O’Mara’s Epiphany

We had sailed from Holyhead with a ‘scratch’ crew as, having just returned from a deep-sea job, most of the regular crew were on leave. Even though I was one of the crew on leave, I was summoned to make up the deck crew, others more sensible than me having taken their leave and gone on holiday – far away from Holyhead. Not that I minded back then. I was single – and bored.

The job we had been given was to connect up to a coaster drifting without power in the Western Approaches. It was a ‘contract pull’ – that is, arrangements had been made between the coaster’s owner and our outfit on a fixed fee basis. We’d get a towing bonus out of it – which was pennies when compared to a decent tow deep-sea but it also meant that for those of us on leave, we’d get a ‘double banker’. The outfit would have to pay us double for forfeiting our leave.

The crew consisted of her regular Master, Mate, engineers – and the deck crowd was made up of part of her crew and some of the harbour men. For the harbourmen it was an experience as they seldom got the chance to sail on the ‘big ones’. It also meant that there was only myself and Mick O’Mara who were permanent crew on her with experience of the tug – meaning that the harbourmen were just there to make the numbers up.

We had left on a poor forecast for the day and a half trip to the coaster in question and whilst it was ‘bumpy’, it wasn’t bad. That was to come later on. As we steamed to the position given by the coaster, we quickly prepared the towing gear ready for transfer at sea. The tow spring was shackled up to the main towing wire, the pennant to the other end of the towing spring and to that a chain bridle attached to the pennant by a monkey’s face. Before anyone writes to the RSPCA, let me explain! A ‘monkey’s face’ was a steel plate that is triangular in shape and very heavily constructed. The base has two holes in it to which we attached the shackles and the chain. The single hole at the apex was for the pennant. It allowed the weight of the twin legs of the chain bridle to spread their load to the pennant. If you held it up then it was easy to see from where it got its name.

Once we had made it all up, everything was lashed down as the Coastguard were forecasting storm force conditions later. By the time we had secured the deck, the sea was a cold steel grey and the sky a drab and gun metal hue. The wind was flexing its muscles and you could feel the tug start to wear to the weather. It had all the hallmarks of being a ‘bit of a blow’.

Sure enough, by the time we reached the casualty, the weather was gusting 8 with a heavy swell rolling in from the Atlantic. VHF radio contact was made with the coaster  and she was told to have a crew standing by on the foc’sle to take our line. She replied that they had no power to their windlass and that the job might take some time given the weather. For us, the weather was not ‘bad’ as the ‘Afon Goch’ was a beautiful sea ship – but for the coaster, in ballast, it looked less than comfortable. She was rolling her beam-ends out when we went to size her up. On one or two occasions she dipped her lee gunnel right under, sending a solid sheet of water right over her main hatches before she swung back very quickly – the sea then sloughing back in a welter of dirty grey, roaring foam. This was also making her cork screw – burying her bows into the green and cleaving it into explosive white gouts as she frolicked like a young colt. I didn’t envy her deck crowd their role.

For us it was a different story. Tugs like the ‘Afon Goch’ are ‘wide arsed’, that is, they are built to take the sea and to leave the afterdeck as clear of water as the designers could make them. Design perfection notwithstanding, she was taking the odd roller aboard but was also quick at clearing her decks.

It was decided that as the coaster had no power, we were not going to use the chains but rather a single chain which the coaster’s crew would send through their Panama lead forward – that is the hole you see at the front of most ships from which lines are passed.

We closed in to pass them the chain, sending a light line over which they caught and then we threw it all overboard, leaving them to haul it in. Meantime, we sheered away to ensure there was no contact during the close quarter maneuvering that passing a tow involves. In seas like those, that could have resulted in a serious accident to us – the last thing we wanted was to call another tug to assist us!

Despite the weather and the conditions the coaster found herself in, they managed to hook up in a very short space of time and soon we had made the connection and  started to turn the coaster about to set course for Pembroke – some 30 hours away now. Her crew greased the chain – they would need to do this every couple of hours to reduce the friction of metal to metal contact and also to monitor the connection – you’d be surprised how much damage can be done when chain is working against metal continually like that.

The weather started to worsen. Land’s End Radio were announcing severe gale warnings southwesterly 8 to 9, occasionally storm force 10  and this worried the coaster Master who was constantly on the VHF requesting an update on the ETA. At one stage he said he might request we head for shelter if conditions got too much. Our Old Man told him that there wasn’t much by way of shelter. He told him we’d continue for Pembroke but update as conditions dictated.

By nightfall, the weather was a full gale 9 with a screaming gale and very heavy  seas. The ‘Afon Goch’ was labouring but making good headway. I was on the 8 -12 watch that night, with the Old Man. He had calculated with the weather and the speed of tug and tow we could shave a few hours off the original ETA.

Around 11pm, the Chief Engineer reported that he could hear a very loud scraping from right aft coupled with a heavy intermittent thumping. The searchlight was shone on the afterdeck and through the flying spray and boiling seas, we could see that one of the tow wire chafing guards had worked loose, leaving the bare wire scraping and thumping over the stern. Not good! The guards are designed to take punishment and save the tow wire from chafing itself weak – leading to a loss of the wire and, obviously, tow. The Old Man called the Mate and it was pretty soon clear we would need to go out there, try to get the guard back and re-secure it to the wire.

That someone was myself and Mick O’Mara – a devout Catholic who practised his religion seriously apart from the odd fall from grace when the demon drink took him and led him astray. He was a nervous man, much given to fatalism and dark opinion – a sea-going Private Fraser from ‘Dad’s Army’. As we dressed for the deck he muttered that this was a bad thing we were doing and that he felt in his bones that we were both doomed. Looking out through the towing winch room door at the maelstrom on the afterdeck, I had a brief moment of uncertainty – but then, with the arrogance and stupidity of youth – told him he was talking through his arse. Arrogant youth knows no fear without experience.

The Mate asked him if he preferred to stay in and he’d go out with me. Mick shook his head and said that it would never be said that Michael O’Mara ever stood back from a job.

“ What will be, will, Dewi. ” He told the Mate. ” You can’t alter what the Lord has written you up for in your book of days. I will go with the boy…..”

The boy! I was in my early twenties then but, as the youngest aboard, had to put up with the paternalistic opinion of most of the crew – especially Mick who thought I was stupid to be wasting my time on a tug boat when I had the whole world at my feet. He had either never seen how I loved the sea – or he didn’t want to. It made no odds to me – this was what I wanted to do, always had. Boy? I’d show him….

The tug had turned head to sea now, making just enough headway to allow us to get out onto the deck armed with a heaving line and a set of spanners plus some grease in a small pot carried in a bag slung over my shoulder. The run from the winch room to the after end was a short one – but the waist-high seas that sucked and punched at us as we made our way down aft were determined as they tried to loosen our footing or tear our grip away from the hand rails.

We managed to get aft and with movements born of unexpressed desperation, made ourselves secure just under the tumble home. The wire rose and fell like a live thing, thrumming under the weight of the tow astern. The ship worked and groaned through the steep seas and the wind was a banshee wailing of shrill shrieks and low moans. We very quickly got a bight around the chafe guard and started to heave it in bit by bit until we got the first two nuts close enough to start undoing. This meant half standing, leaning over the stern taking bites at the nuts with the ring spanner, loosening them enough to be easy enough to turn by hand. Then with it loose enough, we times the rise of the tow wire and pulled the whole guard inboard. We worked quickly at loosening the other nuts. It took what seemed like ages – slipping and dancing as the sea embraced us – but eventually we had the guard loose enough to be ready to go back over the wire where it met the stern of the tug.

Timing it was a real skill. The wire would rise off the stern rail and we would pull the guard from under. It would smash against the stern rail and then the weight of the wire would displace it again. It became a battle of wills to try to pull it up far enough for it to stay in one place long enough to fasten it – whilst timing the rise and fall of the tug and being pulled and pushed around by the bully sea.

Eventually – soaked through and by now chattering with the cold – we secured it and tightened it down. Once it was on, we slapped a heavy layer of grease onto the guard and rail and then – exhausted – sat under the bulwark to wait for the best time to return for’ad.

Looking at the tug from there, the scene was an awesome one. Against the dark sky, the tug was rising and falling, dipping and burying her bows into the head seas. Spray – tinged red and green on either side by the navigation lights – was being thrown up as she butted the seas, then came racing aft like bullets, hissing angrily past us. Either side, half illuminated by the powerful deck searchlight, the seas seemed mountainous as they thundered past, marbled with ragged veins of white, growling like live things. We sat there, holding on, and then Mick said to me that when he said ‘go’ we were both to make a run for the winch room but to make sure we hung on at all times. No lifelines, no life jackets – that was the way of it back then.

As she rose to the next swell he turned to me, his face shining wet, his eyes wide as a madman.

“ Let her go down and then when she starts to rise and I say, then we go for it. Ok? “ I nodded a reply.

She went up, climbing into the darkness and then seemed to shudder on top of a sea before falling heavily downwards. I waited for his call – but it never came. Instead, I heard him scream at me to hang on for dear life. I could see that one sea had become a rogue, twisting inboard as the tug fell into another trough – and that same sea was coming inboard fast and heavy – a dark green roaring monster of a sea. I heard him shout in a scared voice.

” Holy Mary, Mother of God……….”

The sea thundered down instantly and then the whole world vanished as we were swamped. Odd feelings. The sea seemed to reach out and grab me bodily, trying to pull me away from the small stanchion I was hanging onto. It sucked at me, pummeling and twisting at my body in an effort to loosen my grip and take me down in to the dark depths of its being. I was starting to swallow water now, feeling as if my lungs would burst and thinking that this was really a very serious moment. My eardrums were roaring with the blood being pumped by my heart – and then the tug seemed to falter under me before rising up – and the sea was ebbing, hissing and sloughing away from us both and Mick was half on his feet,  grabbing my hood and pulling me onto my knees and his voice screaming, roaring “ Run! For fuck’s sake, run!’.

I didn’t need to be told…..

We made it to the winch room where the crew waited. We were pulled inboard and helped to strip off. My fingers were like blocks of wood, numb with the cold and I was unable to even pull the zipper down. Once out of them, it was straight into a hot shower and a dry set of clothes – and hot sweet tea, gallons of it!. To the jokes and the jibes that covered the fear that we’d not been hurt or lost. To that rough but caring monkshood community that is a ship and its crew.

We got the coaster in to Pembroke no problem and then laid up alongside and had a run ashore. The experience was forgotten by myself as I took my time ashore with the crew and got – as usual – drunk. The incident was part and parcel of life at sea and, ignorant of its real danger, I just accepted it as ‘part of the job’.

Later that night, as we sat in the mess room, Mick looked at me and told me that he really thought we’d had it. We were demolishing a crate of beer at the time, in a smoke-filled fug with all the crew around.

” I thought that was it. I could see it coming and I thought we were goners. The worst bit for me was when I saw – I swear to God I did – my mother walking towards me with her arms open and a smile on her face – and she’s been dead this fifteen years now…..”

No-one commented at his version of the event. That was his experience and his alone. There was a sort of respectful silence among us all – but only for a brief moment before someone broke the spell and said  “ Ah fuck it – you’re okay – someone pass me a beer…..”

Whatever he saw that night out there in the storm, it decided his future. When we berthed back in Holyhead he took his bag and went ashore – and that was the last time he set foot afloat again. After some 30 years at sea it was not the conditions that caused him to go ashore – but whatever it was, to this day he swears blind that what he saw was real.

Who was I to argue?