The Apprentices; they about eighteen or nineteen years old. There was one called Hemmy, one Ginger and the other Titch.  Well, I was very friendly with Hemmy and Titch but Ginger, he wasn’t very popular on board at all.  I was shaving in my cabin, which was not very far away from their cabin and we got to be arguing about something or other, I don’t know what it was and I was busy shaving there.  The door opened, we were shouting at each other.  All of a sudden these two Apprentices, Hemmy and Ginger, came barging into my cabin.  Well, Hemmy, he grabbed me round the waist and had my arms fastened to my side and Ginger was punching as hard as he could at me while I was being held.  Well, I told them what I was going to do when I got loose and it was a very small cabin and I got bounced about a bit.  Anyhow, last of all, I did get loose and they ran out on deck.  Well, by this time there was quite a crowd round us of Firemen and other Crew.  And I just gave Ginger one punch and knocked him clean out, unconscious.  Well, there he was laid on the deck so I thought “Oh no then what shall I do?”  Blood was coming from his mouth and so I went into my cabin and got him a drink of water.  I lifted his head up to bring him round.  And as soon as he came round he brought his knee up into my face and that was the first time I really saw stars.  As soon as he did this he jumped up and was running for his cabin and I was after him.  And I said “I’ll murder you now, when I catch you” Anyhow, suddenly a great big hand came on my shoulder and he said “Oh no you won’t.  You won’t touch him” And I looked up and saw it was the Mate so I said “Wont I?” I said “You just see” so he said “Ginger, go and lock yourself in your room and stop there ‘til I tell you to come out”  so I said “That’s the best thing you could have told him cos when he does come out I’ll murder him”  Anyhow, the Mate asked me what had happened so I said “Well, there’s quite a few witnesses round here” I said “ask them what happened” I said “I’m not going to tell you what happened” I said “they saw what he did” So anyhow, the Mate said “The Captain wants to see you” so I said “Oh, does he?” I said “Righto, let’s go” So the Captain asked me what had been going on so I said “Well, ask any of the Crew that was there.  They’ll tell you what happened” I said “I’m not going to say anything at all.  I’ll leave it to them to give you a description of what happened”  Anyhow, the Captain must have got to know the facts and he said he’d have a word with the Apprentices about this and he said if I promise to leave them alone and not touch them… he said if they ever gave me any cheek again or interfered with me I could give them a good hiding if I liked so I said “Righto, well if they keep to that, I’ll keep my word” so we got on alright after that.  And strange to say, it was not after this that I brought a hammock while I was in Madras, it was just a cheap thing and not a very strong one.  One afternoon I was laid in this hammock and a chap came along, I think he was a Greek and he started swinging me backwards and forwards on this hammock ‘til I was hitting the deck head every time.  I said “Stop it you fool” I said “this will smash and I shall fall out” but he wouldn’t take any notice. He went on swinging this hammock until last of all, it broke.  Out I shot with my head onto the iron deck.  Well, there was quite a bump on my head and I was very annoyed about it so I just gave him one smack and knocked him out.  Clean out.  Now, when he came round I said “I’m sorry I hit you so hard but” I said “I did tell you to stop.  I really hated fights but what can you do when people do things like that” I said “You lose your temper and that’s it”  Anyhow the Firemen heard about this and they came round to my cabin a couple of nights later with some very cheap whisky and they were pouring this whisky out into pint pots I remember.  They started talking and they were pretty well drunk by the time they’d finished and they wanted me to fight against any man on the ship and they were going to make a book on it and back me against any person on the ship.  Well, as I said, I was twelve and a half stone and six foot one, I was pretty tough but I didn’t fancy taking anybody on the ship on.  I said “No thank you.  Not for me” And I think that was the only trouble there was on the ship.  I never had to fight again.

Another time I was in the Apprentices’ cabin and we were larking about in there and one of them slipped a key out of the door and they went out and they locked me in the cabin.  Well, I was banging on the door and they wouldn’t open it.  Oh, I was in there about half an hour and still they wouldn’t open it so they cleared off and left me locked up.  Well, I had my job to do on the boat so I thought “I’ll have to get out of here somehow” We were miles from land.  So I opened the port hole and their cabin and my cabin, they were just underneath the lifeboat.  So I got my head and shoulders out of this port hole and looking down into the sea and I thought “Well, I don’t think I can reach up to the rail”, the little ledge where the lifeboat was under.  So I tried to get back and I found I couldn’t get back, couldn’t get my shoulders back inside again.  So I thought “Here goes, I’ll have to go out now” So I struggled out and I just managed to reach this ledge and I pulled myself up underneath the lifeboats. And I tell you, it gave me quite a fright.  I thought I was going to fall overboard.  So I thought “Right, I’ll play a joke on the Apprentices now” So when I got up to the lifeboat, it was covered with canvas to stop the ashes going in from the funnel.  So I got in the lifeboat and hid there for quite a time and just kept looking out to see if there was anything happening.  Well, the Apprentices came back to the cabin and unlocked the door and they found me missing so of course they knew that the only way I could have got out was through the port hole.  They found that open.  So they thought I must have fallen overboard.  So of course, they had to report it.  Well, I didn’t know anything about this but suddenly I saw the ship turn round.  I thought “Now then, what’s happening?”  Anyhow, the boat turned round in a complete circle and went going back the other way.  So I thought “Good heavens, they must be looking for me”  So I appeared on deck as if nothing had happened and they said “Where have you come from?” so I had to admit that I’d climbed out of the port hole and kept hidden under the lifeboat cover.  There was a heck of a row about this but I think they were really relived that I hadn’t gone over the side.  The Captain wasn’t at all pleased about things.  Anyhow, if I had gone over the side, they’d have never found me because, as I say, I couldn’t swim, and that would have been that.

We had two lifeboats on the ship and near the bridge there was another smaller boat.  I don’t think it was a lifeboat but just for lowering for the Captain to go ashore or anything like that. Anyhow, as we were coming through the Suez Canal there was an Arab[?] It hit this boat, this small boat, and smashed it up entirely.  We’d no means of repairing it so I think we just throw it over the side.  This left quite a gap and there was just a ledge about three inches and then over the side, there was nothing to stop you going over the side.  Well, I’d been up to take the Mate his cup of tea and toast as I usually had to do and there was a pretty heavy swell on at the time and I slipped down the ladder and fell on to the deck and went straight for the side where this missing boat was.  Luckily there were some awning posts up there for when it was very hot, they used to put an awning up there.  And luckily I shot towards this awning pole and one leg went to each side of it so I grabbed hold of that and there I was clinging hold of this.  As I’d fallen the saucer broke and it stuck into my hand.  There was a pretty bad gash in my hand and I had to hang there quite a long time before I could get back again.  I waited for the ship to roll the right way and then I managed to get back.  It was then that they told me that I should have one hand for myself and one for the company.  After that I’d more than one hand for myself.  I used to have both hands for myself.  I took things more steady after that.

The first time we went to Calcutta was very interesting as Calcutta lay quite a long way up the River Hooghly and we had to have a pilot on board.  We never used to seem to keep to the middle of the river.  One minute we were right at one side close to the shore and the next, the other side.  They were continually testing the depth of the water.  There must have been quite a few sand banks there and I don’t think anybody else but the pilot could have got up there without running aground.  When we got to Calcutta we always used to tie up at the buoys in the middle of the river.  I remember a great many mosquitoes there and it was very very hot indeed.  We were all pleased to get away.  I got to know Calcutta quite well.  We went to see the Black Hole of Calcutta and all the interesting places round about.

The ship was overrun with cockroaches.  They were little brown things about an inch long.  They used to get into everything.  You couldn’t keep anything from them.  In fact most of the crew, they used to draw their rations weekly.  They couldn’t leave anything on a table. They used to have everything hanging from the ceiling, the ‘deck head’ as we called it.  So these cockroaches couldn’t get at them.  They were in all our drawers and cupboards and beds and everything.  You could feel them running over you in the night.  It wasn’t very nice.  Well I used to set traps for these cockroaches.  I used to get a fifty tin of cigarettes, they were round in those days, and grease the top with butter and leave them there all night and the cockroaches used to get in and they couldn’t climb up again because of the greasy butter on the top of the tin.  Well every morning three or four of these tins were full of cockroaches and it didn’t seem to make the slightest difference.  However long you went on catching them, there seemed to be more coming.  They were peculiar things.  They had a little pouch on their back, their tail end, and it had the eggs in.  This used to drop off and the young cockroaches used to hatch out.  Well it got so bad with these cockroaches that they decided to fumigate the ship with sulphur.  It was during the day that they did this.  The Captain wouldn’t allow anyone ashore during the day cos we all had our own special jobs to do such as painting the ship and I was helping the Cook all the time.  In fact I never got a day off at all.  So they closed all the hatches and all the doors a pumped sulphur fumes into the ship.  Well we were coughing and nearly choking.  You had to go right to the front of the ship where the wind was blowing to keep out of the way of the fumes.  I tell you we were very pretty fed up with this.  It was very very unpleasant but it certainly seemed to clear away a lot of the cockroaches.  There weren’t so many after that.

One day I saw a cockroach; it must have been four inches long.  I said it must have been the granddaddy of all the cockroaches on board.  I wish I’d caught it and kept it as a specimen but I didn’t.

We had no fridge on this boat but we had a huge ice box and whenever we went ashore we used to fill this box with ice and put meat and eggs and such like, anything that would perish, on top of this ice and it used to last for about seven days, we could only take seven day’s supply of fresh food with us.  When this was done we had to go on to salt fish or salt pork or salt beef.  Well I found the salt beef was very nice.  We used to soak it over night to get all the salt out of it.  The same with the pork.  It was quite nice as well but I can’t say I liked the dried fish that we had on board.

When the Steward was buying his stores he was a real rogue.  I used to hear him telling the Chandler, the chap who supplied all the food, instead of bringing seven days’ supply of meat, to bring four day’s supply of meat and four day’s supply of that and he was making quite a lot of money out of this so I suppose they shared it.  I’m not sure whether the Captain was in with him or not but I shouldn’t be at all surprised if he hadn’t been.

Anyhow, one day I was in my cabin and the Steward came and gave me three Rupees which he owed me. I’d sold him some cigarettes.  I think it was about four and sixpence.  The Chief Engineer saw me take this money from the Steward so he said “Oh, that’s the game is it?”  This was after the Steward had gone.  He said “I suppose that’s your share of the proceedings from the food we’re getting short?”  And he said “When I get home I’ll report you for doing this” I said “Now look here” I said “If I was in this swindle, you don’t think I’d be satisfied with four and sixpence as my share of the booty.  I’d want a hell of a lot more than that.  And if there is any reporting going on when I get home, I can do quite a little bit of that myself if I wish to”  I said “I once heard somebody telling the coal people to bring four hundred ton of coal short” I said “I wonder where that money went?”  Of course this was the Chief Engineer and he was fiddling as well and so after that he shut up.  I said “Look, I watch and I hear and I see quite a lot of things going on on this ship but” I said “I don’t talk about it.  Not unless anybody says something about me” I said “so if I get the sack when I get home “I said “they’ll be  a new Chief Engineer on board” and I said “I’m afraid it’ll be a bit harder for you to find a job than it will for me” I said “Chief Engineers are few and far between to get but people of my rating” I said “they can get a job on anything” So after that he was more friendly towards me.

Everybody seemed to be on the fiddle there. One day I saw the Apprentices, they’d got a huge rope. A brand new rope.  They were throwing it over the side.  Of course it sank.  And I said “What’s the idea” so he said “Oh, we’re flogging it.  There’s a chap just paid us for it” I don’t know how much they got for it but they’d dive down and get it out when the ship had gone.  The Boatswain and the Carpenter, they were flogging paint as fast as they could.  At last on our last journey to Madras with coal, we got the ship cleaned up and we loaded up with shelled monkey nuts.  I think we took on board about eight thousand five hundred tons.  We were eating these all the way home.  We got fed up with the sight of them by the time we reached home!  We went to Rotterdam, I think, with those.  And Hamburg.

I’m afraid that in Rotterdam I got very drunk indeed.  I’ve never been so drunk. I told a waiter, there was one or two of us there, and I told the waiter whenever he saw my glass empty, to fill it up.  I didn’t like English beer very much but this continental beer was a light beer and it was very very nice.  So of course I went on drinking this and we were in there quite a long time and when I tried to get up from the table I just flopped down again.  I couldn’t stand on my feet.  Anyhow, at last we got on board a tram and headed back for the docks.  Well, as I said before, the ship never seemed to tie up at the shore.  It was always at the buoys.  It was very late and we couldn’t find the ferry so I went to sleep in this ferry shelter.  I don’t know how long I had been there but suddenly I woke up. Someone was shaking me and saying “Come on! It’s time to wake up” and I saw it was the Second Mate and I said “Oh, it’s not time for your tea and toast yet, I know” so he said “I don’t want any tea and toast” he said “It’s time we got back to the ship” he said “do you know where you are?”  I said “No, I hadn’t a clue” so he says “Well, you’re in a ferry shelter and we’ve got to get back to the ship”. He was pretty drunk as well.  Last of all, we got a ferry and they said “Which ship do you want to be on?”  So the Second Mate said “If you see a ship without a light on, that’s the one we want” Anyhow, we eventually got back and they helped me on board and shoved me into my bunk and that’s where I stopped ‘til morning.

Whenever we were in port we always had a Night Watchman on board.  In Hamburg he turned out to be an ex Captain of a German destroyer in the First World War.  I got quite pally with this chap and he asked me my name and so I told him it was Riegels and he said “Well that’s a German name” so I said “Yes, my father was a German” so he said “Well then you’re German” so I said “Oh no I’m not.” I said “I’m English” He went on to say one night in the war, it was a very foggy night and he was close to the East coast of England.  He suddenly saw a British man of war and he fired a torpedo at it and sank it.  Well as he was so close to the shore he thought he’d better turn round and get away as fast as he could because he didn’t know how many more ships were about there.  So off he went back towards Germany.  Well when the crew heard about this, they wouldn’t have anything to do with him at all.  After all he was only doing his job and if it had been a British Captain, he’d have done the same thing I suppose.  Anyhow the Steward was a real swine.  Whenever he gave this German Captain his dinner he used to spit on it before he gave it to this Watchman.

One night quite a few of us went ashore at Hamburg and I was with the Apprentices and there was another four of our chaps at a table further away.  We went to a hippodrome and in this hippodrome there was a ring, like a circus ring, and a horse running round it and it seemed that you’d to pay a Mark to go on to this horse and if you could go three time round the ring on this horse’s back without falling off, you got a prize.  Well, there must have been a given signal for this horse because it’d be trotting round quite calmly and it was running quite fast.  Suddenly at a sign from the Ringmaster, it used to stop dead and you shot over the horse’s head on the floor.  So of course, you didn’t get a prize.  Well, I was drinking with these four Apprentices and of course there were a lot of girls there who kept coming up to us.  The Apprentices disappeared one by one until I was the only one left and there was a girl came up to me and she said could she have a drink.  So I said “Oh yes, you can have a drink” I said “I’ll buy you a drink” and of course she wanted me to go off with her somewhere but I wasn’t very keen on that. So then she asked if she could have a ride on one of these horse’s so I said “Oh yes, you can have a ride on a horse” so off she went and of course she went on alright.  He didn’t give a signal to the horse and she stayed on alright.  But that’s as far as it went with her.

Anyhow, there was a Second Mate, he had four of his pals at another table and a girl came up to them and she said “You’re English aren’t you?” so they said “Yes” so she said “Well I’ve been watching the waiter and he’s charging you far too much for the drinks. He says he knows you’re English and he says he’s charging you too much”  She said “If you give me all your money, I’ll order the drinks for you and get them much cheaper” So they thought this was a jolly good idea.  So they handed over every penny they had and this girl was getting the drinks cheaper, definitely.  Anyhow, this went on for a few minutes I suppose and she suddenly said “Excuse me, I’m just going upstairs. I won’t be long” But that’s the last they saw of her and their money so they hadn’t a penny piece left between them.  Anyhow they spotted me and they said “Have you got any money?” so I said “Yes, I’ve got a bit.  Why, what do you want?” so they said “Oh, we’ve had all ours pinched and we’ve no money for the ferry back to the ship” so I said “Oh, I can lend you that alright” so off we went back to the ship and I told them what idiots they were to do a thing like that.  But I don’t suppose they were ever caught like that again.

When we left Hamburg we went to the Bristol Channel.  I think we lay outside Port Talbot for a while.  We were waiting there; I couldn’t read semaphore but I could read quite a few letters; there was somebody on shore signaling away and I recognised H-A-L-L and so I said to the Second Mate “There’s somebody sending a semaphore message to us I think” so he said “How do you know” he said “You don’t understand semaphore” so I said “Well, you just have a look at that light over there” so he did and he said “You’re right!” he said “they are signaling us” so he got the messages down and it was to say we’d to go to Swansea.  Well, I forget what we loaded at Swansea but to our disappointment we found we were going to Aden again. 

Well, at Aden, we loaded up with salt. It took an awful long time to load up.  This salt had to go to Calcutta.  Well, as there was a heavy duty on salt in India, every ounce had to be weighed as it was taken out of the ship and this took us weeks and weeks.  We were there about five weeks unloading. Then we went down to Kidderpore Dock and waited there for orders for a week or two.  So we spent an awful lot of time in Calcutta. 

From Calcutta, I think we went to Moulmein in Burma.  The second night we were there the Second Engineer said to the Apprentice and myself if we like to go ashore to a hotel there and have dinner with some people he knew. So we all agreed this would be very nice.  Anyhow, we went to this hotel in Moulmein and they gave us a six course dinner and never charged a penny for it.  They had two daughters there.  They were as black as ink.  They must have been Spaniards I think.  Her name was Perrara.  They had a big dance floor there and we used to dance with these two girls and they kept sending us drinks up there and we had a wonderful time and they invited us there again the following evening.  Anyhow, the next night they didn’t specifically say come again the following day so I said well, I’m not going but the Apprentices, oh they were, they went again.  When they got there, these Perraras, they asked where I was.  So they said “Oh he hasn’t come because he hadn’t been invited” They told me we all had been invited and we went there every night for ten days and we had a wonderful time there.

I couldn’t make out why they invited us because they said when we went away they wouldn’t answer any letters if we wrote to them and they certainly didn’t.  We never heard from them again.  While we were there we saw two funerals.  This first funeral, they had a brass band and they were playing ‘The More we are Together’ blaring out this on the brass band.  The body was on a stretcher and they were jogging along at a jog trot and this body was bouncing up and down ‘til they got to the graveyard.

The next funeral we saw they were playing ‘My Girl’s Got Long Hair’ and the same thing happened and the same thing happened: jogging along with this person on the stretcher again.  It was while we were there that there was what they call a ‘Water Carnival’ on.  It seemed to be a great honour if you had a bucket of water thrown over you.  Well it seemed alright but we didn’t take to it very much because it wasn’t very nice getting soaked through to the skin but we had to take it in good part and on the whole we enjoyed it and had a very nice stay there.

From there we went to Rangoon. We saw the famous pagodas there.  From Rangoon we went down to Java and called at a place Surabaya.  I remember every night, there was an airmail plane went over about Six o’Clock and as soon a this plane has passed over, it seemed very strange, but it poured with rain every night just after this plane had gone.  Of course it had nothing to so with the plane but it seemed very strange that it rained at the same time every night.  We loaded up there with sugar and then set sail for home.

One day I was looking over the side of the ship and I suddenly saw what looked like a flock of birds flying very low over the water.  They suddenly disappeared and I couldn’t make this out at all so I mentioned it to one of the crew and they said “Oh, they were flying fish”  This turned out to be right because next morning there were quite a few that’d flown on to the deck.  They couldn’t actually fly, they used to, they had very big fins, and they used to open their fins and it was really gliding but the light of the ship used to attract them and they used to fly on the deck and they couldn’t get off again so we used to have them fried and they were very nice indeed.

We had a very mixed crew on board.  I remember there were two Arabs, a Greek, a Dutchman, quite a few Welshmen, Scotsmen, an Englishman but they said this was good because if they were all the same race there used to be a lot of trouble.  These two Arabs were very nice chaps indeed and I got on very well with them.  They were Mohammedans and one time, the Steward, he put a huge piece of pork in to the soup to boil.  Well one of these Arabs found out he’d put this pork in the soup and the Steward was very lucky that he didn’t get knifed for it because it was against the Mohammedan religion to eat pork of any description.  The other Arab, he once came to me and said had I any bacon.  So I said “Bacon?” I said “You’re not supposed to eat bacon” so he said “I know that but” he said “I like it very much” he said “but do not tell Ali that I have had it or he will kill me” So I gave him some bacon and he enjoyed it very much.

We had a Japanese Boatswain on board.  He was the only Japanese I’ve ever known really and he was one of the finest chaps I’ve known.  He was very good indeed to me.  One time I remember, I’d about a hundred fish to clean for tea.  It was Sunday and he had the day off so he said “Give me.  I clean those for you” and he cleaned all this fish for me.  So of course that was a great help. I used to help him quite a lot because when they had the gangway stowed away on the ship they had four bars hanging from the deck head with a loop at the bottom and they used to push this ladder up and put an iron bar across through these holes and it held the ladder in position.  Well when they had to get it down they had to have somebody hold it at one end while they pulled the bar out and let it down.  As I was one of the tallest men on the ship, I could reach up without standing on anything and I just used to hold this ladder up while they pulled the bar out and he thanked me very much for it.  That’s why he used to help me many times.  He was a very queer chap. When he went ashore he’d be dressed up in an immaculate white suit and white helmet and off he used to go ashore and I said “Where are you going Joe?”  We used to called him Joe because we couldn’t pronounce his proper name and he said “I go to see my doctor” so I said “I didn’t know your doctor lived here” so he said “My doctor live everywhere” so I said “Well, who’s your doctor then?” he said “Doctor Brandy. Very good doctor indeed. I go see him and I’m better at once!”

The Wireless Operator, he was his own boss really.  He had a room next to his operating room and he lived alone high up over the bridge and he used to get all the news and the football results and things like that.  Well he didn’t get on very well with the Captain but the three of us, the Japanese Boatswain, the Wireless Operator and myself, we became firm friends. I think it was the strangest trio that there ever was but we used to talk for hours at nights sat on the deck.  One night it seemed that this conversation seemed to be ‘Who could tell the biggest lie’.  Well this Japanese, he won hands down.  He said he had a sword that was so sharp that if he put it in the water and a thick tree came past, he just had to hold his sword in the water and the sword would go clean through the tree and cut it in half.  Of course we had to laugh at that.  Another time he said a big fish jumped on board and bit a man’s leg off and jumped back over the side again.

One day this chap saw me darning some socks so he said “Why you darn, darn, darn all day long?” he said “When they get old” he says “throw them over the side and buy new one” so I said “It’s alright for you” I said “you’ve got more money than I have. I’ve got to make things last” But he didn’t, he used to go ashore immaculate in this white suit and next day he’d turn to work in this suit and he used to wear it ‘til it fell to pieces practically and then he’d throw it over the side and buy another outfit when he went ashore next time.

I remember one time; the Wireless Operator was going ashore so I asked him to get me some Burma Cheroots.  They were very cheap there so I asked him to get me a couple of hundred and I said I’d pay him back when I got some money from the Captain so he said “Okay” and he brought these back with him.  When I offered him the money he said “What’s this for?” so I said “It’s for the Burma Cheroots” so he said “Well I want paying back 200 Burma Cheroots” he said “I don’t want any money. I want the Cheroots” so I said “Well how do you think I’m going to get them?” I said “I can’t go back to Calcutta or Burma and get those for you” So he wouldn’t take any money for them at all which I thought was very good of him.

One day I thought it was pretty rough and the sea was coming right over the deck and you couldn’t walk along the deck without holding on to a life line.  So I said to the Cook, I said “It’s rough today.  She’s shipping seas isn’t she” so he says “Ohh” he says “this is only spray!” Anyhow he’d just made some bread.  He was carrying an armful of these loaves, they were very long loaves he used to make, carrying them along the deck and one of these waves hit him.  Knocked him flying along the deck and all his bread and everything else.  So I said to him “It’s pretty heavy spray isn’t it?!” “Oh” he says “she’s shipping seas now” so I said “Oh, I thought it was!”

For three days we couldn’t walk along the deck at all without holding on to these life lines that they had laid along the deck.  It was so very rough.  You kept getting knocked over by these waves.  I remember looking up toward the side of the ship and you could see a wall of water at least twenty foot high and you’d think it was going to break right over the ship but luckily it never did.  The ship just went up like a rocket.  Like a lift going up.  Over the top of the wave and then shot down the other side.  The ship used to just give a shudder and we were all alright.  We never thought of such a thing as the ship going down but it was about that time [4^th June 1923] that the Trevessa and Trevenna both were lost at sea and the men had to row about a thousand miles in rowing boats to get back to land.  I think a few died but most of them got home.  The ship was rolling so much that there was an alleyway near my cabin and I could just barely reach across this alley way with my hands outstretched so it must have been just over six feet long because they say that your reach is your height.  I remember I used to stand in the middle of the alleyway and just roll with the ship.  As it rolled one way, I leaned over and my forehead used to touch the wall of one side of the alleyway and then come back and the back of my head used to touch the other wall so you could tell we were rolling petty hard but they still insisted it wasn’t rough but I thought differently.

The Second Mate, he told me that on a previous voyage, he’d been washed over the side by a huge wave and the next wave brought him back onto the ship.  Well, I couldn’t believe this, I thought he was pulling my leg but I asked one or two of the crew who had been on the ship a long time and they said this was quite true.  The sides of the ship for the rails they were, I think, about half inch iron plate and they said once this plate was bent flat to the deck so it just shows what power water has.

Sometimes we used to get rather short of drinking water and it was rationed so we had to use sea water wherever possible and I’d seen the sailors, they used to tie a line to a bucket and just throw it over the side and just catch the top of the wave and pull a bucket of water up on deck.  So I thought I’d have a go at that.  Well, I throw my bucket over the side and before I knew where I was the line shot through my hands and it brought all the skin off my hands and the bucket, it just, the bottom came out and it was absolutely flat when I brought it back up on deck.  So I never tried that anymore!

Another time I thought that the matting we had in our cabin wanted a good wash so I thought well it would be a good idea just to tie a line to it and hang it over the side and drag it for a while so I left it there all night.  When I went to get it out next morning it had disappeared of course, broken up and broken the line.  So I lost my mat.

One day this Japanese came up to me and he said “You want Pound? Pound note?” so I said “What for?” so he said “Oh you fool! When anybody say You want Pound note? You don’t ask questions, you just take!”  So he said again “Do you want Pound note?” so I took it and said “Thank you” He said “Now you get sense!” So I said “Anyhow, what’s that all about? Why have you given me a Pound?” so he said “Well, on board this ship there’s three Apprentices, Ginger, Titch and Hemmy” he said “Hemmy and Titch very good boy but Ginger, no good at all”  he said “I got three Pounds, I give one to Titch, one to Hemmy, one Pound left over so I give to you.  So I said “Well thank you very much. That’s very nice of you” so then he said “You want another Pound?” so I said “Yes! Gimme!” so he said “Ahh! Wait!” he said “You must do something for this” so I said “What must I do?” so he said “Well, you see the mast there?” he said “Climb up mast, go along cross tree”, that was the cross piece at the top of the mast “Climb out on cross tree and sit with your hands, stretch your hands out and come down and you get Pound” so I said “No thank you!” I said “I’m not going up there.  Not for twenty Pounds!”

When we were in port they used to paint the ship; the ship’s side.  The three Apprentices used to do most of the painting.  This Japanese Boatswain gave them a certain distance to paint: “You paint from here to there and I give you a pound each.  When you’ve done that you can knock off for the day” So of course the Apprentices used to work like Blazes and they had it finished very very quickly.  So they used to get the pounds. This came out of the Boatswains own money, his own pocket. The next day he’d give them a bit more to do and so on, a bit more each day.  That’s how he got them to work.  As soon as they’d finished their job, the job he’d given them, he used to tell them to go and hide and not let the Mate see them and so he got the ship painted very quickly in that way.

We used to have an awful lot of curry and rice for tea.  It was very cheap curry powder and I loved this stuff.  Of course you had to eat it or do without so I thought “Oh, this is no good” so went down into the store room and I got every tin of curry there was in the store room and throw it over the side.  So next day the Steward asked me to bring a tin of curry power up so I said “We haven’t got any” so he said “Of course we have, there’s dozens of tins down there” so I said “Well, I’ve looked all over, I can’t see any” so he said “Well that’s very strange” he said “I was sure we had a lot” so he had to tell the Captain we had no curry power.  Anyhow when we got to Calcutta, there’s a very huge market there and we got some Crosse and Blackwell’s curry powder.  That was ten times better and I quite enjoyed that so we got a good stock of that in.

When we were in Java we loaded up with sugar and I remember these sacks had a blue line down the sack and we’d been at sea about twenty four hours, I said to the Steward, I said “Did the Ship’s Chandler come ashore, come aboard during the night?” so he said “What on earth are you talking about” he said “we’ve been at sea twenty fours.  How could he come aboard now?” so I said “Well I wondered that but” I said “there’s three or four sacks of sugar appeared in the store room” I said “Where on Earth has it come from?” From the store room there was door into the tween deck where we used to have the cargo.  Obviously he’d opened this door and pulled in four bags of sugar from the cargo.  He’d pinched it you see.  I said “This sugar, strange to say, that it’s the same markings as the bags on the cargo”  So he said “You keep your mouth shut” he said “and mind your own business” so of course that proved he was fiddling.  He got this sugar for nothing, pinching the cargo.  I don’t know whether they missed it at all when they unloaded, I never heard about that.

One time while we were in Calcutta while we were on the river there, the Steward had bought some live hens, about a dozen live hens and these were for Sunday dinner for the Captain and Cabin Crew.  Well one day he asked me to go and catch a couple of these hens and I went up on the deck where they were in a huge cage.  Well I opened this door and made a grab for one and missed it and all the others flew out onto the deck and they flew aft towards the Sailor’s and Fireman’s cabins.  Well, I never caught one. The Steward said “Well what has happened?” so I said “Well, I opened this door and they all flew out” so he said “Well where have they gone?” so I said “I think they went over the side” but I knew jolly well that the Sailors and Firemen had caught them and they had them for themselves.  Well there was a row about that.

Sometimes when we were a long way from land, all manner of birds used to land on the ship.  Well we had Pelicans and Parakeets and I remember one night, four Swallows came into my cabin and they sat on the ledge over the door and stayed there all night and flew off next morning.  They were just having a cheap ride.  The sailors were pretty good.  We always used to put fresh water down on the deck for them, a bowl of fresh water and bits of food.  Well, some used to have this water and food but some were so far gone that they used to just drop dead as they landed on the ship, they were just so exhausted.  This Japanese Boatswain, he had a very mangy cat and some of the crew used to kick it about and wouldn’t have it near them so he had it in the chain locker right at the forward end of the ship.  So instead of sleeping in his cabin he used to put a hammock up there and sleep with this cat.

At the end of each trip we used to get paid off at the shipping office and we asked this Jap, we said “Are you coming back next trip with us Joe?” he said “Oh, I don’t know.  I don’t know” he said “I go to London. To Japanese gambling place.  Play pantan” he said “If I win hundred pounds, no good.  Two hundred pounds, no good.  If I win twenty thousand pounds, I no come back to sea anymore!” But of course he turned up next trip dead broke so he was back with us again.

All the sailors used to carry knives on their belts for cutting rope and splicing ropes and what not and I remember one day the Sailors lived on the starboard side and the Fireman on the Portside and there was a running fight, I should think it lasted twenty four hours.  There was a terrific fight going on. Banging each other against the winches and blood all over the place but I will say this, not one of the Sailors drew their knives.  They were very fair fighters.  The Captain ordered none of us mid ships to go aft at all as it was a pretty dangerous situation.  It was practically a mutiny. In the end it all settled down peacefully.

One day when we were in Algiers the Captain refused to give us any money so we thought “That’s that.  We can’t go ashore”