Is their anyone out there ex Eastern Ships
HiI note this goes back to 2009. I'm not too clever on getting around this site. If you are still there Garry I was 3/E on Loksang, 1948 to 1951.
Eastern Saga was in the fleet, then Queen and Glory came before I left.
I was 3/E on Eastern Saga from July '84 to Jan '85. It was quite a wreck then but the run was good.[/QUOTE
I sailed with Jardines (ISNC) from 1980 to 1984.
I was onboard the Tsuru Arrow, Malahat, Eastern Moon, Mountain Thistle and Eastern Saga.
The Saga was a bit decrepit right enough but as you say, she was always on a good run.
The Eastern Moon was my favorite, Vancouver to Eastern seaboard of the states with lumber.
Hi, we must have just missed each other as I had just gone on leave when it happened. Seem to recall stories about pictures of HMS Bulwark being stuck into the side of a Mao portrait that they had put on the bridge and some other disfiguration of a Mao picture ? Also a good friend 'Sexy' Sid (Ferguson ?) getting a good kicking on the boat deck by the donkeyman, egged on by the red guard mob.Served with Indo China from 1960 4/O to Master.
Favourite ship was EASTERN STAR on which I sailed as 4/O,3/0,2/O and C/O. Another favorite ship was EASTERN MOON was C/O on her in the Shanghai attack by Red Guards in 1966.
There is a suberb painting of Easter Star at Old Ship Pictures web site at www.photship.co.uk
This site has lots of other IC ships of that era.
Thanks for replying Robert and letting us know what did actually happen, not too far from the tales doing the rounds afterwards ! Was it also true about being made to kneel on pallets next to the ship, then wrapping a torn up ensign around everyone's necks and being led down the other ships or was that also a bit of enriched gossip ?For MikeK
Tommy Marr was indeed on Eastern Moon at time. Only he and the Sparks were not lugged off to shore.
The picture on Bridge was a poster of Mao which 2/O Greg Bannatyne was using as a dart board prior to being carted off.
Sexy Sid was carted off for insunuatiions of what Mao did to cats.
I seem to remember the day the Moon was attacked the Red Guards also sacked the British Consulate in Shanghai.
Greg and I spent nearly 3 weeks in the Shanghai Prison then went on trial in a big stadium and sentenced to being deported for Obstructing the Great Proletarian Revolution
Was back in Shanghai in 2001 on E&A containership ARAFURA
but I guess all traces of MAO MADNESS had long gone.
I just picked up on this interesting thread I had to go by rail from Shanghai to Hong Kong in February 1962 I have still got my rice paper visa and train tickets best regards DaveAS far as I can remember Mike after we were taken off the ship by hystericak Red Guards we were made to kneel on pallets in front of ship wearing cardboard dunces caps, can’t remember any torn Red Ensign though. After half an hour in blazing sun we were carted of by lorry presumably to a Police Station. We all spent a few days there before Greg and I got carted off to the Prison which was run by PLA who seemed almost apologetic foe Red Guard Madness.
Sid and the others spent a few more days at Police Station being indoctrinated with Mao’s Little Red Book – fiendish oriental torture indeed !! before being returned to Honkong.
Greg and I went by rail from Shanghai to Hongkong with PLA escort. At Liwo bridge we were met by John Gibson the then Shipping Manager and whisked away in a darkened car and taken to his flat and cleaned up. Spent rest of day dodging press and then whisked away on darkened car to Kai Tak and smuggled on to Qantas flight to Sydney.
Press tried to ambush us at Sydney Airport but Greg’s father who met us tipped us off and we dodged them.
As I was currently then an RAN Reserve officer I had a somewhat amusing debrief in a seedy Kings Cross hotel by a Navy spook.
I caught up with Tommy Marr a couple of times when he was Master on Eastern Queen just before he retired. Sid I met in Yokohma in 1971 when I was joining a new ship, and again in Hongkong when he was Engineer Super.. Was back in Hongkong a few times from 1986-90 when I was on E&A containerships Asian Jade and Arafura. We only had a few hours in port so usually only had time to catch up with my old shipmate from Eastern Star days David Cauvin.
Regards
"How unlike the home life of our own dear Queen!"The Not so Noble House
For those old IC hands familiar with James Clavell’s Noble House written in 1981 set in 1963 Hongkong the real tale was somewhat more tawdry. Noble House has a power struggle to oust the Taipan, I always though it was to oust Michael Herries but it was in fact to oust David Newbigging who clashed with the Keswicks over concentrating on making Jardines a real estate empire. Both Herries and Newbigging were honourable types whilst the Keswicks would have been at home in the Borgia family.
Down stairs in Indo China Office the real tawdry power struggle occurred, the Shipping Manager John Gibson had just shot through leaving his resignation on his desk and flow to Australia where he mysteriously disappeared from a hotel a few days later. Gibson apparently fed up with the petty goings on in Jardine House. The power struggle for his job was initially between Queeg Parish and the Jardine Agency Manager who threatened a bit of ethnic cleansing of IC management and supers if he gained office. The IC Management rivals made a security pact to defeat Agency Manager and managed to get their candidate Colin Hardy into the job.
I later heard they wouldn’t let Queeeg stay on as Marine Super after he was 55 and a further ignominy was he lost all his loot and pension on a stockmarket fraud engineered by Jardines. The Keswicks wanted to raise money to take over a big real estate outfit in London so they stoked the stock market in Hongkong to where it was like a casino withy every man and his dog [and Queeg] gambled their all, then lost all when Keswicks took their money and ran. Complaints to Hongkong Financial secretary only got the laconic comment that “you can’t protect people from their own greed”
Although Indo China soldiered on in bulk shipping and tanker management the liner trades slowly faded. Their venture into containerisation was to say the least half baked with the Flinders Shipping venture ill thought and basically wrong ships. Swires by comparison were innovative although they too have vastly changed post 2000
What a small world it is. I have often wondered what happened to Dave Cauvin and now, thanks to you, I know. Dave and I sailed together on Blue Flue's Stentor to Aussie in 1956. He left at the end of the voyage to join the Mayflower for her Atlantic crossing. We met a few times when he was with Jardines and our ships were in port together, usually in Bangkok for some reason, but in time our paths diverged and we lost touch. Sad to see that he died so young. One thing, though, I'm sure that Dave told us that he had been born in the Seychelles. (Not important!) I'll attach a picture of us at a noon ceremony on the Stentor. Dave is on the extreme left and I am next to Fred Edwards on the extreme right. Sad to reflect that, with the possible exception of the young middy in the lineup, I am the last one standing.If you were on Glory with Ken and Dale then you would have been with my good friend David Cauvin.
Dave fell foul of Parish and left after being C/O on Easter Ranger.
He then was Master on a South African ship running coal from Lourenco Marques tio Capetown. Dave was born in Capetown his father was Harbour Master there. He was aiming to settle there and was taking his Japanese wife Ayako there and she was in LM awaiting permision to take her to South Africa where Goverment had promised Dave she would be treated as an honourary white. Unfortunately the government reneged on rather petty grounds that Dave had become a British citizen when South Africa left the Commonwealth, he had done this because he had to be a British citizen to sit for his Masters ticket.
David and Ayako returned to Hongkong where David worked for a Yacht Consultants. David's ambuition was to sail the world and whilst getting the yacht ready Ayako was killed by a gas bottle exploding in yacht cabin. I saw David regularly in 197O-80s. Sadly he died of cancer at his sisters in Hobart in 1988.