Deck Boy, page 44
Joey and Fizz, who remained my lifelong friends, were the happiest couple in English football. Fizz had two, three and finally four children. Joey, at the age of twenty-three, became striker for Newcastle and was a regular member of the England squad.
Samuel, the finest man on board, continued a few more trips as bosun then took a job as school janitor to be with his growing family and work for the church.
Michael, a big hit with Auntie Meg, was left a substantial sum of money by his grandmother. He and Barbara moved to York and opened a bijou restaurant called Pink Champagne, which became very successful.
Smoky and Dolores resumed their violent marriage. Before we left the ship he had presented me with a beautiful painting of our day at the lake in Fiji – with the other Dolores, the praying mantis, hiding in a corner. Word of his work was spreading and an exhibition was organised at a gallery in London. By the time it opened, however, Smoky was drinking his lager and rolling his fags aboard a tramp steamer, five hundred miles up the Amazon.
Ossie, of course, was no longer with us, drifting in the depths of the beautiful Java Sea. Michael and Barbara arranged a requiem mass at St Mary’s in Westport with lots of candles and a good-looking altar boy swinging clouds of incense. Charlie and I went with Auntie Meg. To my surprise it was well attended and I spotted several faces I recognised. Captain Bell read one of the lessons and Michael the other, demure in a soft grey suit, a white buttonhole for Ossie and the merest trace of eye-shadow. A memorial stone was erected close to the plot of his appalling mother:
Oswald Bagot,
faithful son and much-loved shipmate.
Safe in the arms of Jesus.
And what became of Tony Fanshott-Williams and Trish the Dish, who were carried off by Ka’tang? There was no news of the horrible Tony and I couldn’t care less. But by chance, two or three years later, Charlie came across an article in an old magazine which spoke of rumours, passed on by seamen, of a beautiful white woman who was said to be running with a gang of buccaneers in the South China Sea. Can such stories be believed? I hope so, and if it is Trish, I wish her well.
As for me? Nothing so exotic. I stayed on at school to take my ‘A’ levels and mostly enjoyed it – friends, rugby, teenage parties – but the trips I had made with dad and the months I spent aboard Pacific Trader had got into my blood and I wanted to go back to sea.
I imagined this would be in the Merchant Navy, it was all I knew, but my plans changed when an officer from the Royal Navy came to talk to the sixth form and show us a short film. I liked what he had to say enough to go for an interview. And later a medical.
Auntie Meg drove us to York for the opening of Pink Champagne. “Ooh, lucky for some,” Michael said when I told him my plans. “All those bell-bottoms! A lot of very lively people in the Navy, dear – and the straights are even worse! Isn’t that right, Barbara? Pacific Trader hasn’t got a look-in.”
Dad put it differently. Now a deep-sea captain on the China run, he flew home to see me. “Just the job for a grand lad like you, Ben,” he said as we sat in the lounge bar of the Eight Bells. “A real career. Plenty of action, foreign travel, good pay, good prospects of promotion. I couldn’t be more pleased.”
So that was it. And on a beautiful October morning, two months before my eighteenth birthday, I kissed Auntie Meg and my girlfriend goodbye at the station, shook Uncle Joe’s hand, and set off with a high sense of adventure to start my training at the Royal Naval College in Dartmouth.
Glossary of Nautical Terms
AB : able seaman
alleyway : corridor
azimuth : check accuracy of a compass against the true bearing of the sun or stars
bight : a wide bay; a bend or loop in a rope
binnacle : housing for magnetic compass
bitts : pair of strong posts on deck to which mooring or tow ropes are attached.
booby hatch : small rectangular hatch with raised trunking that gives access to the hold
bosun : petty officer in charge of the crew
bridge : navigating deck (wheelhouse, chartroom, binnacle, etc.)
bulkhead : wall
chippy : ship (or shore) carpenter
coaming : raised metal edge around a hatch for keeping out water
crosstree : horizontal beam high up the mast
davits : small double cranes for lowering a lifeboat
deckhead : ceiling
Decks - foredeck, afterdeck
one up to crew deck
one up to boat deck
one up to bridge, funnel deck
derrick : long tubular beam used for loading and discharging cargo
D.F. : radio / telecom. direction finding
donkeyman : responsible for the auxiliary / donkey engine and generators in port
flying wing : projecting wing of the bridge
fo’csle : enclosed section of foredeck at the bow
fo’csle head : raised deck above fo’csle
freeing port : opening in a solid rail to allow water to escape
gyro : gyroscopic compass showing true (as opposed to magnetic) north
halyard : rope for hoisting flag, sail, etc
heaving line : a light rope for throwing
Holds, cargo spaces –
lower hold
lower ‘tween deck - with lockers
upper ‘tween deck - with lockers
shelter deck (holds 3 and 4)
holystone : block of sandstone (with handle) for scouring a wooden deck
J.O.S. : Junior Ordinary Seaman
lamptrimmer : lampie; petty officer, junior to bosun, in charge of deck stores
marlinspike : metal spike used for splicing etc.
mast house : locker at the foot of the mast
monkey island : small deck above the bridge where a magnetic compass is situated
Pool : the Shipping Federation office, where seamen learn what work is available
poop : raised platform / deck at the stern
quarter : starboard or port side of ship towards the stern
safety line : rigged rope, waist high and taut, to grip in stormy weather
samson post : thick post to support and suspend derricks
scupper : drainage channel and outflow at the side of the deck
shackle : U-shaped metal fastener with screw locking pin to secure wires or ropes
shroud : another name for mast stay
single-up : reduce mooring lines to one
slops : ship’s store providing basic clothing, bedding, etc.
smoko : morning or afternoon break
splice : join two ropes by weaving the strands together (end to end / end to middle)
stage : long board / seat with a cross-piece at each end, suspended on ropes
stay : wire guy-rope supporting the mast
steaming light : navigation light when vessel is under way
stem post : flag pole at the bow
suji-muji : suji – a lime and soda mixture used for washing paint
tabnabs : biscuits, small cakes, buns, eaten at break times
thimble : a tear-shaped metal eye around which a rope or wire is spliced
winch : electric motor with revolving drums for hauling ropes and wires
windlass : powerful winch / motor on fo’csle head for raising anchor
In place of the correct nautical term ‘companionway’, for which dictionaries offer various definitions, I have referred to stairs (below decks), steps (above decks) and ladders, which seem to me more precise and less cumbersome.
Alan Temperley
Alan Temperley was born in Sunderland in the north-east of England and educated at the Bede Grammar School. Aged sixteen he went to sea with the Shaw Savill Line, served his apprenticeship aboard ships very like Pacific Trader in this story, and qualified as a deck officer. Some years later, changing career, he came ashore to study English at Manchester and Edinburgh Universities. Thereafter he became a teacher of English, notably in the northern Highlands of Scotland. His life since, including a return to sea, has been a combination of teaching and writing. His books, mostly fiction and folklore, have won awards, been televised and translated into eighteen languages. Alan currently lives in south-west Scotland. He has one son and two granddaughters.
Alan Temperley, Deck Boy
