Thanks for the spelling - come to think of it, Paludrine must have done a great job over the years. Sailed with a mate who had recurring Malaria, and it was not much fun...
Used to use the lime juice to clean the wooden chopping block, Salt tablets on the tables in both messroom and saloon,Paludrine tablets on tables also before and during your stay in malarial ports.
Brocklebanks used fresh Indian limes when available, but usually well watered down in the interests of economy.
I could never take the salt tablets, salt tablet down=sick as a dog.
Ian
Paludrine, were on a dish in the dinning room at lunch time. Pusers limers was avalaible for the steaming crews. Puser's cheifs (sorry cooks) put sufficent salt in the food that salt tablets were not required althouth I did have them on my first ship the Carysfort in the late 60s.
Alan,
Much better than lime juice on the maplebank was the saturday tot of rum.Dont think that we apps were supposed to get it ,but the chief steward was a kind chap,and we were very popular with the abs if we gave them our tot.
Crikey, Jim - I think our deck crowd would have gone haywire if they got their hands on a rum ration! Must have been a generous Master? Was it Capt Mountain or later?
Never had lime juice but alway OJ or Tom Juice on the table, with Paludrin on the side.
We used to have a help yourself box of 500 sugar coated salt tabs on the manouvering platform desk with a battered coffee pot of iced water (from the fridge flat).
The BOT lime juice used to be kept in the bonded locker as it had an alcohol content of 10%.
Great when mixed with Four Bells and some raw sugar.
Stopped you getting scurvy too!
Bill, BOT lime juice was indeed kept in the bond for the reason you say. It was kept in large glass bottles perhaps about a gallon size. The cork was covered in sealing wax with the BOT stamp. In my time at sea, on British ships, refusing to take anti scorbutics was an offence under the MSA and a log book entry was reqired stating offenders name and penalty imposed. On a BTC tanker in 1946, in the focsle, our only source for coldish water was from our chattis pots which hung from the awning spars, supplemented at noon daily by a bucket of cold BOT lime juice. Happy days.
Salt tablets and paludrin on the saloon table in E.D.'s. Lime juice went well with Gordons and iced water. I still have one as a lunch time drink of choice with lots of ice. I religiously took the daily paludrin but I collapsed on deck while on nights working cargo and came to in hospital in Takoradi. I was diagnosed with malaria and very well looked after. I have never had it again, luckily, so it obviously wasn't the recurring strain. There is still traces of it in my blood apparently so I was never allowed to give blood.
Tradition has it that, in the old days, lime juice was dosed to British seamen in order to prevent scurvy. However, the story goes that Captains James Cook and William Bligh actually fed their crews on sour kraut for that purpose. Small wonder Bligh's crew mutinied!
I heard it was James Cook who fed his crew sauerkraut. When they refused it he announced that it was for officers only. Later he issued it,
strictly rationed, to the whole crew. I can't swear that this is true, but it should be.
Memory of being sent for it by 2nd on my first deep sea watch still fresh. (Jan '67 Blue Flu's Ixion)
Chief steward mumped away saying he should have been ready for request as he knew 2nd was a big fan of it in all weathers.
He told me to come back later as it was buried away in his stores, so I returned down below thinking I'd done well bringing down 6 cold cokes.
When we did get it I was instructed on how it should be made exactly to 2nd's taste.
One teaspoonfull, six heaped teaspoons of sugar, all in a half pint china mug and stirred like a whirling dervish.
My first taste clapped my cheeks in, so I opted for the Roses, on one day consuming a whole bottle.
Constipation was not a problem(EEK)
The bosun told me some cadets had used the BOT stuff neat in some poor girls Vodka when they ran out of Roses and she was a hospital case.
Thanks for the reminder. Now that we have the internet, I had a good look at the impact of bromide on humans, and it seems to be accepted that the notion of it being a sex inhibitor is false. As someone says on line, it does do this if you load it into a shell and fire it below the waist, but generally it is a calming drug that makes the recipient not want to do anything much!
In Brocklebanks when out East we always had fresh lime juice and water at Smoko . Very refreshing and and certainly helped . That included some limes in the " Panai Bucket " during watches . There was always salt tablets at the table and also a bottle of salt tablets on the desk in the engine room .
We drank lots of tea and lots and lots of water during a watch .
The fix was very simple ; If your sweat running into the mouth did not taste salty . Take a salt tablet .
The early salt tablets were terrible to take but after a year or so they provided us with tablets that had a coating and did not have a bad taste .
Only know of 1 Brocks Engineer during my period of service who lost his life to Heat Exhaustion .
This is not about what you have already thought it was!
But do you remember the anti yellow fever, smallpox and cholera shots admininstered by that stalwart Bank Line physician in Calcutta, Doctor Ganghuly? Also the individual pink health record books that were kept up-to-date and resided in the Master's drawer along with the discharge books?
Ganghuli was a former surgeon aboard one of the white ships. In my time the surgeon on "Inchanga" was Doctor Roy. His son was the Purser and the Writer was also a Bengali whom Wilkie Rutherford had christened "Brown Owl" because of his large glasses. He was regularly greeted with "Hoot! Hoot!"
Those of us who remember Wilkie know he had a nickname for everyone which in my case was "Hamish". Alan Macgregor the Second Mate was called "Willie". Both of us carried our adopted names throughout our Bank Line careers! As a matter of fact, I wanted to name my first boy child Hamish but his Brooklyn-born mother demurred. We settled on James!
Its a strange world!
But getting back to prophylactic medicine.....
Once our passenger register was reduced to 12, Macgregor, as Second Mate, became the keeper of the keys of the medicine locker on "Inchanga" which, of course, was a much more elaborate stash of medical goodies that was usual for a Bank Boat. There were pills that modern day kids consider old hat that cured hangovers and permitted 24-hour play and work combinations with no apparent side effects until one morning one of the Apprentices dropped down in a dead faint with a very low heartbeat. We all got a rollicking from Captain Gale who was told by Ganghuli what was happening. Youthful bad habits are not a recent phenomenon!
This is not about what you have already thought it was!
But do you remember the anti yellow fever, smallpox and cholera shots admininstered by that stalwart Bank Line physician in Calcutta, Doctor Ganghuly? Also the individual pink health record books that were kept up-to-date and resided in the Master's drawer along with the discharge books?
Ganghuli was a former surgeon aboard one of the white ships. In my time the surgeon on "Inchanga" was Doctor Roy. His son was the Purser and the Writer was also a Bengali whom Wilkie Rutherford had christened "Brown Owl" because of his large glasses. He was regularly greeted with "Hoot! Hoot!"
Those of us who remember Wilkie know he had a nickname for everyone which in my case was "Hamish". Alan Macgregor the Second Mate was called "Willie". Both of us carried our adopted names throughout our Bank Line careers! As a matter of fact, I wanted to name my first boy child Hamish but his Brooklyn-born mother demurred. We settled on James!
Its a strange world!
But getting back to prophylactic medicine.....
Once our passenger register was reduced to 12, Macgregor, as Second Mate, became the keeper of the keys of the medicine locker on "Inchanga" which, of course, was a much more elaborate stash of medical goodies that was usual for a Bank Boat. There were pills that modern day kids consider old hat that cured hangovers and permitted 24-hour play and work combinations with no apparent side effects until one morning one of the Apprentices dropped down in a dead faint with a very low heartbeat. We all got a rollicking from Captain Gale who was told by Ganghuli what was happening. Youthful bad habits are not a recent phenomenon!
My nickname from Wilkie was haggis.Do not remember the docs name on Isipingo,but when we were in calcutta drydock and the doc and i were sitting at breakfast,somebody came running in and said that the 2/e had fallen in to the dock ,we dashed out ,the dock took one look and refused to go down ,it was the mate (bert lynch) and myself who dashed down to see what we could do,but the poor chap was dead.
I dont know when the ship was downrated but the doc was on board the whole two years that I was there 57-59
when i was on the swan river the chief cook used to make up the bot limejuice i dont know what he added to it but it really tasted ok and everyone drank it and asked for more
BP tankers late 50s early 60s, lime juice in a tin container similar in size and appearance to a watering can without the shower head on the spout hanging on a hook under the vents on the boiler flat. Salt tablets, sometimes chocolate covered on the messroom tables. Only time a tot was issued was after a boiler clean as we steamed around the Cape at reduced speed.
I vividly remember the one gallon glass bottles of BOT lime juice -- I developed quite a taste for it. Preferred it to the branded varieties, which doesn't say much for my taste buds I guess.
We engineers always took a salt tablet when going on watch in the tropics as in those days there were no unmanned engine rooms or air conditioned control rooms, and in a steam turbine ship it got very hot indeed on the plates. The tablets were, I remember, rather like white Smarties.
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