Orcades

Lovely nostalgia, possibly mid sixties?? (Orient Line paintwork & old type radar!)

Simon,
I forgot to put the date in!
It was in mid 1964 and it was in the passing canals just south of Port Said.

Great photo reefpilot. The dark sky provides a dramatic element to an unusual shot of Orcades. I have always felt the Orient Line corn coloured hull and green boot - topping looked far better than the P&O all white hull with red. Unfortunately many of the other old photographs have faded and the Orient colours are being lost to us today.

Fred

A great shot

Heading South out of Port Kembla early 1968 on a Greek tramp and Orcades appeared out of the twilight. Our Sparks called her up....."what ship?...". The reply from Orcades was a terse "F@$# Off" LOL!

Bob

Great photo it's good to go back in time

Orcades/MABA. The passenger newspaper transmitted to ships from Sydney Radio/VIS was called 'MABA Press'. The R/O's in these ships spent most of the night watches copying a newsheet from various radio stations world wide depending upon where you were. If you were good enough you could type the transmission directly onto Gestetner 'skins' for printing by the Bureau staff. If you couldn't type direct or had to write it in long hand you had to stay on after your watch to type it up! You soon learned to type direct. The Chief R/O used to check the skins for errors before it was allowed to go to the Bureau. A lesson quickly learned was to limit your corrections with the red Gestetner fluid until it had been passed and then edit it! Too many red dots and he would make you re-type the whole page!

It was a great boon for future life at sea being able to type directly from morse and saved countless hours re-typing weather forecasts, nav warnings and telegrams etc. Typing German and Dutch press was always a good sport - trying to guess how long the word was going to be before you came to the end of the line...