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hazards on passage....

3K views 15 replies 11 participants last post by  rabaul 
#1 ·
Apart from weather, refugee boats, congested ports, and possibly lack of expert medical attention when needed, I guess we had it easy in the Bank Line days. We could focus on the next run ashore and what was in the kitty to spend.

Just had a conversation with my son Guy, who is in the thick of it with the so called pirate menace ( kids with guns). The ships he has responsibility for are having to buy reels of razor wire to go all around the bulwarks.....

Made me realise how straight forward our passages were in general.

Did anyone get boarded by hostile gun bearing boat crews?
 
#3 ·
Pirates.....

Got boarded by pirates twice when I was at sea with Bank Line. The first time was on "Ettrickbank" in Manila Bay. We had arrived ovenight and were slow steaming up the bay to make the pilot boarding station at dawn when a couple of small boats powered by outboard motors came alongside and threw up grappling irons to prepare to board. Ship was fairly high out of the water so we were aware of the boarding attempt before any of the pirates made it to the deck. We fended them off with throwing bolts and nuts at them but the final blow came when we dropped a bucket of bolts and nuts into their boat and it went right through the hull. Pirates jumped from the sinking craft to the second boat and they fell back into the night. Just as well we never had to ballast the deeptanks as there would have been no bolts and nuts left to secure the lids!

Second incident was aboard "Fleetbank" in Chittagong when the thieves came aboard up the forward mooring lines and made off with all the manilas and wires from the forecastle head leaving the ship tied up only with the moorings, ropes in use being cut off at the bitts. Never saw or heard anything from my night watchman position on the after deeptank hatch having a cup of tea with the duty sixth engineer. Needless to say, rockets flew next day and the Mate was all for stringing me up from the forward crosstrees!
 
#6 ·
Following a repair job on an item of my equipment while we were in Penang, the friendly chap who did the work offered to take me in his car to see some of the countryside, but halfway through the journey he informed me that he had noticed that there had been a vehicle following us for the last several miles, and he suspected it must be connected with the fact that he had just received his pay packet. i.e. he suspected that it might be an armed bandit!

His solution was to stop off at the house of the police chief, who he knew personally. Fortunately we did this successfully, although he happened to be absent at the time. The suspected bandit also stopped outside and seemed perplexed by the situation, which proved that my friend had read the situation correctly. After a minute or two he drove off and the incident was over. I think we cut the sightseeing short thereafter and hightailed it back to town and safety.

I will never forget the police chief's little servant girl who noticeably took to me during our short visit despite our communication difficulties. It all added to a memorable adventure.
 
#7 ·
Trouser Piracy.

How can I forget the blood curdling screams of the of the Olivebanks third mate?He had turned in early worse for drink,only to be awoken by the infamous West African trouser pirate just fastening up his best pair of strides.I was on cargo watch and just happened to be passing his cabin when I heard the commotion.When I got into his cabin poor third mate was laid on the floor tugging at his precious going ashore trousers trying to de bag this evil marauder.Anyway,we overpowered him and retrieved the trousers then turned him over to some of the Indian crew who,I think, locked him up for a few hours to teach him a lesson.
 
#10 ·
Shanghai was a menacing place to visit in the fifties,the approach patrolled by warships and the river lined with what looked like landing craft.There was martial music blasting out and we were all lined up on deck while our cabins were searched.
After dark the famous Bund was completely blacked out and to top it all the Pilot,from Eastern Europe I believe, took us down river "sideyways" over all the mooring buoys,resulting in a dry dock visit in Japan for repairs delaying our departure.No complaints there!
 
#16 ·
Spent a day in Freetown on the Beechbank early 1977 discharging bales of cotton piece goods loaded some months earlier in Calcutta. We were alongside using union purchase to get the bales ashore onto a variety of trucks. By lunch time we were visited by a number of dugout canoes and every so often a load of cargo would swing out over the wall where it would be dropped into the water to be collected by the ' bad guys' - no guns but lots of shiney blades flashed at us as we made our annoyance known. We stopped cargo and a small ' grey coloured gun boat' was sent around to patrol around the berths. Things calmed down a little for a couple of hours and then a couple of loud bangs were heard ( gunshots ?) and the ' gun boat ' disappeared - guess what the canoes returned and the CPG bales started to go overboard again into the waiting dugouts. This continued for our stay - I remember at the time thanking my lucky stars that I never joined Palm Line . The Beechbank was my only trip along the West African Coast - it included six weeks off Apapa - Happy if I never see the place again.
 
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