The Mary Hopkin effect

The year is 1978. The music of the time was dross – with the exception of Kate Bush’s ‘Wuthering Heights’ which, when I played it on the packing crate sized portable ‘compact’  stereo in my cabin, was guaranteed to get one of the music critics comparing it to a female cat in rutting season. I would turn the volume down, consoling myself with the fact that some folk just didn’t have taste. After all, how much Frank Sinatra or worse still Elvis could a man listen to without going nuts?

We had sailed free running from Holyhead to Hamburg to pick up a barge loaded with small tugs, cranes and other wreck clearance equipment for passage to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia where Harms – a German salvage contractor – had been hired by the Saudi’s for wreck removal in the port. We’d been sub-contracted as their own tugs were engaged on other jobs, mostly in the then fledgling but expanding offshore game.

Hamburg is a great port for a run ashore. We were tied up opposite the offices of Harms at the southern bank of the Elbe river at the Vulcanhafen. As the barge was not yet ready, we were given free rein to go ashore which, as we were on the wrong side of the river, meant using the underwater pedestrian tunnel that joined one side to the other.

Walking through the old Elbe tunnel you come out near to the square, dome-shaped structure of the St. Pauli-Landungsbrücken which also marks the (in)famous St.Pauli red light district of the city. As any sailor will tell you, a run ashore invariably involves drinking copious amounts of beer whilst sightseeing in true nautical fashion – mainly  through a bar room window. A good run ashore has to include bars and clubs to distract the eye, offer the sort of venues where misdemeanours can be committed discreetly if that is your thing and –  more importantly – be close to public transport so you can get back aboard ship safely.  St. Pauli fitted that bill. So, armed with a suitable amount of ‘subs’ ( an advance of wages) from the Old Man, we decided to see just what Hamburg had to offer.

We hit many bars, raucous with a polyglot collection of punters, music and pretty hostesses who asked you if you would like to buy their company – and more – for the night. A polite refusal worked. The main purpose of the run was beer – and the lager flowed like nectar as we stoked well up towards a head of steam.

At a late stage in the night, I got separated from the crowd. One minute I was with them, the next I had gone outside to see if I could find a telephone to call home – spurred by that sudden urge to talk to someone and let them know you were having a good time – and then next…..they were not there. I found the drink I had left on the bar and downed it, and then set out to find the rest of them. Talk about a forlorn hope………..

At every bar I popped in at, I had a drink. Now, they used to serve smallish glasses over there which, whilst looking diminutive by British standards, contain a brew that is pretty damned strong! By the time I’d done six bars, I was starting to feel the strain of the evening and was in two minds as to whether to hop a joe (get a taxi) or continue seeking out my shipmates. As my befuddled brain tried to rationalise this, the urge to have a pee was starting to become painful and as I did not know the German for toilet, and was by then speaking slurred English with a North Walian accent, I figured a quick trip up a dark alley would do.

There were many up the Reeperbahn and I found one that seemed suitable and just pointed myself in that direction. Half way up the dark alley was a car with its lights off which looked like a taxi, its windows steamed up. Maybe he was waiting for chucking out time to make a good few bucks? Anyway,  I wedged myself between it and the wall, turned so as not to get anything from the ‘splash zone’ on me and unzipped. Out popped Wimpey (so-called because it was in the erection business – how vain are we when we are young?) and I started to let fly with a steaming fountain of what was probably 80% lager……ah, the relief! There is nothing – nothing at all – that beats that sensation of pressure being relieved, leaving greater space for more beer. It is unlike anything on earth! It fills you with a deep personal joy – so much so that my wandering pleasured mind was not focusing on the job in hand and it wasn’t long before the rear tyres of the vehicle were being washed down……

Then, from behind me. “ Guten abend, mein Herr. Polizei…..”

Now, I understood enough to realise I was being greeted cordially and I reponded by muttering ‘Nicht Polizei, mate. British Seaman. Englander Matrosen. Sleepbootsman! “ in a combination of English – German- Dutch. These Continentals were clever folk – they’d recognise some of it.

To which he replied, in heavily accented English,

“ Zo…..I am der Politzman, my good friend. You are urinating on a Politz car…..”

Through the alcoholic fog it started to dawn on me that while the word Taxi is international, Polizei is trouble in any language…….

Anyway, I got placed inside the car – and lightly interrogated, given a typical German telling off – very stern – and then a warning about my conduct. I was busy apologising profusely, almost embarrassingly, when the Policeman asked me whether I had said I was on a ‘schlepper’, which I knew was the German for tug. I said I was – and he grinned and said that he once went to sea – on a tug boat!

It ended with them being extremely good with me and driving me to the tunnel entrance, with instructions to get back to my ship and bed – which I took as being sound advice. A few minutes later I was bouncing off both walls of the tunnel but headed in the right direction.

We started the next day by mostly refusing breakfast preferring to hit the aspirin heavily. This kept the cook happy because he also had to cook which – as he was in as fragile a state as the rest of us – was probably no bad thing. The smell of eggs frying is not something to savour afer a skinful of good German Lager. I had to put up with all sorts of accusations about doing a sly one and going to see the painted ladies…..and when I told them what had happened, they didn’t believe me!

When the Mate surfaced – looking as bad as any of us slouched in the mess – we were told that we would shortly have to hook up to the tow. This meant all the deck squad turning out to manhandle the towing gear out from inside the hatch, grease up the bits that needed greasing, get the gas bottles, lights and shapes out and generally rig the barge for sea.  After much groaning about sore heads and many a sincerely muttered never again we went out on deck under the watchful eye of Chief Officer .

Making the tow up is hard work. Not only do you have to get heavy gas bottles across to the tow and rig them up – often having to manhandle them across seemingly yards of cobbled quayside -, you also need to rig the emergency towing gear. This is basically a duplicate chain bridle and wire pennant attached to a buoy and light messenger and carried alongside the tow, secured by whammies – a sailor’s term for light lashings that are expendable. The idea being that if the main tow breaks you can recover it by using the emergency gear. Having said that, while is sounds simple, it still involves heavy chains, wires and lots of swearing, cursing and heaving up from the deck store, up the quay wall, along the quayside and then onto the tow itself – and this without having yet rigged the main tow. And with a monster hangover!

By lunchtime we had secured the emergency towing gear and were set to rig the main tow.

We shifted ship after lunch and then worked like men possessed to set the towing gear on the barge up ready to be hooked up on the tug’s after deck. That done by 4pm, we were now in the mood for another night ashore. Despite the morning’s hangovers and heavy work of the day, once we had taken a shower – which, on every ship I have sailed on, is seemingly endowed with mystical powers so that all your reluctance to face one more night of heavy drinking and carousing is washed away down the plug hole – it was time to hit the town.

As a crew, we tramped beneath the Elbe once more in that lovely pedestrian tunnel and set out to sample the delights of St. Pauli again – with the same results as the previous night – apart from this time, I stayed very close to the crowd and even found out ow to use a German toilet!

The next morning, again under the influence of a seriously heavy session ashore, we shifted ship and lay close to under the blunt bows of the barge. We secured the towing gear and, a little after 9,30am, assisted by tugs from the Port, picked up a pilot and set out for the run to Gibraltar – the first stop.

The passage down the canal was good, and on reaching Brunsbuttel, we prepared for the North Sea. Once clear of the harbour control area we streamed the tow, dropped the pilot and dismissed the harbour tugs and that was it – Gibraltar here we come!

Arriving in Gibraltar, we shortened tow and had bunker barges come out to us to top up the water and fuel tanks – and managed another run ashore! More beer, more thick heads! I think I spent all my time in JJ’s bar sitting on a stool in the shady interior and just getting drunk and avoiding Policemen……….one AB went loopy whereupon the Captain threatened to have him locked in the paint locker if he carried on drinking. Unfortunately (for him) he ignored the Captain and annoyed the bo’sun so much that they came to blows and he ended up being laid flat-out on the main deck after a particularly well placed upper cut lifted him off his feet.

The Chief Engineer, meanwhile – a quiet man who had the nickname ‘The Shadow’, spent the entire time smashed off his head, quietly hiding down below in the engine room with two bottles of Scotch. It was with some relief that, three days after we had arrived, we sailed…..

Easy passage to Port Said, and then bimbling about waiting for a convoy through the canal. It was also my first introduction to the delightfully named ‘Suez Canal Electric light Company’ who owned the searchlights you had to carry aboard together with its two-man crew. At night they shone the light from side to side so that the embarked pilot could see the banks. I can remember hand steering and receiving orders from the pilot quite unlike anything I had ever heard before. “ Port a little….” a wild waving of hands. “ More….more…more…..OK, ‘K….STOP….Ins Allah!” and then “ I wish for more coffee…..” at which point a hand would come out holding a mug and a disgruntled watchkeeper would have to go down two decks to the galley to make one before the pilot would wave his free hand again. “ Starboard now….very good…good…..yes….more…..OK OK OK! Ins’Allah! “

We also had a visit from the ‘Gillie Gillie’ man – who would pull baby chicks or a sweet from behind your ear. Great stuff – and a Port Said regular. Meanwhile, as we were distracted, a gang of thieves cunningly masquerading as ‘boatmen’ for the Gillie Gillie men were trying to pick long fibres out of the cotton towing spring, and trying to steal anything not nailed down like brass sounding caps (etc). They were followed by the Mate and Bo’sun who ensured that they didn’t actually get anything, replacing each cap with a wooden bung.

After that it was a slow trip through the Red Sea and with no air conditioning aboard most days we went through the effort of work while we sun bathed and nearly every night was spent on the deck because it was much cooler. I have never seen the stars and the night sky as clearly as I did back then. Lying on my back on a thin mattress, on a gently rolling wooden deck, looking directly up at a spectacle that was pretty awesome.

In Jeddah we were not allowed alongside and had to anchor off. We stripped the tow, she was then ballasted down and the plant floated off to begin working on clearing the numerous wrecks littering the area. Two of these wrecks we towed out to deep water and sunk using explosives – a brilliant little job – whilst the others were munched away by the floating sheerlegs we had towed out and then disposed of by using small explosive charges to break them up. There were a lot of discarded ships there…….

Most days we performed ‘daily maintenance’ which involved greasing machinery, dropping the derrick (boom) and changing the wires, painting the engine room casing and ship’s upperworks and then making up a stage to hang over the ship’s side – chipping rust scabs off in searing heat, priming the result with red lead and then under coating / top coating it – oh and also, looking down over the stage, seeing sharks swimming lazily underneath us in the clear waters. You could see the sea bed, fathoms down, in the clear sea inside the anchorage. The lazily moving sharks were a sobering reminder of why swimming was not a good idea – unless you had a death wish and wanted it to be a spectator sport.

I also recall many long nights in the cool of the evening listening to exotic radio stations whilst sipping the illegal cans of booze we had – it being taboo to drink alcohol inside Saudi territorial waters but we seldom got a ‘visit’ from the authorities.

We also organised drink parties with the German salvors engaged on the wreck clearance by taking one of the big work boats they used out beyond the limit to ‘fish’….and have a few! The Saudi crews engaged were given our Sunday off – but the sight of them, at first light every day, praying to Mecca was very foreign to all of us and we left them to it. They were not the world’s hardest working employees either, always seeming to find some excuse to down tools and protest about something or other. They also indulged in some very illegal practices such as smoking. They said that providing tobacco never touched their lips, then it was not a sin – hence their insatiable appetite for filter cigarettes, which they paid ‘top dollar’ for from us. Requests for Scotch Whiskey  You sell me Johnny Walker I give you good price US Dollar were tactfully ignored. That would be – in nautical parlance – kicking the arse out of it

Surprisingly, we were never allowed ashore. The authorities would not grant any of us Visas to leave the ship. The only time I did get ashore was when we were being flown home and were met at the dock by a mini bus. From there it was a fast drive to the airport, through customs and on the ‘plane. In all we spent three months out in the anchorage. It was wonder no-one went stir crazy but a strict rationing of alcahol helped……

Not that that was the case when we saw the ‘plane home. You can imagine our surprise to find it was a British Airways flight  – so we drunk the bar dry! Same went for arrival in London – first stop was to the bar before we got a couple of taxis for Euston and the train home – where most of us slept it off as it rattled us homeward.

The good bit was we arrived home at the end of May in ‘78 and it was starting to look like a good summer. By then I was already brown as a nut so there wasn’t a tan to touch mine! By brown I mean exactly that – burned a deep rich colour.

A week or so after getting home I was told I was redundant but had two months leave due which they would pay me for and did not expect me to hand in any gear they’d provided or to come to the office.I took the leave for May and June but towards the end of June had already started to ring round shipping companies looking for employment.

In the last week of July, I took a job in the North Sea on anchor handling tugs – at twice the basic salary plus bonuses, and twice the leave. Six weeks on, six off with full pay. As Mary Hopkin sang:  “Those were the days…..”