no sooner had I laid my head on my bunk had I been called to start work in the galley, which with my bandaged hands had meant that I had spent the day engaged in ‘light duties’, counting our supply of sacks of potatoes and other vegetables that had been stacked almost to the roof of the ship’s ‘veg room’.

We had remained in Rotterdam for about a week loading our precious cargo of horse piss, and during that time a number of the ship’s drunken crew had stolen a bread van in order to get back to the ship. Driven by another drunken crew of maniacs the van had eventually been chased through Rotterdam’s docklands by a couple of police cars and the crewmen had eventually been cornered by the police and had elected to fight their way out of trouble. Eventually arrested after a pretty ugly street fight the sailors had had to be bailed out of the city’s lockup by our Captain, who had reportedly been on the verge of leaving them to their fate. However, after a severe dressing down from the ‘old man’ the four by then chastened seamen had been allowed to return to the ship and had never been allowed ashore in Rotterdam throughout our stay there. With no harm done as far as I know nothing more had been said of this incident; however it is thought that the four culprits had eventually paid quite a hefty fine.

With a full cargo Tucurinca had been readied for sea. The hatches had been battened down by the bearded ship’ carpenter, whilst the deck crew had gathered in knots fore and aft waiting to ‘cast off’ from the shore. Elsewhere in the ship could be heard the distant roar far below of the ship’s turbines as they had idly turned whilst waiting for the order to spring into action. In the Galley there had been the problem of a missing Second Cook and Baker. No one had seen this secretive chap go ashore and it had at first been believed that he had been in the ship somewhere. However, despite an exhaustive search the errant cook had not been found and his locker had been found to be empty. Eventually listed as a ‘V.N.C.’ [Voyage Not Completed] the few remaining belongings of the missing cook had eventually been taken ashore by Tucurinca ship’s agent and we had cast off that night without him.

With rain streaking her superstructure the Tucurina had been edged away from her berth by a pair of tugs to begin her journey down the crowded Niewe Maars towards the open sea. Eventually quitting the environs of the largest port in the world Tucurinca had eventually disembarked her Dutch pilot into a fast launch which had sped towards us from the pilot station located at the Hook of Holland, and soon she had once again been under the command of her own captain, who had turned his most beautiful of vessels in the direction of the busy shipping lanes of the English Channel, and eventually the Atlantic Ocean.

You have already met a handful of the men that I had sailed with during my first voyage to sea, I would now like to introduce a few more who had shared those wonderful that wonderful voyage with me.

‘Call me Bond’ had been the password of ‘suave’ Robert Pickens. Aged about twenty-two and possessing very good looks, Bob had indeed ‘fancied himself’ as James Bond. On all occasions smartly dressed this steward, unlike the rest of the ship’s rabble, would never go ashore in casual clothes and no matter how rough the place had been where he had been drinking he would always be found to be dressed in an immaculate three piece suit clean white shirt and tie. Truly a rose amongst thorns, it had at first been thought Bob had been gay, but no matter where he had gone it had always been with a couple of girls in tow, and whenever he had passed the rest of us with both his arms around yet another couple of beauties he would wink and give his customary parting remark of ‘call me Bond’.

I had known the Engineroom Storekeeper only as ‘Mush’. Hailing from Southampton, Mush had been aged around fifty at the time that I had known him. A powerfully built blue-eyed seafarer Mush had reportedly been a seaman almost the whole of his life, and if anyone within his earshot had dared to remark that he had been at sea for a long period Mush would inevitably reply with; call yourself a fucking seaman. I’ve spent more time on one fucking wave that you have in the whole of you career’. Also in possession of one of the finest collections of tattoos I would ever see in my ‘short’ and miserable seafaring career, his back being festooned with the scene of a traditional British fox hunt with horses and hounds giving chase to a fox whose tail could be seen entering the sailor’s rectum. He had also reported had three seagulls tattooed onto his penis, and it had not been unusual for the drunken sailor to say; who’s pinched one of my fucking gulls’ whilst urinating in some foreign toilet.

Another remarkable man had been ‘Chaw’. Really named ‘Alf’, Chaw had been a ‘Fireman Water Tender’ and had been aged around twenty-five years. A Middlesborough man who had insisted in calling everyone ‘Chaw’, Alf had been considered by many of the crew as dim witted and slow, This notion being reinforced when Chaw had emerged for the engine room one windswept day with a bucket of oily waste that, without first finding the direction of the wind, he had thrown over the side. Inevitably the roaring wind had collected Chaw’s waste into its arms and had thrown the whole lot back at the Tucurina with the result that the customary pristinely white vessel had been pebbledashed from funnel to waterline with oil. Inevitably, the Captain had been furious that someone had messed up his ship and for many weeks ‘Chaw’ had spent his off duty time confined to the ship with a bucket of soapy water ‘soogying’ [washing] off the terrible mess that he had made.

Another of my chums had been Eric, a Somerset man Eric had possessed the driest wit of anyone aboard Tucurina, and anything that had hove into his view could turn into another source of amusement for this very funny man. I those days without any decent clothing I had worn a cheap pair of British denims that had had a label on a back pocket proudly proclaiming ‘Jet Jeans’. Eric had spied this label soon after I had joined the ship and had said in his customary dry way; ‘Got some new jeans have you’? No', I had replied; 'they are quite old'. ‘Fuck me’, he replied, ‘do tell me where you bought those fabulous things, I want a dozen pairs like them I had just been on the verge of telling Eric where I had bought my jeans when he had said; ‘only joking kid, those are the worst fucking jeans I’ve ever seen’ and I wouldn’t be seen dead wearing them’! Laughing out loud Eric had left me bathing in a pool of disappointment; however, a few minutes later he had returned with an old and faded pair of American ‘Wrangler’ Jeans. Handing me the pair of jeans Eric had said ‘Chuck those fucking things over the side and wear these until you get something better’. Feeling as proud as punch to be offered a pair of real American denims, although Eric’s present had been a little on the large size, I had worn those Wranglers for many years as work clothes until they had finally met their end sometime during the 1980’s.

Although the majority of Tucurinca’s crew in one way or another had seemed ‘peculiar’ to me none had bettered ‘Fireman Jack’. Hailing from Whitby, Jack had been aged well over sixty years by the time that I had met him. A veteran of the arctic convoys of the Second World War, Jack had reportedly worked for many years in the sweltering Persian Gulf and during that time had acquired a bad case of the so called ‘Aberdan Blues’, so much so that by the 1960’ he had been completely ‘out of his tree’. Electing, as far as possible not to have any contact with the remainder of our crew Jack had spent most of his time alone on deck and had even eaten his meals there, sometimes in the worst of weather. Being from nearby Whitby I had initially thought that with me coming from Scarborough there may have been some common bond between us, but every time I had tried to speak to the old fireman, however he had never made any rely other than ‘fuck off you little bastard’, and throughout that eight months voyage we had barely spoken a sentence of conversation. Dark eyed and with his sun addled brain still in the Persian Gulf; Jack had indeed been ‘odd’.

Although registered in London, Tucurinca had been built for service in the fruit trade between the Caribbean and the United States. Under charter to the American owned United Fruit Company, by the time that I had joined her Tucurinca had left Rotterdam, as far as I am aware, without any orders regarding her destination. However, within a couple of days rumours had gone round the ship indicating we were bound for Panama, and the Chief Steward had eventually arrived in the galley to inform the Chef and I that we were indeed bound for Panama, where we were to load a cargo of bananas at a place called Golfito destined for delivery in the United States.

By this time my hands had healed enough for me to resume my usual duties, however, having now lost our Second Cook the burden of supplying food to the crew had been placed in the hands of Sowden and I, and as a result I had prematurely been ‘up rated’ to the rank of ‘Assistant Cook’, quite an achievement for a first tripper. I had then begun to learn how to bake the ship’s long loaves of bread and cakes [universally known in the British Merchant Navy as ‘Tabnabs’] as well as also being responsible for the preparation of potatoes and vegetables, as well as doing some simple cookery tasks, along with all my usual galley duties.

We were now in the spaces of the massive Atlantic Ocean and it had been expected that we would be at sea for around twelve days before we would see land again. To fill some of this time the Captain had inspected his ship twice a week, when on Monday’s and Friday’s the ‘Old Man’ along with an entourage including the first officer, Chief Engineer, and Chief Steward had inspected each compartment of the ship, often whilst wearing white gloves, for any specks of dust or dirt. I remember once having been ordered to my cabin to explain to the Captain why so much of the said offending material had collected on the springs of my bunk, and had spent that evening polishing these springs until the Chief Steward had been satisfied with my efforts.

Another regular event aboard the ship had been the once weekly lifeboat drill. I well remember the first time that I had attended the drill. Just before the event the old hands had told me that the ship was to conduct a special lifeboat drill where the crew were to load all their kit into the Tucurinca’s two lifeboats to see how much they could carry. I had therefore been instructed to put my ‘Vindi’ uniform, clean shirt and tie and beret included, then put a lifejacket on and then put all my gear into my kitbag and then make my way as fast as I could to the boat deck, where my stuff along with everyone else’s would be loaded into the boats.

The ship siren had duly signalled ‘lifeboat stations’ and I had duly done as asked. Arriving at the rush on the lifeboat deck I had been greeted by the laughing faces of the said ‘old hands’. Our boat had been in the hands of an astonished Second Officer, who, seeing me arrive with my gear had said; ‘and where the fucks do you think your going’? With this the assembled men had fell around in laughter, the Captain had been on the bridge, and upon hearing the commotion below, had poked his head over the rail and had shouted down; ‘what seems to be the matter Mr. Mate’? The ‘Mate had replied; Our First Tripper seems to think he’s going on his holidays’? Once again the congregation had fallen around in laughter, and the Captain seeing the joke had duly shouted back; ‘tell him not just yet’! This had been the first occasion that I had been publicly embarrassed, it would happen again further into the voyage.

A few days into our Atlantic crossing word had come down from the bridge to expect bad weather within the next couple of days. The delighted Chef had duly cut the standard three meals per day down to sandwiches, and had also begun to prepare a massive pan of stew, I contributing to the concoction with a load of peeled and diced potatoes and vegetables. Out on deck no one had been allowed to go forward, whilst on the afterdeck safety hand lines had been rigged and I had guessed we were in for a rough ride.

The storm had hit us at some point during the following night and I can still remember the violence of my ship’s movements. Awoken from sleep the Tucurinca had seemed to ride up a large hill and slide rather sickeningly down the other side like a bucking bronco. Looking out of the porthole I had seen a sea as black as ink towering high above my head the huge wave being topped by a crest of pure white water. I had seen seas like this at home but I had never been this close to such a frightening sight. The Tucurinca’s speed had by this time been reduced to a snail’s pace compared to her customary twenty knots or so and she had thus seemed to ‘wallow’ in that tormented sea.

Although the ship had initially had a ‘pitching’ motion, this had shortly changed to ‘corkscrewing’ where she had not only gone up and down but had also rolled from side to side, talk of an appropriate time to change one’s underwear! Terrified beyond belief I had shortly made my way to the crew mess room where a number of the crew, obviously also unable to sleep had been trying to stay upright in chairs that had obviously wanted to slide across the deck with the erratic motion of the ship. Casting knowing glances at the obvious look of fright on my face, one of them had said; ‘and this is only the fucking start of it’ and seemingly, without a care in the world, had gone back to his mug of tea and a drag of his cigarette. The violence of the ship’s motion had, inevitably, caused me to feel the first pangs of nausea that eventually developed into full blown seasickness, and throughout the remainder of that first day of the storm I had done little else other than have my head down the ‘heads’ getting rid of the contents of my stomach.

The storm, like my seasickness, had carried on for another two days. Confined to my bunk I had lived for those couple of days on crackers and water despite the numerous kindly offerings of greasy food that had been brought to my bedside by a number of my good-natured shipmates. However, by the fourth day I had awoke to find Tucurinca had returned to her customary role and the black sky of the day before had turned into a magnificent blue. The ocean the same colour, we had duly passed the Azores and the officers had duly exchanged their blue uniforms for white tropical kit.
Gone Tropical : Where the flying fishes play

Twelve days after leaving Rotterdam Tucurinca had poked her bows into the Caribbean Sea and whilst at work that day I had been summoned by Dave to follow him on deck, where he had said ‘watch this kid’. Gazing out at the azure blue sea I had shortly seen shoals of fish jumping out of the water to fly across its surface like so many flocks of silver birds; Ain't that a fucking wonderful sight’! My excited friend had shouted. And indeed it had. I had stood for many minutes with Dave watching this wonderful spectacle, until Sowden had arrived on the scene to spoil the moment with one of his customary snide remarks; ‘The meal won’t cook itself you know’! In an instant Dave had swung round on the chef with the remark; ‘well you’d better go fucking see to it hadn’t you, leave the fucking kid alone’! With that the fuming chef had turned on his heels and had scampered back into the accommodation without saying another word, but I knew I would pay for this encounter at some point during the day, and that afternoon Sowden had given me the odious task of scrubbing out the ship’s rubbish chute. Situated at the stern of the ship the ‘shit chute’ had carried all the galley waste away from the ship’s side and had inevitably become as greasy as sin. Anyway this unpleasant task had got me away from the galley for the whole of that hot afternoon, which I had spent scrubbing the chute and yapping to the many crewmen who had gathered to watch me at work. For the first time in the trip dressed in shorts, it had also been the first occasion that I had worn shorts since I had been a child ‘many’ years before.

Now much warmer than it had been in Europe, we had begun to spot the tell tale signs of land, seabirds had begun to congregate over the stern of the ship awaiting the arrival of scraps of food that had in general been thrown overboard by me. We had also begun to spot large clusters of vegetation including tree trunks and eventually we had spotted land, the coast of Panama, and had duly arrived in a large bay known as Limon Bay, which had been full of other ships, which had been lying at anchor waiting their turn to traverse the Panama Canal.

A ‘banana town’ located on the Pacific side of the continent of North America, to reach Golfito the Tucurinca had first to cross from the Atlantic to the Pacific via the Panama Canal. One of the most difficult and complicated engineering feats ever undertaken by man, the construction of the Canal had begun in 1888 and by the time that it had been completed in 1914 it had cost the lives of over 27,000 American and French labourers, mostly due to Malaria and Yellow Fever, and the almost impossible conditions that they had encountered within the seventy seven kilometres of jungle.

During the following day it had become Tucurinca’s turn to traverse the canal and the ship’s anchor had duly been weighed and we had arrived in the first set of locks [known as the Gatun Locks] that would lift the ship into the interior of Panama. Whilst we had been approaching these locks our genial Second Steward had arrived at the Galley to inform me that it had been the custom for the youngest member of any ship approaching the Canal to feed the ‘mules’ that would pull us through the locks, and had been told to stand on deck with a bag of carrots to await their arrival. Naïve me had duly done as I had been told and had stood on the after deck for some time with the bag of carrots until the Bosun had arrived to ask me what I had been up to. I had told the old boy of the seamen telling me to feed the carrots to the mules when they had arrived, and after he had stopped laughing for quite some time he had said it had been another hoax on the old hands part and I had better save the carrots for the crew as the so called ‘mules’ had become electrified tractors.

Going back into the accommodation with my bag of carrots I had been met by the remainder of the catering staff who had asked why I had not fed the ‘mules’; guess what my reply had been? Something on the lines of ‘fuck off’! comes to mind. Anyway as a reward for being such a ‘good sport’ the laughing Second Steward had presented me with a case containing twelve tins of Coca Cola.

We had presently traversed the three tiers of the Gatun Locks and had steamed into ‘Gatun Lake’ an artificial lake located eighty five feet above sea level that stretches for over fifteen miles across the ‘Isthmus of Panama’ to the ‘Galliard Cut’ where I had seen a large memorial that had been cut into the face of the Canal marking where the Pacific and Atlantic ends of the Canal had been joined. A marvellous place to be for a boy who not six months before had been roaming the streets of Scarborough, much to the annoyance of the Chef, I had whipped out of the Galley at all the opportunities I could get that day to watch our progress along that wondrous stretch of water.

Managed by the American Army in the 1960’s, as we had travelled through the canal I had noticed large encampments of tanks and other military equipment and wondered what sort of trouble they had been awaiting. However, unmolested, about nine hours later we had arrived at the ‘Miraflores Locks’, where Tucurinca had begun her descent to the Pacific Ocean. It had become dark by this time and the canal along with its accompanying clusters of installations had become illuminated by floodlights, the night humming to the sound of thousands of crickets. Sadly, my first traverse of the Panama Canal goes unrecorded, for in those days I had not yet been able to afford a camera, but the image of that wonder is still locked in my brain and as I write I can still feel the excitement of that day and smell the sweet air of that place in my history. Tucurinca had shortly left the Panama Canal behind and passing under the Thatcher Ferry Bridge [now known as ‘The Bridge of the Americas’] carrying the Pan American Highway she had steamed into the Gulf of Panama before turning left to go in search of her first cargo of bananas.

Two days after leaving the Panama Canal we had arrived in large bay known as ‘Golfo Dulce’ [Sweet Bay], where Tucurinca had presently entered the seemingly land locked Golfito Bay, where the ship had duly tied up to the single pier at Golfito town. On first impressions, consisting of little more that a pier sticking out of the jungle, Golfito [the name means ‘Little Bay’] had not impressed many of the ‘old salts’ as they had peered from the deck of Tucurinca looking for the town’s ‘bright lights’. ‘Not even a fucking bar’ having been the predominant reaction of the cluster of crewmen as we had come alongside this seemingly deserted place. However, within minutes of us tying up, what looked like hundreds of dark skinned men speaking a foreign language, that I had later found out to be Spanish, had descended on the ship, who had soon had her hatches opened and the ship’s derricks lifting and swinging the first sacks of ‘horse piss’ shore side to be loaded onto waiting flatbed rail trucks.

Before we had arrived in the ‘town’ each man [apart from me who had only been allowed two pounds ten shillings] had been allowed a five pounds ‘sub’ from his wages, which in those days had equated to around fourteen American Dollars, and as soon as the ship’s gangway had been lowered quite a number of the crew had gone ashore to reconnoitre what had been on offer at Golfito. However, with an evening meal still to prepare I had not been amongst these fortunates and had been forced to continue with my duties until later in the evening, when after work I had hurriedly showered and changed into shore clothes and armed with my seven Dollars sub and in company with Dave had gone ashore in search of dear knows what.

However, soon after we had set foot ashore the two of us had encountered a large group of seamen running in the opposite direction to us. Asking what all the rush was about we had hurriedly been told that a live crocodile had been seen on the road leading to town. Enquiring which way the croc had been going one of the disappearing seamen had shouted back to us---‘ you don’t think we’re chasing the fucking thing do you? And with this we had also beat a hasty retreat. Arriving back aboard we had duly heard the sound of distant gunfire and assuming that the beast had been killed we had once again made our way up the dusty road to Golfito where we had presently come across a large group of locals who had been clustered around the body of the largest lizard I had ever seen. Perhaps four feet in length the ‘crocodile’ had been as dead as a nit and an English speaker amongst the group of locals had told us that these reptiles were very common in those parts and had been very good to eat.

The crew’s first impressions of Golfito had been deceiving and our first port of call ‘up the road’ had been the vibrant ‘Cantina Bar’. A large wooden building with a corrugated iron roof, the Cantina would become the ship’s ‘headquarters’ throughout the ensuing months of our stay on the Pacific side of American continent and had been the place where I had spent much of my off duty time. Consisting of little more that a large room containing rough tables and chairs, there had also been a large bar and a bandstand where a variety of local ‘bands’ had played the night away. In addition there had been a juke box that had contained but a few popular records, the only two I can remember are Chris Montez’s ‘Lets dance’, and my personal favourite, the Beach Boys ‘Little Deuce Coupe’ a record which I had played that many times that I had received the local nickname of ‘Deuce Coupe’. In addition the Cantina had had a communal lavatory that had consisted of little more than a hole in the ground that had been used by males and females alike, that on occasion had contained more ‘frolicking’ people that the bar!

With little in the way of ‘door security’ the Cantina had also been the stomping ground of the majority f the town’s wildlife including roaming dogs, lizards, snakes, and monkeys that would on occasion jump from the place’s roof beams onto tables to steal cigarettes and matches and anything else that wasn’t tied down. Inevitably, the Cantina had also been frequented by the so-called ‘women of the night’. With little experience of these girls I had spent many an embarrassed night in the arms of these dusky maidens in the belief that they had been in the Cantina merely because they had wanted to dance with us seamen and perhaps on occasion buy them a drink. How naïve can one be?

Thumbing through the pages of my memory my most outstanding visual recollection of the Cantina is of its vibrant atmosphere of gyrating sailors and local girls dancing to the rhythms of Latin America emanating from the place’s house band, whilst my nostrils still tingle to the smell of sweaty bodies and rum and coke laced with ice and pieces of limes.

During our second day at Golfito a deputation of seamen had arrived at the galley to say they had ‘found’ a woman for me. Eagerly anticipating an encounter with one of the many dusky maidens I had seen the night before I had rushed through my duties that evening and by the fall of night I had arrived at the Cantina. With my heart pounding with expectancy I had soon joined a large crowd of our seamen who had introduced me to ‘Fifi’ .not her real name, ‘Fifi’ had been aged around forty years and had been the largest woman I had ever seen in my life. Soon the woman had been sat on my knee and I had lost sight of the world as her voluptuous breasts had buried me amongst their vastness. The ‘boys’ had obviously been rolling around with laughter by this time, and despite numerous attempts at escape I had stayed locked within this large woman. ‘You want to fuck me’ she had whispered in my ear, it will cost you five dollars short time’. I replied that I had had no money, however, within seconds my fellow crewmen had had a whip round and had gathered the required sum, and without more to do, much to the delight of my shipmates, I had been gathered up by this huge woman and whisked off to one of the rooms situated above the Cantina.

Fearing for the safety of my life, whilst Fifi had been undressing I had climbed out of the window to drop around ten feet into the surrounding jungle and whilst I had been gathering myself together I had heard the woman pounding around the rooms above the Cantina shouting my name, ‘come on out Pablo I will give you a very good time’. I no way wishing to experience one of Fifi’s ‘very good short times’ I had soon made my escape back to the safety of the ship, where during the following day, I had spent much of my time being god naturedly ribbed by the crew for my failure to bed Fifi, and as a precaution had spent that night aboard hiding from that huge woman, who, despite many more visits to Golfito, I had never seen again—thank goodness.

During the afternoon of the third day the Tucurinca, now loaded with a full cargo of bananas had quit Golfito. Steaming out of the beautiful bay that encompasses the town, the ship had duly turned right to head northwards towards the Californian coast of the United States of America.


Life and death at sea

By this time Tucurinca’s crew had melded into an efficient unit of men. Hard working during the day and hard drinking by night, by evening knots of men had generally gathered together in various parts of the ship to share their daily quota of alcohol and swap yarns of their various escapades during their time at sea. Fortunate I had joined the Merchant Navy during the sixties and many of the men I had sailed with had been veterans of the Second World War and especially the extremely dangerous convoys to Russia, and what tales my shipmates had had to tell. One night I and a number of other men had listened to one of our ‘old salts’ telling of the horrific time his ship had been torpedoed in the Barents Sea and of him having spent two days huddled in an open boat whilst all around him his comrades had one by one died from exposure because the extreme cold and how he and another couple of seamen had only survived by building a shelter from the frozen bodies of those that had expired and how he had been rescued in an extreme state of exhaustion and suffering from frostbite that had cost him three fingers of his left hand, fortunately, he had said with a smile, it had not been the hand that he had held his beer glass in.

On the whole, my shipmates had been good natured and fun to be around, however, in any box of apples one can always find a rotten one, unfortunately our ship had carried two, one had been the Chief Cook, and the other had been a large Irish seaman, who had inevitably been called ‘Paddy’. For most of the time Paddy had kept himself fairly much to himself. However, with a drink down him he had turned into a vicious animal, and at these times it had been best to lock your cabin door. Fortunately I had never had any trouble from this rouge Irishman but many of the crew had fallen victim to this man. However, some months into the trip, Paddy, by this time regarded as a psycho to be avoided at all costs following a drink, had been found lying unconscious in a pool of blood and had had to be evacuated by helicopter from the ship. It had later been found that the Irishman had been so badly beaten that he had eventually died from his injuries. Despite a lengthy investigation by the American police once we had got into port it had never been found who had been the cause of ‘Psycho’ Paddy’s death. Some had said good riddance to the Irish bastard and few had missed his disappearance from the ship, and little had been spoken of the murdered Paddy, but like I say, he had never done me any harm.

Although now commonplace, during the 1960’s homosexuality had still been taboo and had in fact been a punishable offence. However, in a world dominated by men the British Merchant Navy of those days had been a haven for men of that disposition. Tucurinca had been no exception, our ‘gay’ community being headed by a steward named Joe. A resident of Blackpool when ashore, Joe had been aged around forty at the time that I had known him/her, short in stature and quite round Joe had been, as many of the crew had remarked, ‘as bent as a nine bob note’, nonetheless, a finer person had never walked God’s good earth. Always jocular, Joe had brightened many of the darkest days of the voyage with his ‘sods opera’, an event that had been held often on a weekly basis in the crew mess room that had seen he and his fellow ‘queens’ dressed in their finery performing their variety of drag acts that who have even had Danny La Rou blushing. I remember on one occasion Joe had dragged me onto his improvised stage to have me strip him whilst he had danced around like a proper fairy. This had caused an absolute riot of laughter from the large assembly of the ship’s crew [including a number of junior officers] and despite everyone’s protestations I had refused to strip Joe down to nothing and had allowed one of the engine room staff to do the task whilst I had returned, very red cheeked, to the audience and oblivion. These shows would inevitably end with Joe announcing that he and his crew were available for summer seasons in any part of the world and if anyone was interested in discussing terms they should speak to him after the show in his cabin, preferably with the lights turned out.

Indeed a good shipmate, Joe had acted more or less as my mother throughout the voyage, and like mum had washed and ironed my clothing, and when I had been short of money he had always found enough for me to go ashore for a beer. Despite my tender years Joe had never taken advantage of me throughout our time together and I would been fortunate sail with him again on another voyage in Tucurinca, by that time he had been promoted to Second Steward and unfortunately had stopped performing his sods opera. God bless the old queen wherever he/she is.

In the good old U.S. of A.

We had arrived in the Port of Los Angeles one warm evening some days after leaving Golfito. Heralded from a tannoy in the gaily lit ‘Ports o’ Call Restaurant’ at San Pedro we had heard the first of many sub ‘Aloha Tucurinca’ echoing across the water. Accompanied by the large brightly painted harbour tug ‘Long Beach’ [which I had, coincidentally, built a plastic model of some years before] we had meandered through the large harbour filled with ships of all shapes and sizes until we had reached Wilmington, where Tucurinca had been tenderly pushed by the bow of Long Beach alongside the United Fruit Company’s Berth 147.

Once we had been secured alongside Tucurinca had been boarded by a very official looking uniformed officer belonging to the Public Health and Immigration Department of the American government, and each member of the ship’s crew had been issued with an identity card that we had been ordered to carry around at all times. The very next day whilst ashore in Wilmington I had walked across an apparently deserted street of the town, and no sooner had I reached the other curb that a black and white painted police car had driven up alongside of me. The armed officer had jumped out of the patrol car and had asked why I had crossed a street whilst a ‘Dont Walk’ sign had been showing, with little other explanation to hand other that I was a British seamen and had not noticed the sign, the officer had duly asked for my ID card.

Having left my I.D. Card aboard against all orders I had duly been arrested as an illegal immigrant and had been taken to the local police station, where I had remained in a cell until one of our ship’s officers had arrived to bail me out. After a severe telling off I had eventually been released from the police station and allowed to return to the ship accompanied by our officer who had also given me a good telling off. Charged with jay walking, this episode had eventually gone to court where in my absence I had been fined fifty American Dollars, the princely sum being deducted from my wages. Believe me I had never gone ashore without that damned card again.

We had remained in Wilmington for around three days, and during that time I had found a shop selling Wrangler jeans where I had bought my first pair of American denims and a jacket that had begun my life long affiliation to the jeans that at that time had been endorsed by Rodeo champion Jim Shoulders. Sadly the sixteen times world champion is no longer with us, but thankfully, the jeans that he had once helped design are.

During our stay at Wilmington Unite Fruit had unloaded half of Tucurinca’s cargo of bananas, the other half of her cargo had been destined for the port of Seattle. Located further to the north of America in Washington State, we had set sail for city one dusky evening, once again we had been hailed by the Ports O’ Call Restaurant and those of us that had been on deck had once again waved to the diners as they had tucked into their meals. Once again meandering through the great port for some unknown reason various vessel had sounded their sirens as we had passed them as if we were royalty, however, as we had neared a large U.S. Navy aircraft carrier one of our seamen had dashed aft to dip Tucurinca’s ‘Red Duster’ as a mark of respect.

Situated within a large body of water known as Puget Sound, we had arrived at Seattle two days after leaving Wilmington. Nowadays reportedly a city with one of the lowest rainfalls in America, back in the 1960’s it had always seemed to be raining whenever Tucurinca had arrived in the city’s harbour, and had therefore also never been considered as ‘a good run ashore’.

The ship had always been docked across the bay from Seattle within the confines of the Puget Sound Navy Yard and a journey to the city had always involved getting on a bus to journey the few miles into town. I well remember the time that I had been amongst a crowd of men from our ship that had boarded a bus and unaware of American law we had sat on the back seat in true British fashion where we had begun to light cigarettes. Almost instantly a voice had come over the buses tannoy system saying something like ‘If those guys on the back of the bus do not put their cigarettes out they will be forced to leave the bus’! Of course the remaining passengers had all turned their heads in horror to find who the culprits had been of this most heinous crime and almost inevitably one of our number had piped up with ‘what are you lot fucking looking at! Soon all of us had been ejected from the bus and we had begun to walk the couple of miles into Seattle, whilst the bus had pulled away from us with many of its passengers still staring out of the windows at the mad crowd of barbarians standing at the side of the highway smoking cigarettes.

Once we had reached town the elder members of our group had inevitably gone off in search of a bar whilst Dave and I had meandered through the sprawl of the city until we had reached Seattle’s ‘Space Needle’.

Towering some six hundred feet above the city the ‘Space Needle is a large futuristic looking tower that dominates the skyline of Seattle and had been completed in time for the World Fair of 1962. Dave and I had paid two dollars at the entrance to take the lift to the observatory some fie hundred and twenty feet above the city. Another of those grey wet days in Seattle, the view from the platform had, nonetheless, been spectacular and having gone no higher than Scarborough’s lighthouse in my life the experience had indeed been exhilarating. However, within a few minutes we had tired of the magnificent view of the city, the distant Cascade and Olympic Mountains ranges and the various islands dotted in Puget Sound and the pair of us had repaired to the Needles revolving restaurant where we had bought a Coke apiece.

Sat in the comfortable ‘Eye of the Needle’ Restaurant, Dave and I had eventually spotted two teenage girls apparently sitting on their own. Dave had suggested going over to talk to the two rather good-looking girls and within seconds we had been sat alongside the two. At the time the Beatles had still been rated as the best rock band in the world, and we had inevitably tried to cash in on this by saying we were from Liverpool and had known John, Paul, George, and Ringo very well. We had become instant stars ourselves and the two girls; Loraine and Iris had taken in every word we had said. However, very shortly the occasion had been spoilt with the arrival of the girls two boyfriends.

Introduced to the two as being from England and friends of the Beatles, the two men had, nonetheless looked upon us as interlopers, nevertheless Lorraine and Iris had been keen that we stayed with the group and Dave and I had eventually remained with the teenagers for the remainder of the afternoon, the six of us becoming quite good friends. During that time we had been dismayed to find that the two eighteen years old boys, whose names I have now forgotten, had recently been drafted into the American army, which at that time had been entwined in the hopeless war in Vietnam, and neither had been looking forward to the prospect of eventually being sent to ‘Nam’. I have often wondered throughout ensuing years whether those two lads had survived to return to Seattle and Iris and Lorraine.

As I have said before when in Seattle Tucurinca had been moored near to the Puget Sound Naval Base and sometimes when we had been alongside American sailors would come to our ship in search of alcohol. Unlike those of the British Royal Navy the U.S. Navy’s vessels are ‘dry’ no alcohol being allowed aboard, and having an English ship close by had obviously been a godsend to the beer-starved seamen. The majority of these gatherings had been good natured the two countries’s getting on like the proverbial house on fire. However, during one of these visits the merits of the Royal and American Navies had been called into question and a few of our ex Royal Naval personnel had been quite upset by the American seamen’s derogatory remarks. Soon a large fight had begun in Tucurinca’s crammed recreation room that had eventually had to be broken by a combined party of our ship’s officers and an American Naval shore patrol which had been called for by our captain, who had been quite liberal with the use of their nightsticks. After this fracas there had been no more visits by the U.S. Navy.

Once again Tucurinca had remained in Seattle for two days whilst the remainder of her cargo had been offloaded. Still raining and cold, no one had been sad when the ship had left her berth to head down Puget Sound towards the open sea and the warmth of tropical Central America.

Tucurinca had remained on the Golfito-Los Angeles-Seattle run for about three months and during that time I had lost my virginity in a room above Mamasita’s Bar. A hurried and rather sweaty affair that had seemed to last seconds, I had initially been charged five dollars for the privilege by a ‘dusky bar girl’ whose name I have now unfortunately forgotten. However, this girl upon learning that I was a ‘cherry boy’ had given me back my money along with a wonderful smile that I can still recall to this day.

Also during this period, apart from losing the psychopathic Paddy, Tucurinca had also lost her pantryman. The personification of the Glasgow drunk as portrayed by Rab C. Nesbit, ‘Scotch Jimmy’ had joined the ship in a drunken state and had left her in pretty much the same state after swallowing a bottle of whiskey along with a good number of aspirins. The type of drunken Scotsman that I seem to encounter all over the world, once Jimmy [not his real name] had spied me ashore he would invariably stagger up to me and slur the classic; ‘I know you Jimmy’ and proceeded to ask for a drink or a cigarette. ’Giz a cig’, or ‘get us a fucking beer Jimmy’ had been on his lips throughout the trip and most of the crew had learned to get out of his way when ashore, I however, had drawn him seemingly out of the woodwork everywhere we had gone.

However, one day I had encountered him staggering, seemingly in his usual drunken state, in one of the ship’s alleyways and instead of asking for a cigarette he had merely said; you can have my records and record player Jimmy, I’m fucking out of it’. A strange thing to say for an avid country and western fan whose whining disks had echoed throughout the ship since day one. Anyway I had thought little of his remark until sometime later when another member of our crew had found Jimmy in an unconscious condition in one of the ship’s heads [toilets]. Once again being unconscious had been second nature to Jimmy, however, on that occasion according to the seaman who had found him he hadn’t looked right, in fact he hadn’t been breathing.

The Chief Steward had eventually arrived and despite a vigorous attempt to revive jimmy, the pantry man had duly been pronounced dead his body eventually being sewn into a canvas bag by our bosun. Jimmy’s remains had subsequently been taken to the ship’s refrigerated ‘special cargo’ compartment located in the housing at the stern of the vessel where they had remained undisturbed until we had reached port where they had taken off the ship to be flown home. Jimmy’s favourite song had been Marty Robbins’s ‘El Paso’, and whenever I hear this mournful song I recall the drunken Scotsman and his sad demise.

And so the voyage had continued, and by the eve of Christmas we had been alongside our customary jetty at Wilmington. Fortunately for me I had been amongst a handful of Tucurinca’s crew that had been ‘adopted’ into the families of some local church folk and had found myself being set free, much to the chagrin of the bastard chef, from the monumental task of preparing Christmas dinner for the crew who had remained behind.

Mustered on the boat deck us selected few had been lectured by our First Officer something about us being on our best behaviour whilst ashore and told that each of us was an ambassador of Britain whilst in the company of those fine people who had kindly opened their homes for us during the festive season. Eventually allowed down the gangway we had been smiling like Cheshire cats as we had boarded the bus that had taken to a church in San Pedro where we had been collected by our respective ‘adopted families’.

My ‘family’, Barbara and Ed Hornbach, had been the epitome of kindness and had treated me like the King of England during the two days that I had been in their company. A former seaman in the U.S. Navy, Ed Hornbach had been aged around forty at the time and had been a veteran of service in the Korean War, however, by the time I had become acquainted with him he had been working on the docks near the family home in San Pedro, whilst his bespectacled wife, Barbara, had tended to the home in addition to her work with the church. The person that had most interested me however, had been their teenage daughter, Teri. Roughly around the same age as me Teri had not been what one would call the classic Californian blonde beauty, nevertheless, she had been a fine looking girl with long brunette hair and what some may call brown ‘come to bed’ eyes, However, although she had been friendly towards me I could see that she had only had eyes and thoughts for her twenty years old boyfriend who had been serving at the time with the U.S. Marine Corps in Vietnam.

During my stay with the Hornbach’s they had taken me to Long Beach where we had strolled along the seafront into a leisure park known as ‘the Pike’. A neon lit wonderland of amusement halls, roller coasters, and dodgem cars, I can still recall the smell of the various hot dog stands and stalls selling ‘cotton candy’ [candy floss] Very much resembling Scarborough’s seafront in summer I had suddenly been struck with a severe attack of homesickness and would have dearly loved at that moment to be at home for Christmas with my family instead of those strangers I had barely known. Despite this feeling I had allowed myself to be led onto the largest roller coaster I had ever seen and for the next five minutes or perhaps it could have been ten years I had been terrified almost to the point of wetting myself as the coaster had somersaulted and pirouetted up, down, and around the park.

The following day we had feasted on a Christmas dinner of roast turkey with all the trimmings during which I had been astounded to watch Ed sprinkle sugar on his mashed potatoes, a practice, he had said, that had begun during his service in the Navy. After dinner, for some unexplained reason, Teri had presented me with a beautifully inscribed brass U.S. Marine Corps belt buckle belonging to her boyfriend, whilst Ed and Barbara had given me a framed photograph of the family. I still have the belt buckle but unfortunately the photograph of the smiling trio has not survived the passage of time.

All too soon it had been time to return to Tucurinca, where we had shown our respective families around the ship before they had been treated to dinner in the officers saloon. Soon after this we had said our goodbyes and I had returned to work to clear the huge backlog of pans and cooking utensils that my friend the cook had left unwashed since Christmas. Unfortunately I had never met the Hornbach family again for after our customary discharging of cargo in Seattle Tucurinca had received orders to once more pass through the Panama Canal to pick up a cargo on the Atlantic side at a place known as Puerto Cortes.

[I had remained in contact with Teri Hornbach on and off as a ‘pen pal’ for about a year after I had spent Christmas with her family. Her final letter had told me that her boyfriend had been killed in action in Vietnam, I had heard no more from her].

Speaking of correspondence, about this time one of the ship’s officers had arrived at my cabin door one day. Armed with a pen and paper, he had told me that my worried parents had written to the company office asking the whereabouts of their son, as I had never made contact since I had left our front door some five months previously. I must admit I had never been much of a letter writer and in those days, long before the mobile phone and satellite communication, I had had little inclination to put pen to paper. However, this, according to the officer had been totally irresponsible on my part and he had sat with me until I had written a lengthy letter to my despairing parents. From then on I had tried, good times permitting, to write at least once a week.

Around this time I had received a letter from a girl named Jean. A Scarborough lass Jean had been the daughter of a woman that had worked with my mother who at the time had been working as a Nanny in a now forgotten corner of America. Jean’s mother and mine must have got it into their heads that she would make a fine pen pal for me and the girl had subsequently been told the ship’s address. Presently I had received the letter from Jean together with one of those small terribly bad photographs that are produced in a booth found in most shopping precincts. Somehow, someone had got hold of this photograph and unknown to me had pinned it to the notice board in the crew messroom together with Carol’s address. Eventually I had received a letter from the very upset girl telling of the large number of seamen from the ship that had written ‘disgusting proposals of a sexual nature’ to her. Not surprisingly I had heard no more from my ‘pen pal’.

Having received orders to proceed to the east coast of the states numerous rumours had begun to circulate around the ship. Some had intimated that we would soon be returning home, whilst other had reported that we were about to pick up a cargo of ice cream destined for the U.S. forces in Vietnam. The latter had caused a number of our crew to say that if the ship were to sail for Vietnam it would be without them, The news of ‘the Vietnam trip’ had eventually reached the captain and her had personally arrived in the accommodation one night to tell everyone that we were not going to Vietnam, neither were we going home--just yet.

Having transited the Panama Canal heading eastwards we had set course for Puerto Cortes. Described as now being ‘cleaned up’ and the principal seaport of Central America, back in the sixties Puerto Cortes had been the wildest banana port that I would visit during my time in the Merchant Navy. Resembling one of those threadbare towns in western movies where a drunken brawl always seems to be taking place, Cortes had indeed been rough and not a place to walk the streets alone on a dark night as I was about to find out.

Situated on the northern coast of Honduras, we had arrived alongside the jetty at Cortes one sultry hot afternoon, across the way had been one of the town’s many brothels and a number of the girls belonging to the place had been standing tantalisingly naked at the joint’s windows flashing various parts of their anatomy. Ribald remarks like ‘You want fucky –fucky’, and ‘short time five dollars’ had drifted towards the ship and a few of the crew had been seen to be frothing at the mouth at the sight of these girls. However, shortly after we had tied up word had reached us that there would be no subs whilst there.

Never a chap to be put off by the prospect of no money over the years the British seaman has acquired numerous ways of gathering the stuff and in those days it had generally meant selling something. That evening the mess room had been a hive of activity, the place resembling a local rummage sale as men had sold watches, lighters and loads of other stuff for the price of a few drinks and perhaps a ‘bag off’ ashore. Fortunately I had still had a few dollars left out of a sub I had had in Wilmington, and sure enough, as soon as I had finished work, showered and changed I had clattered down our metal gangway and headed for the bright lights of Cortes.

Like I have already said, at the time that I had visited Cortes during the 1960’s, the town had been a seemingly wide open town where everything had gone with no holds barred, and within minutes of leaving the ship I had been walking in a labyrinth of bawdily lit dens of iniquity where I had eventually found some of my shipmates sat around a table in a bar drinking beer whilst watching two drunken bar girls fighting tooth and nail over something or other no one had ever found out.

Crossing to the bar’s large juke box I had found that the huge coloured monster had carried many of the Beatles songs and after placing a coin in the machine before too long I had joined the two girls on the dance floor to jig to their classic Roll over Beethoven’ and ‘Twist and Shout’. As soon as the music had started, as if a magic penny had been dropped somewhere, the two girls had stopped fighting and as if they had never been locked in combat had begun to dance with me to the boisterous tones of the fab four. Those were indeed the days my friend.

Back at the table our group had eventually been joined by a very drunk and very large Norwegian seaman who had wanted to punch my lights out for stealing his girlfriend [who had turned out to be one of the pair of fighters] feeling that my end was in sight I had turned ashen and had stammered that I had done nothing to his girlfriend apart from dance with her. ‘Are you calling me a fucking liar? The large Norwegian had said as he had lunged at me with the intention of hitting me with one of his huge fists. Fortunately my chum big Alf had been sat nearby who had saved my bacon by punching the big guy with a perfect right hook that had taken the wind right out of the Norwegian and had put him on floor. Alf had presently said; ‘The kid’s already told you that he has had nothing to do with your bird chaw, we know that you know that, now fuck off before I get really mad’. The Norwegian had then merely shook his head and had presently rejoined his shipmates, who, although they had looked like they were about to start something, had thought better of it and had chosen to glower at us for the rest of the night. ‘Make sure that you don’t go to the bog on your own chaw’ had been Alf’s final words on the subject.

At some point in the night’s proceedings my fellow shipmates had begun to drink local white rum known as ‘Barrilito’. Vicious firewater, Barrilito had been the locality’s ‘Poor Mans Rum’ and had soon had everyone speaking a load of gibberish. Inevitably a few drops of this firewater had passed my lips, and like the rest of Tucurinca’s men I had soon lost control of my mouth, and in addition, had also developed a weakness in my legs. By this time we had been joined by number of the crewmen from the Norwegian cargo ship that had also been in Cortes at the time, and before long the two nations had been locked in the same world of drunkenness and debauchery.

Amongst the Norwegian ship’s crew had been its teenage galleyboy, who like me had also been a ‘first tripper’. Somehow this young fellow had heard of a brothel in the town that had awarded free sex sessions to virgin or ‘cherry boy’ seafarers. Of course my ears had pricked up with the telling of the boy’s story, and before long the pair of us had staggered off into the night to find this sexual paradise. We had eventually found ourselves outside a wooden built bar at the end of the beach known as ‘Mamasitas Place’. Indeed the red lit place had been frequented some fine nubile women, but each had burst into peals of raucous laughter at our request for free sex in return for our virginities.

The remainder of that night is still a mystery to me, and despite over fifty years of trying to recall the events of my first night in Cortes the night remains shrouded in darkness. Nevertheless, at some point in the following morning I had awoken on the beach to find I had not been wearing a stitch of clothing, my recently acquired pair of Wranglers jeans and everything else I had been wearing the previous evening had vanished!

Also covered in a multitude of mosquito bites I had eventually gathered myself together to stagger back along the beach to the ship as naked as the day I had been born. That morning the deck crew, to my intense embarrassment, had been painting the side of Tucurinca and once within the sailors sight I had been bombarded with a barrage of wolf whistles and shouted bawdy remarks that had sent me running up the ship’s gangway like the proverbial scalded cat. However, once aboard I had been met at the top of the gangway by the Chief Steward, and judging by his terrific scowl I had not been in his good books. Told to report as soon as I was dressed, at his office, I had received an all mighty telling off and had been told that I would not be allowed a sub from my wages for a fortnight. Back in the Galley the cook had been even more furious as my being missing for ‘turn to’ at 6am had meant that he had had to peel the day’s potatoes and vegetables as well as seeing to the officers and crew breakfasts.

The Captain had eventually also learnt of my ‘embarrassment’ and I had also been called to his cabin to explain my behaviour of the previous night. With me being under the age of eighteen I had in effect been officially under the ‘old man’s’ care, and the mere fact that I had been drunk the previous night had not gone down too well and after another severe ‘dressing down’ and warning that I had been very lucky not to have had my bits and pieces cut off during the night of oblivion, I had been docked two days pay for my episode ashore. Fortunately we had sailed from Cortes that evening and as the lights of the wildest port I would ever see in my time dipped over the horizon I begun to look forward, albeit with a jaundiced eye, to our next port of call.

Of all the ports of the United States that I had visited during my time in the Merchant Navy, New Orleans had been my favourite ‘run ashore’. Tucurinca had entered the majestic deep brown Mississippi River two days after leaving Cortes passing numerous riverside settlements along the way, I remember lots of children rushing to the riverbank to wave at myself and my great white ship as we steamed upstream to the city that has remained cocooned in a corner in my memory ever since those wonderful days of 1964. We had eventually tied up to a pier near a huge bridge that I now know had been named the ‘Greater New Orleans Bridge’, which in those days my sixteen years old brain had only thought of as a bloody big bridge, and after a few formalities with customs and immigration had been issued with passes to land in the fair city.

Sadly I had missed most of our first day in New Orleans due to work but as soon as I had washed up the last pan and swabbed the kitchen’s deck I had turned out the lights to get a quick wash and a change of clothing before heading shore side inevitably in search of the customary delights associated with the seafarer.

After leaving the ship I had eventually waked into town and the neon lit Canal Street, where I had found the customary collection of rough bars that attract seafarers from miles around and become their home until their ship sails towards another seaport and next bar. Fortunately, the laws of the State of Louisiana had allowed eighteen year olds to drink alcohol, and although I was still only aged sixteen years I had found little trouble in obtaining a beer in the first smoke filled bar that I had entered, and had soon been sat at the bar trying to ‘chat up’ the barmaid, who although delighted by my British accent had heard the same words coming from the mouths of a thousand sailors and had soon found myself talking to myself.

A group of seamen from Tucurinca had eventually turned up, and despite they already being the worst for wear I had accompanied the drunken sailors to the mesmerising district known as the French Quarter, where music of all kinds had oozed from the entrance of nearly every joint in the always-crowded streets. Our motley crew had finally elected to go into a dusty bar where I had heard for the first time a type of music, called ‘the blues, that would haunt me for the rest of my life.

For the life of me I cannot remember the names of the seemingly ancient bunch of black musicians that had been belting out the fiery notes of songs the likes of which I had never heard before in life but boy could those old fellas play. An admirer of drums and drummers since an early age, the old boy playing an old and very battered set of Slingerland drums had caught my breath with his magnificent playing from the start of the band’s first song and had held the music in the palm of his hand, the pianist, guitarist, bass and Harmonica players bending their notes to their stickman’s every turn. I had expected my fellow seamen to call the band of old boy’s rubbish, but like me they had been mesmerised by their playing, so much so that at the end of their first set we had bought the musicians a drink, a not too customary practice I might add amongst generally skint British seamen. Anyway, we had sat with the old boys throughout the remainder of that night and by the early hours of the next day we had become favourites of the house, our musician friends referring to us over their scratchy microphones as ‘our limey chums in the corner’. Throughout our stay in ‘Norlins’ we had frequented that corner of their bar, whose name I have also lost with time.

Looking back at my youth I must have been very naïve because at some point during our three-day stay in New Orleans for some unknown reason I had been invited to the home of ‘Bobbie’, one of the barmaids of the above ‘blues club’. Not knowing where I was being taken I had sat rather excitedly in the back of a taxi with this pretty girl, whose name I recall had been unfortunately been long lost in time, until we had reached her home in the suburbs of a darkened New Orleans that for all I knew could have been on the dark side of the moon. Once inside she had wasted little time in getting undressed, and before long this comely girl had be motioning me to join her in her bed. Obviously flustered by this rather ‘fast girl’, I had dithered with my clothing until I had finally been stripped down to nothing. Standing before her she had told me we could not go any further until I had fitted a condom. With little practice in these matters I had said that I did not have one and in less than ten minutes of entering her house the girl had shown me the door with little more than a wane smile and a warning to be always come prepared in the future.

As I have already said I had had no idea whereabouts in New Orleans I had been situated and with Tucurinca under orders to sail in a few hours time I had begun to walk back to the ship. Fearing having my throat cut at any moment in this strange city you can well imagine my feelings of terror as I stumbled through the darkened streets knowing not where I was heading. Dark shapes of people would scurry by but no one had offered me a word when I had asked the way to downtown New Orleans. I had eventually been rescued by a couple of the city’s finest that had been patrolling in their black and white Police car. After a cursory glance at my I.D. card the two cops had asked ‘why the fuck I had been walking the streets in such a bad neighbourhood at such a time in the day’? I had given the two cops my story of being whisked away from the Canal Street bar by the ‘hot’ girl from behind the bar and of my lack of success due to not having a condom which had brought peels of laughter from the two friendly policemen who had muttered something like ‘you must be shitting us kid’. But I had told them it had been the absolute truth and the three of us had laughed about my encounter all the way to the pier where Tucurinca had been tied. The two cops and I had said our goodbyes at the foot of my ship’s gangway and as I rattled up her gangway the two policemen had left me with a parting shot that had sounded something like ‘better luck next time kid’, but soon I had been back inside the warmth of the superstructure of my adopted home.

It had seemed no longer than a minute after I had laid my head on my pillow inside my bunk before I had been awoken to start work in the Galley. However, by this time Tucurinca had slipped her moorings and had been steaming her way back down the Mississippi heading towards our next port of call, which had once again been Puerto Cortes.

During the days and nights we had spent at sea the crew of Tucurinca had amused ourselves in a number of ways. With the price of duty free beer running at five shillings [25p] for a case of twenty four tins the drinking of alcohol had been the top of our off duty pastimes. Still under the age of eighteen I had still officially been under the age for legal drinking but this was generally sidestepped by myself and the remainder of the lads below deck by me swapping a tin of Coca-Cola for one containing the ship’s ‘Badger Beer’ a lightweight brew which had inevitably been re-christened ‘Badger Piss’ by the lads.

There had generally been a party every night someplace within the crew accommodation or out on the poop deck at the stern of the ship in the balmy evenings of the tropics. Someone playing a musical instrument of some kind had usually accompanied these parties. One of our men, an Able Seaman, nicknamed ‘Popeye’ had played the harmonica, whilst his chum, ‘Stan the man’ had played spoons, however, the couple’s only repertoire seemed to be hymns like ‘Rock of Ages’ and ‘Will your anchor hold in the stormy seas of life’, but after a few beers no one had cared what they had played.

Another activity that had sometimes taken place aboard the ship had been the ‘Sods Operas which had been put on by the ship’s ‘gay’ community. Dressed in all their finery seamen, who by day had worked as ‘hairy arsed’ deckhands, stewards, and firemen, had by night turned into what we may call today ‘Drag Queen’s in the ilk of Lily Savage that in the 1960’s had still caused consternation ashore but had been a common sight in the Merchant Navy of those long gone days. Inevitably a lot of the ‘Queer’s’ saucy banter, much to the amusement of the rest of the crew, had been pointed in my embarrassed direction, and many is the night that I had dashed red- faced back to my cabin to lock the door in fear of being pounced on by one of those men/women. With no women around it must be said that on many occasions I had witnessed some very lewd sexual acts during these ‘Sods Operas’ but throughout my time at sea I had never seen anyone being taken advantage of without their consent.

During the warm periods at sea it had no been uncommon for us to lie naked on the after deck soaking up the sun’s rays. Known to us as ‘bronzying’, the dangers of sunbathing had not been known during the 1960’s and it had been considered as healthy to acquire a suntan, especially all over. During one of these sessions I had fallen asleep and had awoken to find my entire front including my ‘privates’ having turned the colour of a red cooked lobster. In fact I had burnt my self so much between my legs that for a number of days afterwards I had had to wear only a towel because it had been too painful to wear trousers. You can well imagine the stir this had caused amongst our gay community, and I can assure you that I had never again ‘burnt my bollocks’ as you might say.

Soon Cortes had once again hove into sight. However unlike the last time we had been there we had anchored offshore as our berth had been occupied by an American United Fruit Company vessel. Whilst at anchor, during the following day there had been a special lifeboat drill where almost everyone aboard the ship had been loaded in the ship’s boats and lowered over the side in order to test, I suppose, their seaworthiness. Despite the cook’s protests I had also been amongst the men that had gone into the lifeboats, which I might add had not been powered through the water by an engine or the customary oars but by a series of levers that were pushed forwards and backwards, had spent an enjoyable hour or two cruising round the crystal blue waters of Cortes bay whilst the chef had grudgingly prepared tea by himself.

That night after work I had joined the customary gang of seamen and firemen that had congregated on the stern of the ship to quaff a couple of tins of beer. For a time there had been talk from one or two of the lads of swimming the mile or so to the inviting twinkling lights of Cortes, but someone had mentioned they had seen a shark earlier in the day that had soon put paid to any such notion leaving us to ponder the delights that could have been ours had we been ashore.

The following evening we had once more gone alongside the paint spattered and oil stained United Fruit Company wharf where work had soon begun in filling the ship once more with her cargo of bananas. No sooner had our gangway touched concrete than the first of our crew had made his way into town. Of course I had once again been working clearing up after dinner but as soon as I had swilled down the Galley deck and at last turned out the light I too had showered and changed into my best denims and clean shirt and headed ‘up the road’.

With the fiasco of the last time I had been in Cortes still ringing in my ears I had approached the first bar in town with caution. Fully expecting to find the place filled with cavorting sailors and ‘girls of the night’ I had flung open the joint’s bat-winged doors much like John Wayne to find…nothing. Except for a few older and long past their sell by date ‘girls’ trying to ply their wares amongst a few of our lads the bar had been empty. ‘Where is everybody’? I had asked the sad eyed guy behind the bar, ‘gone to the calaboose’ he had replied as he had handed me a bottle of the local ale. Crossing the dusty floor to the our bunch of seamen I had asked them what had been going on, and they had told me that one minute everything had been going on as normal the gun totting police had arrived to cart all the girls away, seemingly because they had not attended the local V.D. Clinic recently. ‘Serves the fuckers right’, one of our lads had chipped in; ‘I caught a dose here last fucking trip’!

A few of us had spent the remainder of that night searching for a place with some form of life going on but the police roundup had been thorough and few acceptable girls had remained in the otherwise flyblown town. Dave and I had eventually found or way to Marmasita’s Place where instead of finding the fine collection of nubile girls frequenting the place as on the previous trip we had only found a toothless old dear who had promised us both a ‘short time fucki-fuck for two dollars each. Looking at each other in dismay we had both said ‘fuck it’ lets go back to the ship.

We had never seen Cortes in full flight again for by the time the girls had been returned to the town there had been no shore leave as we had been preparing to leave the port. It had sometimes been said that those girls of the night had known more about our ship’s movements than we had and on that occasion I believe this had been true fro as we pulled away from the jetty a good number of girls had come from the bars to wave us off, an unusual occurrence one might say, as if they already knew that we would not be returning if this had indeed been the case they were right.

I had now been in the Tucurinca for about seven months and during that time I not experienced any real bad weather. However, shortly after leaving Cortes word had come from the bridge to literally batten down the hatches because we were about to sail into the ‘tail end’ of a hurricane. The storm had hit us during the night. One moment I had been sleeping in the top bunk of the steward’s three-berth cabin, the next I had seemed to be riding a roller coaster at a fair with my ship not only pitching up and down but also had simultaneously rolling from side to side. Getting out of my bunk I had found it hard to stand, as my world seemed to fall away from me with every crash of yet another huge wave that had engulfed the cabin porthole. Finding myself alone in the cabin I had clawed my way along the working alleyway to the crew mess room which I had eventually found full of card playing and fag smoking fellow non sleepers.

Although terrified by the violent motion of the ship I had nonetheless put a brave face on and tried to act as if bad weather had been an everyday occurrence in my life. But someone nearby must have noticed my look of horror every time the ship had rolled to port and starboard and tilted back wards as she climbed yet another large wave. ‘Don’t worry kid’ the seaman had laughingly said, if she rolls over you wont know a fucking thing, the lights’l got out and it’ll be goodnight Vienna’. Obviously not encouraged by this statement I had gone to make myself a coffee in the pantry, Situated alongside the galley I had stood in the small compartment and listened with a smile on my face to the sounds of the pots and pans rolling around in my place of work. With the door locked I could only imagine what had been happening in there and secretly hoped that the place had been so wrecked that we would not be able to work in the not too far away morning.

Going back to the cabin I had laid on my bunk and tried to read a book that I had acquired from one of the crew. Unfortunately it had been Nicholas Monseratt’s ‘The Cruel Sea’, which had also gone some way in terrifying me even more. Nevertheless, I must have eventually fallen asleep and had next been awoken by the cook, who had told me there had been work to do. Dressed and washed in a fashion I had arrived at the galley to find absolute mayhem. The pots and pans and roasting trays I had heard rolling about in the night had still been rolling from one side of the galley to the other. No so the three or four dozen eggs that had smashed onto the deck to mingle with a half bag of flour that had tipped over, the two ingredients laying on the sodden deck like a massive omelette waiting to be cooked. ‘Fuck me’ the cook had said, looking round his shattered kingdom like a dog that had got its head fast in a door. Turning to me he had merely said ‘get this shit tidied up while I get a pan of burgoo [porridge] on the go’. ‘Fuck it’ the cook had said, ‘if anyone thinks I’m going to get scalded in this little lot they have another think coming’! Soon the Chief Steward had arrived to ask why the normal breakfast had not been got ready. ‘What’s the score George’? he had asked the chef. ‘Chief, if you or anyone else thinks they can do a better job in this bad weather they are welcome to try, but as far as I am concerned the galley is closed until further notice’! and with that he had disappeared back to his cabin.

The red-faced and obviously furious Chief Steward had looked at me in wonder. ‘Did I hear that correctly’, I nodded and stood waiting for the chief to explode, but he didn’t and the pair of us for some reason just seemed to begin to tidy the galley up. ‘I think we’ll make some sarnies Gall’, and together the Chief and I had made a mountain of corned beef and cheese and onion sandwiches that we had left in the crew mess room and officers saloon. ‘Call it a day’ the Chief had said to me ‘you have done well in the circumstances’. Grabbing a couple of sarnies I had made my way to the cabin where although I had not done a days work that day, I had fallen fast asleep.

My world had still been pitching and rolling when I had awoken later in the afternoon. Once more making my way to the crew mess room I had once again found the off duty seamen and firemen smoking and playing cards. One or two had grumbled in my direction about the lack of a decent meal that day but on the whole no one had said much. Finding myself with very little to do and although given strict instructions not to go on deck I had nonetheless, decided to take a look outside. Obviously a suicide mission to step out onto the wave swept after deck of Tucurinca, during my time in the ship I had wandered her from stem to stern and had even found my way into the vessel’s tall funnel.

A labyrinth of pipes, ladders and iron walkways climbing up the inside of the funnel had usually been a delight in some of my off duty time but with the ship rolling and tossing so violently it had not been such a picnic climbing the twenty or thirty foot structure. Anyway, I had eventually reached the top and the hatch that had opened to the elements. Undoing the dog I had lifted the said hatch but a fraction before it had been whipped out of my hand as if by a giant to clang back onto the funnel casing with a sound that had seemed to ring throughout the length of the ship. Despite this the view had been fantastic, with my eyes barely above the coping of the funnel hatch I had been surrounded by a sky as black as a witch’s caldron that had contrasted outrageously with a windswept sea as white as driven snow. The wind howled through the ships rigging like a wounded banshee and for a moment I had imagined myself to be in a place I had considered much akin to hell. Soaked to the skin in seconds I had been forced to make my way back below.

The hatch had defied all my efforts to be closed and had left it open to the elements. Climbing back down the funnel I had been met by the Third Officer who had been sent to investigate the loud bang coming from the funnel. ‘What the fuck are you doing’ the grim faced officer had asked me. Deciding to act even dumber than I had been I had sheepishly replied ‘I’ve been taking a look outside sir’. You silly lad, do you know what sort of danger you have been in going up there’. ‘No sir’ I had replied. The officer had looked at me as if I were a complete fool, and had been on the verge of telling me off, but had chose not to say anything other than I would be in for the high jump I were ever caught up there again. He had dismissed me then and I had scrambled back down the ladder into the accommodation never to go up the funnel again. The storm had lasted for a couple of days, on the third day I had been awoken early by the cook who had told me in no uncertain terms that we were going back to work.

We had by this time been at sea for around seven months. During that time the mood of the crew had gradually become more irritable. Little matters had become big issues and instead of a lot of laughter drifting around the accommodation there had more often that not been the sound of raised voices. I had been no different to anyone else. It had been the custom of Dave, my best friend aboard ship, to punch me in the arm when we met in the working alleyway and say something like ‘how’s it going kiddo’? However, on this particular day he had as usual punched me in the arm and before he could say ‘how’s it going’ I had punched him in the mouth. ‘What the fuck did you do that for’ he had said, I had replied that I was sick and tired of being punched in the arm by his and as far as I had been concerned he could go and take a flying kick at himself. He had looked crestfallen but I had simply walked off to carry on with my work and despite him being my chum throughout the voyage and had shared some good times we had never spoke to each other for a very long time.


The homeward bounders

And so Tucurinca had continued on her way. Our next port of call had been New York. A city I had seen only in pictures, New York had been the largest port I had seen during that voyage and boy had it looked massive compared to my tiny hometown of Scarborough. Steaming past the impressive statue of Liberty we had entered the mouth of the busy Hudson River to see the Queen Elizabeth tied up to her customary Pier 59 in Lower Manhattan, whilst nearby had lain the equally majestic Furness Withy Luxury Liner ‘Queen of Bermuda’. I had imagined we would be berthed near these two beautiful ships, alas we had eventually tied up to a rather scruffy looking wharf across the river at a place with the unglamorous name of Weehawken, New Jersey.

I don’t remember much about my time at Weehawken. I do remember having bought a rather expensive blue shirt with white polka dots in a store in the town but that is all. I journeyed over the water into New York City one day though. I had gone by bus under the Hudson via the Lincoln Tunnel and had eventually arrived in, if I remember rightly the Port Authority Bus Terminal located in 42ND Street. From there I had meandered amongst the huge skyscrapers until I had somehow arrived at the Empire State Building. During the 1960’s the Empire State standing at 1,454 feet from ground to the top of its spire, had been the tallest building in the world.

Sensing an opportunity not to be missed I had duly paid a couple of dollars in the buildings enormous foyer and soon joined a large number of sightseers to be whisked up to the observatory on the eighty six floor. What a sight to behold, the whole of New York City had lain far below. By this time night had been fast approaching and the city had seemed to be light up like a Christmas tree. ‘Gee isn’t it so wonderful’ an obviously American female voice had whined to her husband; ‘Quick jerry take a photo before the light goes’. Jerry had duly taken a photo of his excited wife and for some reason the pair had then asked me to take a picture of the two together with the New York skyline in the back ground. I had duly taken the photo as asked despite an obvious lack of light and the couple had thanked me by asking if I wanted my picture taking in my haste and possibly shyness I had told them it had been O.K. but I would prefer not to be photographed, looking back a pity for I have no photographs taken during my time at sea. I had eventually quit the observation platform to take the elevator to the top-viewing platform on the 102nd floor. Unlike the lower viewing area this had been smaller and enclosed by glass and had had none of the impact of the lower view of N.Y.

Returning to the now dark crowed street I had had no idea of the way back to the bus, however remembering my parents advice of when lost ask a policeman I had eventually found a rather large member of the New York Police Department standing on a street corner and had asked him to direct me to the Port Authority Bus Depot. This kind cop had not only told me the way he had even escorted me to the bus terminal. The pair of us had walked quite a way through the bustling streets of that very large city whilst talking of where I came from and what I thought of the Beatles and Rolling Stones, which he had considered as not as good as Sinatra and Dean Martin who I had obviously thought little of at that stage of my life. At one point the friendly policeman had asked what I thought of New York. Saying I knew very little of the city, he had replied that he wished he could say the same as I and had gone on to tell of the number of murders there would be that day and night in the city and the amount of corruption that had gone on beneath the flimsy veneer of the seemingly opulent city. He had also told me that it had been no place to be after dark. Thanking the cop for his advice we had eventually arrived at the Port Authority Bus Terminal where the kindly policeman had taken me to one of the ticket booths where he had said in what I now know as a classic New York accent, ‘give the kid a ticket to Joysey’ and with that we had parted I to return to my ship the cop to return to the mean streets of New York.

With our cargo safely delivered Tucurinca had headed down the Hudson towards the open sea. Passing the by then vacant Cunard Berth, I had also watched as the Staten Island Ferry had crossed the large River in our wake a few of her passengers waving to me and the couple of other crewmen who had gathered on the poop deck to watch the city go by. The statue of Liberty had been my final sighting of New York as soon after I had been called to return to my work in the galley. Once at sea the ship had received her orders and soon the bush telegraph had relayed them the crew mess room, we were once again heading southwards to the Caribbean coast of Nicaragua and the deadliest destination of my journey thus far.

Described as a ‘city’ by Wikipedia Puerto Barrios is situated in the Gulf of Honduras and encased in a large bay known locally as ‘Bahia de Amitique, Puerto. During the time that I had visited the ‘city’ in the 1960’s Barrios had been the principal port of Guatemala. However, an earthquake in 1976 [the worst in Guatemalan history] had destroyed most of the port facilities that I had known and had seen the construction of a larger and more efficient port some miles away. Much of that information has been gleaned from the good old Internet and had not been known by me until I had looked for background information regarding the port. The Internet also carries the comments of a number of modern day tourists who have visited the town since I had sailed into it almost fifty years previous. Although many years have past under the proverbial bridge of time their comments bring the place back to life for me. One visitor speaks of ‘a dodgy town’ whilst another says it is ‘the home of seedy bars, strip joints, pool halls, and other dens of iniquity, and is not a safe place to walk around at night’... Nothing has changed then!

Almost as soon as the Tucurinca’s gangway had been lowered onto Barrios’s oil stained quay the town’s chief of police had boarded the ship and soon afterwards the majority of the crew had been assembled on deck to be given a ‘pep talk’ by the policeman who had told us that a couple of Danish semen had recently been murdered in the blackened streets and had also warned that the town was definitely not safe to walk around alone at night in at night and if we were planning on going ashore we must go and return to the ship as a group no-one had to be left behind. We had all looked at each other and I could se the same thought run through every body’s mind ‘what sort of fucking place was this, who gives a toss, lets go anyway’. We were soon to find out.

Of course the skipper had not offered ‘a sub’ of our wages for obvious reasons, but like every other time when money had been short we had taken ashore things like Ronson lighters, watches and anything else of value that we could sell in the first shore-side bar. Obviously being under the age of eighteen the Captain had held the right to not allow me even to go ashore, but by nine that first night the galley had been scrubbed and I had showered and changed into my best Wranglers and clean shirt to join a group of fellow seamen to savour the delights of this reportedly untamed town.

Barely had we left the ship when a black guy had stepped out of the shadows that had asked if any of us wanted drugs or a woman. H had apparently known many fine ‘ladies’ who were prepared to do anything we wanted from as little as five U.S. Dollars. One of our lads had asked what they would do for nothing. We had laughed but the chap obviously sensing we had had little money about us had merely smiled and shrugged his shoulders before drifting back into the shadows.

Like most sailors ashore we had gone into the first bar we had arrived at. Built of slatted wood the ‘bar’, little more than a shanty, had been typical of the many bars that had dotted all of the ports we had visited in Central America. With loud Latin American music blaring from a battered old juke box thumping through the joint we had gone to the seemingly makeshift bar where we had held a seamen’s ‘tarpaulin muster’ and between us my friends and I had just raked up enough money for a beer apiece. A couple of girls had been hanging round in the bar and of course they had eventually come over to our table to flaunt their wares, but a shouted words by the barman had obviously warned the girls that we had had little money and with a shrug of their shoulders had soon returned to their wandering of that dingy place.

With funds ‘tight to say the least we had then held another ‘tarpaulin muster’ for items that we perhaps could sell over the bar that had resulted in six Ronson lighters along with a similar number of cheap watches plus a couple of rings piled on the table. Our spokesman, a rather large Liverpool fireman named ‘Scouse Freddy’, had duly returned to the bar and we had sat sipping at our drinks whilst Freddy had bartered with the barman. With ears bent in the direction of Fred’s back, and despite the loud music all I could hear had been Fred’s broad souse accent saying ‘you must be fucking joking mate’ Anyway this conversation had gone on for some time and Fred had eventually arrived back at the table to tell us the robbing bastard was only prepared to give us thirty U.S. Dollars for the lot. Despite our protests and much cursing we had eventually elected to take this offer and Fred had returned to the bar to get the money. The next thing we knew Fred had picked the barman up by his throat to snarl ‘you said forty now fuck off with this thirty shit and give us our money’. The by then shivering barman had duly paid over the forty instead of the agreed thirty dollars, Fred saying something like ‘in for a penny in for a fucking pound’ as we made our way further into this seemingly seething den of iniquity.

We had eventually arrived at a bar that had seemed to my young eyes to be the scruffiest of the few places of pleasure we had passed on our journey from the ship. With the customary bat wing doors similar to those you see in all the western films that have ever been made we barged into the music filled bar like a bunch of desperadoes and as if in one of those same old movies the place had gone deathly quiet. Instantly sensing we had made a mistake by going in that joint I had been on the verge of running all the way back to the ship, but my chums obviously made of much sterner stuff, had said ‘fuck it’ and had insisted that we stay. The music had eventually been turned back on and the locals had gone back to their beers and conversation to occasionally glance over in our direction with obvious distrust.

Despite a few beers the atmosphere in the place had felt no better as the night had progressed. The locals had become more vocal and one could sense the malice in the bar’s putrid air. A couple of us younger seamen had tried to have a dance with a couple of bargirls but they had been having none of it and unlike most Central American women they had ignored us as good as if we hadn’t been there. Sure enough the real trouble had started almost with a whisper with the guy from the first bar bursting into the bar wielding a very large machete. Heading straight for our table the guy had obviously meant business and had intended to do someone some serious harm. Everyone in the bar had made a move to get out of the way of this madman, but, as quick as a flash ‘Scouse Freddy’ had been on his feet and as fast as lightening and despite the guy’s lethal looking machete had ‘stuck the nut’ [head butted] on the local, felling him with a single blow. With this the remainder of the bar had joined the fray and just like the old westerns, a good old bar brawl had ensued. I wish I could tell of the valiant deeds I had performed during the battle, but alas, I had listened to the battle whilst hidden in the bars smelly toilet, where I had remained until the police had arrived.

Of course the blame for the battle had been place squarely in our hands resulting in the group of us being carted off to the local jail where we had remained for rest of the night crammed into one tiny cell. The next morning our skipper had arrived to take us back to the ship. Listening to our pleas of innocence our good captain had returned to the police station front were had given the local Bobbies a good bollocking, much to our surprise, in fluent Spanish.

Returned to the ship life had gone on as before. I had arrived to find the cook at the top of the gangway. ‘Skiving again’ had been his opening words and had gone on to give me a right telling off about being on time for work and all that rubbish. By this time I had been used to the Chef’s tirades and his words had drifted down my back like so much water. I had felt like telling the ‘Scouse git’ chef to go fuck himself but had opted to keep my mouth shut in the belief my time would eventually come. Returning to the galley I had found all the mornings grubby pots and pans piled into the sink and had spent the next couple of hours clearing up the mess, much to the twisted bastards obvious delight.

During our two day stay in Barrios no one had even again ventured into the town and at the end of day the majority of the crew had congregated as usual Tucurinca’s after deck, where a couple of our guitar playing brethren had entertained us. A keen drummer myself, I had joined in by bashing on a few pans that I had brought from the galley, our impromptu concert attracting a few of the ships’ officers enough to join us they brining there own supply of beer, which they had kindly shared with the rest of us.

Whilst in the port we had embarked a couple of passengers. Reportedly employees of the United Fruit Company, one of our ‘bloods’ who to my young eyes had been a middle aged and rather pretty woman who had arrived aboard wearing a rather jaunty nautical out consisting of a navy blue brass buttoned jacket and white trousers topped by a nifty white officers peaked cap. Seen strutting around the deck like a proud peacock deck during the time we had been alongside, a soon as we had hit the open sea and Tucurinca had begun her usual ‘rolling on a wet lawn routine she had disappeared from the deck, our bush telegraph telling us she had spent the rest of the trip in close proximity to the heads [toilet] in preparation for another dose of seasickness. Just goes to show you can’t judge a book by the proverbial cover.

The day had eventually arrived when our ship had left Puerto Barrios. With no love lost between the town and us all of us had had no regrets about leaving that most inhospitable of places. No one from the town had stood on the quay to watch us and we who had stood on deck at the time of sailing had been pleased to pull away from the filthy dock. Soon we had been out in the clear blue Caribbean and looking forward to our next port of call, which had once again had been New York.

On our second visit to the city there had been no large Cunard liners tied up their usual jetty as we had glided up the Hudson with barely anyone noticing our passing as we headed for our berth at Weehauken across the water from ‘The Big Apple’. Remembering how much the big city had intimidated me on our last visit I had not bothered to go ashore during our second visit to N.Y. and had spent the two days we were there watching T.V. in the crew recreation room. However the thing I most remember of this visit had been the day when a large cigar smoking broken nosed docker that I had nicknamed ‘Big Al’ had arrived at the galley to ask in a broad New York accent ‘have ya got anything to eat chef’. Turning round from what ever he had been doing at the time Sowden had looked at the large guy as if he had been a piece of shit to sneer ‘we’ve got fuck all so fuck off out of it’.

The huge docker had lunged at the chef and had picked him up by the throat of his chef’s jacket as if he was a feather. Sowden’s face had turned as white as a sheet and I could see from look of terror on his face that he had feared that his end was nigh. Unfortunately the docker had not killed the chef and as calm as a cucumber had merely said. ‘Look I asked you nicely if you could give me something to eat, and let me tell you that no fucking limey is going to tell me to go screw myself and get away with it, now what the fuck are you going to do about it’? In reply the badly shaken chef had turned to me and said something like ‘give your friend anything he wants to eat’. Satisfied with the chef’s reply big Al had lowered Sowden back to his feet and winking at me he had smiled and asked for a fried egg sandwich ‘easy over’. Sowden had said no more of this matter but I had never forgotten the incident and whenever anyone had asked for a fried egg sandwich throughout the remainder of the voyage a smile would appear on my face.

During our time at New York our long forgotten Second Cook and Baker had rejoined us as mysteriously as he had departed the ship some seven months earlier. Telling of being ‘taken ill’ at the outset of the voyage, the Second Cook had said that he had spent some time in Hospital before being flown out by Elders and Fyffes to rejoin us in N.Y.. I believe however he had known from the outset what kind of a bastard the Chief Cook was going to be and had merely hidden behind an oil drum on the quay at Rotterdam until Tucurinca had sailed. Avery mysterious type of person in general, the Second Cook had kept himself much to himself and throughout the remainder of the trip had played little part in my life.

With our cargo of Bananas once again safely unloaded we had once more put to sea. Fully expecting to return to Central America the majority of the lower deck crew had been looking forward to perhaps returning to our favourite fleshpot Puerto Cortes. However, shortly after leaving New York the ship had received orders to proceed to Jamaica where, much to everyone’s delight, we were to load a cargo of Bananas destined for home sweet home. As soon as word of our impending return to the U.K. had been received the dismal atmosphere that had seemed to have hung around the crew accommodation for weeks had lifted like the curtain at a local cinema. Large parties had ensued where many of the old hatchets of discontent had been buried once and for all. My best friend aboard, Dave and I had sunk a beer or two as if there had been no fallout between us and for the remainder of the trip we had acted like brothers. Even Sowden had tried to mend the large rift between us but seven months of misery at that man’s hands could not be mended and I had simply told him to fuck off when he had held his hand out to ‘let bygones be bygones’ as he had put it.

As I write the date is the sixth of January 2010. Outside my window the street is covered in a layer of ice topped with snow and looks as cold as the weather that had frozen the balls off the very last of the brass monkeys. How well the cold condition of the burgeoning New Year contrast with the images stored in my mind of the journey to Jamaica.

Steaming under the bluest of skies bathed in the warmth of a burning sun Tucurinca had skittered across the Azure blue Caribbean as if she too had been keen to return to home waters. During our off-duty periods my crewmates and I had spent our time laid out on the baking hatch tops topping up our suntans in eager anticipation of our return home. In those days there had been little thought of what harm the sun had done to the human skin and like most young seafarers we had ‘bronzied’ at every opportunity so that we could stand out in the crowd once shore side in good old blighty. Yes in those days the majority of us young lads had been ‘posers’. My particular ‘pose’ had been hanging around in a highly scrubbed denim jacket and jeans that had spent many hours on a ship’s deck being scrubbed or dragged through the sea at the end of a heaving line to attain an almost white colour that had looked magnificent in the fluorescent lights that had been used in the British Discos during the 1960. Together with my tanned face can you imagine the effect as I strutted around the discos of Scarborough; you’ve go it, a right twat. Speaking of this, only the other day our local Post Man had known me during this period of my life and he can only remember me wearing denims, ‘scrubbed to fuck’ as he described them.

Looking like some place out of a travel poster we had duly arrived at Kingston. Despite my initial first impression Kingston had eventually looked as flyblown and down at heel as any town we had visited in Central America. Nonetheless, we had tied up to a jetty that had also had a magnificently preserved cargo ship belonging to the Prince Line alongside, which together with our own silver grey painted vessel had made such a fine sight. How I now wish I had had the foresight to have bought a camera that would have enabled me to have a picture of those two fine ships that have now sadly disappeared from the world’s seas.

Once again, once the gangway had hit concrete Tucurinca had been boarded by the customary bevy of officials from customs and the ship’s agent and Kingston’s Chief of Police who had assembled the crew on the after deck to inform us not to go ashore alone whilst at the city. Despite Kingston’s dark reputation we had gone ashore in the city and although we had seen numerous shady looking characters standing on street corners with large machetes hanging from their trouser waistbands we had encountered little trouble and had soon melded into the nightlife which as far as I can remember had consisted of numerous bars filled with large black ladies of the night and the rhythm of a vibrant music that I had later found to have been called Reggae, a musical form that had been made popular by a certain Mr. Bob Marley many years later.

We had spent just one night in Kingston whilst awaiting our cargo that we were to load a couple of days later on the northern side of the Island at Oracabessa. The day after our arrival at Jamaica Tucurinca had dropped anchor in the clear blue water of Montego Bay and before long word had come down from the bridge that the crew had been allowed to go swimming. Not a great lover of deep water I had nonetheless jumped off the deck into the oggin to join my chums who had been skylarking in the warm and inviting looking water. Trying to look unafraid I had swam to the bow of the ship where I had suddenly felt something grab my ankle in a vice like grip. Fearing I had been on the verge of being eaten by a shark or such other large tooth fish I had almost jumped out of the water with fright and screamed at the top of my voice something like ‘oh fuck’. Turning round in the water to see what had had hold of me I had seen my mate Dave grinning from ear to ear’ What’s wrong with you you silly fucker you look as if you have seen a ghost’? I had spluttered some stupid retort and had soon made my way to the safety of the ship’s gangway that had taken my shivering with fright self back aboard to safety. Never again have I swum in deep water.

Whilst at Motego Bay the ship had often been surrounded by clusters of luxurious looking launch. Often contain very beautiful looking women with very few clothes on the approach of these fine vessels had resulted in someone shouting ‘boat approaching’ that had instantly caused a rush from the crew accommodation as we had clamoured so see the next bevy of beauties. Some bright spark amongst the ogling crew had gone as far as inviting a party of American women aboard ‘for drinks’. But some officer had noticed their launch tethered to the ship’s gangway and the ‘party’ had soon come to an end, the women being sheepherdered very politely off the ship by our smiling Chief Steward. ‘Nice try boys’ had reportedly been his parting shot.

Oracabessa takes its name from the Spanish Ora Cabeza [Golden Head], however despite its rather grand name the town had looked pretty much like all the other Wild Western settlement Banana ports that we had visited in Central America. Indeed the place had not even possessed the customary banana loading elevators that had adorned even the poorest ports that we had sailed into, and instead of being loaded through the deck hatches of Tucurinca our cargo of Bananas destined for home had been loaded by hand through doors in the ship’s side.

Despite its rather down at heel look Oracabessa is situated but a stones throw from Ian Fleming’s home known as ‘Goldeneye’ where he had written so many of his now famous James Bond books, but alas whilst we had been there there had been none of those gorgeous semi naked women that had seemingly languished under every palm tree that had featured in every volume of Fleming’s imagination. Instead we had had to be content with the few local women who had frequented a ‘Rum shop’ called ‘La Shanka Tavern’, who much like their town, had also looked uninviting. Nonetheless, one or two of our lads had partaken of these girls ‘wares’ and much to their dismay each of them had contracted ‘a dose of Guns’ [Gonorrhoea], a sad state of affairs as we had been on our way home, one of the victims having a wife and children waiting at home.

Whilst at Oracabessa the deck crew, stripped down to shorts and little else had painted over the various rust streaks that Tucurinca had developed during our seven months at sea, and resplendent in a fresh coat of paint our ship, now loaded with it cargo of fruit had departed from the town two after we had arrived there. Reportedly now a marina for the yachts of the rich and famous I wonder if that old concrete jetty still bears any memories of our stay there almost fifty years ago, an age away.

Leaving the Caribbean in our wake Tucurinca had soon nosed her way into the great swells of the North Atlantic to begin her customary routine of rolling on a wet lawn. However, by this time I had been a seasoned seafarer and unlike the outward journey I had not felt the slightest twinge of seasickness. Little recollection of the journey home remains in my memory. However, I can remember having attended a couple of raucous homeward bound parties that had continued well into the early hours of the next day and can even recall having gone from one directly to work at 6am much the worst for wear. The cook had obviously seen what state I had been in but had elected to keep his mouth shut and not badger me that had suited me fine.

I also remember of the journey home the large amount of pornographic magazines that had been thrown over the side and on one occasion having seen a blow up sex doll being committed to the deep six by a group of laughing firemen they toasting the demise of the large latex blonde with a bottle of beer apiece.

Destined to discharge our cargo at Southampton, we had eventually arrived in Southampton Water on the twenty eighth of March 1965. It had been a foggy sort of a morning as we had made our way into the great port and just before our arrival the Chief Steward had opened the Bonded Store for the final time of the trip where I had bought a ‘Docking Bottle’ of Whisky for my father and two hundred Senior Service cigarettes for my mother the lot costing me less than an English Pound note [those were the days my friend]. We had subsequently arrived at the Elders& Fyffes Jetty some after breakfast and for the first time in the trip I had not had to wash all the meals pots and pans the cook saying beforehand that after the meal I was free to do as I pleas so I had gone on deck like many more of the crew to watch the tugs help us into our berth. Soon we could hear the skipper ring down to the Engine room ‘finished with engines, and with the clanging of the ship’s telegraph my first trip to sea had come to an end.

With our gear already packed the crew and I had made our way to the officers saloon where an official from the company had issued each man with a ‘payoff slip’ which told how much we had earned and spent during the trip. Mine had included all the ‘subs’ I had had, the good number of Ronson lighters I had bought in lieu of subs and the large number of soft drinks and cigarettes I had consumed during my eight months aboard. Despite this I had paid off with over one hundred and fifty pounds after stoppages, a small fortune to my still tender eyes.

We had also been scrutinised by an officious bastard from H.M. Customs who had made me pay what seemed an extortionate duty of three pounds for a number of Long Playing records that I had bought whilst in the States. Obviously much cheaper in America I had bought a good number of Beatles, Rolling Stones, and Animals Albums at a seemingly low price only to pay the extra back in the U.K.. This same bastard had gone on to make the man standing in line behind me share the twenty cigarettes that he had had in his possession over the two hundred limit that had been in force. A right royal welcome home. Seeing as we had also just arrived from Jamaica our bags had also been extensively searched for god knows what only afterwards had I been told for drugs, still a relatively unknown quantity back in the early sixties.

Eventually, free of authority, I had said goodbye to many of my former shipmates who had each been making their preparations to return home. I had also met Ted one of the seamen that had caught a dose in Jamaica. He was hoping that his wife would believe he had caught it from a toilet seat in some foreign bar. I never did hear the end of that unlikely story. At the top of the gangway I had met my mate Dave along with a couple of other seamen bound for the North of England. The four of us had clattered down Tucurinca’s gangway to find a taxi that would take us to the railway station and eventually home and upon reaching the bottom I had turned to have a final look at that most magnificent ship that had been my home for over eight months of my life. Of course there had been a lot of ups and downs during the trip but I had certainly been glad that I had not missed one minute of it. ‘Come on’ shouted the fast disappearing Geordie Dave, let’s get the fook oot a here’! I was going home.

That had not been the only time that I had sailed in the Tucurinca. I had rejoined her again at North Shields on the 11TH of November 1965 to once again haunt the places that had captivated me earlier in my seagoing career. Paying off once again at Southampton on the 1ST of April 1966 I had again rejoined the ship on the 10TH of August 1966 at Bremerhaven, remaining in the ship until paying off at Southampton on the 20TH of February 1967. That had been the last time that I had seen Tucurinca. She had remained at sea but a few years after I had sailed in her. Built before the onset of containerisation Tucurinca and her five sisters [Turrialba, Tenedores, Tetela, Telde, and Tilapa, had eventually been superseded by the container carrying ‘Box boats’. In addition built as specialised refrigerated fruit carriers the so-called T’ Boats’ had not been found suitable for the general cargo trade and during 1978 had been transferred from Elders & Fyffe’s to the Honduras based Empresa Hondurena de Vapores S.A.. Remaining with this Fruit Company until the start of 1980, Tucurinca had been sold for scrapping in Taiwan and had duly arrived at Kaohsiung for breaking up by the end of January that year.

Counting myself to have been extremely fortunate to have served in the British Merchant Navy before the arrival of the soulless looking ‘Box boats’ and indeed the general demise of the M.N. itself, I also count myself as being lucky to have met many of the fine seamen that had met during my time in the Tucurinca and all the other ships that I had worked in during my time at sea. Of course each ship had carried at least one bastard in one form or another, and in some instances the ship’s themselves had been bastards to live and work in, but looking back I would not have liked to have missed one minute of the experience. Would I do it all again? You bet your sweet life I would.

Dedicated to all the officers and men that along with me had lived and worked in the Steamship named Tucurinca. She was a fine ship and didn’t we have a fine time living and working in her. God bless the ship and all who sailed in her!

Paul Allen, January 2010.


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• Charles Dickens account of Filey and Scarborough graveyards

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