OUR PROBLEMS CONTINUE
Up until now, we had rarely seen the Captain on the bridge. This is
normal practice on Merchant ships. The Captain of course, is
always in command, but at sea, and for practical purposes, the
every day running (navigation) of the ship is left to the Deck
Officers, The First, Second, and Third Mates. Each officer takes a
watch. Traditionally, the First Mate takes the four to eight watches,
the Second Mate takes the twelve to four watches, and the Third
Mate takes the eight to twelve watches. The Captain is always on
the bridge when the ship is entering or leaving port. Apart from
those occasions, we would mostly see him during the eight to
twelve watch in the morning, when the least experienced of the
officers, the Third Mate was on watch. As long as things were
going OK, the Captain would often then go below. Sometimes he
would put in an appearance at the all important “noon day
sighting”. This is when the navigating officer, the second Mate
would take a sighting of the sun with his sextant, to determine the
ship’s longitude, and from this reading he would then plot the ships’
position. Since we hadn’t seen much of the sun during our voyage,
not many “noon sightings” had been made. However, now that the
ship was sailing in these reduced conditions, the Captain quite
naturally spent a lot more time on the bridge; it was his attitude to
the helmsman during his continued presence there that led to quite a
bit of trouble.
With the ship going so slowly, and the continued atrocious weather
– it was getting worse rather than better – steering the ship became
almost impossible. Sometimes, we would stand at the wheel, with it
hard over to either port or starboard, waiting for the ship to
respond. It was really a question of having to wait until the stern of
the ship “hit a low”, when the propeller would be under water,
which meant that it could put some “way” (forward movement) on
the ship, which in turn, allowed the rudder to do it’s job. It wasn’t
that the wheel was any harder to turn because of the rough weather.
In fact, most merchant ships in those days had what today in
automobile terms; we would call “Power Steering”. This means that
when the wheel was turned one way or another, hydraulic fluid
would be forced down small pipes to the steering flat down aft, and
cause the steering engines to turn the rudder. All we had to do was
to watch the compass, and turn the wheel accordingly.
I will start from a position where the ship was “right on course”;
(in practice this was really hardly ever the case.) Even with the ship
generally headed in the “right direction”, each time the bow would
rise up out of the water, the wind and swells would cause it to
swing (or “yaw”) wildly from side to side, sometimes as much as
ten degrees or more either side of the desired course. (We are
talking about a seven thousand ton ship here, rather than a yacht on
the Solent.) We soon learned that with the bow in the air, the stern
– and therefore the propeller and rudder – were in the water, and
this was the best time to use the rudder to “coax” the ship to one
side or the other. Usually, it was best to try to steer into the wind,
since being light ship; the wind had the greatest effect on which
way the bow would fall. With all this in mind, during those few
precious seconds that the bow was in the air, and the stern in the
water, the helmsman would try to anticipate the ship’s next swing,
and turn the wheel accordingly. Sometimes this meant going
directly from hard a port to hard a starboard. Not as easy as it
might sound, even with “power steering”, because once the wheel
was hard over either way, it had to be then pulled back to ‘midships
before it could be turned the other way, all this lost precious time.
Sometimes you would be lucky, and the ship would land within a
reasonably few degrees of the prescribed course. Mostly it didn’t,
and you would be left with the wheel hard over in the same
direction that the weather in all of its unpredictable moods, had
decided to take the ship anyhow! On these occasions, there was
nothing else to do but to put the wheel hard over to the other
direction as quick as possible, and keep it there until the ship
decided to respond, or until the weather allowed the ship to
respond. It was a feeling of complete helplessness.
Nobody likes to be as far off course as we often were, but there
was precious little we could do about it other than to stand there,
with the wheel hard over, waiting for the first sign that the ship was
about to respond. Whilst all this was going on, the ship was
pitching and tossing quite badly. When you are up on the top deck
(as we were in the wheelhouse) you can appreciate even more so,
just how the ship was being tossed about by the weather. Without
the wheel to hang on to, one would have been thrown across the
wheelhouse deck on many occasions. I think the officers on watch
appreciated the situation of the helmsman, but unfortunately, the
Captain didn’t.
It is understandable that being responsible for the ship, and the lives
of all on board, he had much to think about. His first order was
“AB’s only on the wheel”. This meant that the Ordinary Seamen in
each watch were not allowed to take a turn on the wheel. This in
itself was no great hardship; it just meant that we had a wheel every
watch instead of every two out of three. However, it wasn’t long
before the first AB came down off the wheel to tell us that he had
been “logged” (fined) by the Captain for his inability to steer the
ship properly. When he had protested, the Captain fined him for
insolence! On one occasion, he even sent a man off the wheel,
demanding that the next man take his place. Whatever mood he was
in, or whatever responsibilities he had, even he realised that he
could not go on replacing men on the wheel. Within a short space
of time, several helmsmen had been logged; those who had
answered back had also been logged extra for insolence. I can’t
remember what the amounts were, but it was probably ten shillings
for each offence.
I know from my own experience that the officer on watch did not
approve of what was happening, but there was little they could do
about it. The Captain is Master of his vessel, and his word is law.
When my own turn came, the Mate tried to signal me to “cool” it,
but when such things happen (especially when you are an eighteen
year old and ready to take on the world!) the indignity of being told
that you are unable or unfit to steer the ship weighs much more
heavily than the thought that the Captain may have been under
undue stress!!! During those moments when even the Captain had
to go below, the officers on watch would talk to us, and tell us to
remain calm until at least the weather subsided, when they would
“have a word”, and try to “sort things out”. Otherwise, we were all
for “seeing the Shipping Federation”, and “having something done
about it” when we reached New York. I’m not sure if any of us
realised just exactly what could be done, but we all felt (not
unreasonably,) that the Captain had unjustly treated all those who
had been fined. (Of course, when talking amongst ourselves, we
expressed ourselves in slightly less diplomatic terms than that!!!)
Further drama occurred when – again, during the hours of darkness
– the ship experienced another “big bang”. I wouldn’t go so far as
to say that we were all more worried than last time; I think the
general feeling was one of resignation! Again, I was down aft, and
in my bunk. I think we all knew what had happened. The fact that
the stern of the ship was constantly rising out of the water, causing
the propeller to race, was by now, just part of life. One gets used to
the sensation of being lifted up, poised as it were in mid air for a
second or two, and then that sensation of the bunk falling away,
with the body “catching up” with the bunk on the way down,
coming to rest with a sudden jolt as the ship “bottoms out” in the
cradle of the swell. Despite the continual, and often violent
movement of the ship, it was not too difficult to get to sleep; and so
it was that as soon as the routine movement of the rise and fall of
the ship was disturbed, a “different” noise occurred, and we all
woke up.
Once again, there had been that extra loud metallic “bang”, the
engines had stopped, and the ship was handed back to the vagaries
of the weather – which soon became obvious, as the movements of
the ship became even worse. Once more, we made a quick trip up
to the deck clad only with the minimum amount of clothing thrown
on for a “quick look”. When we arrived on deck, the engineer was
already there, torch in hand, lying on the deck with his head and
shoulders protruding beyond the rails overlooking the stern. It
didn’t take him long to confirm that yet another blade had fallen off
our propeller, but with almost a sigh of relief, he informed us that it
was the blade diametrically opposite to the one we had already lost!
This meant that we still had two blades, but because they were
diametrically opposite, the ship could at least carry on as she had
been, keeping her head into the weather, and maybe now that the
“imbalance” was gone from the propeller, we might even be able to
afford higher revs. which in turn, would give us better steering!
I doubt if the engines were ever put to “Full Ahead”, but at least,
our previous ability to keep the ship into the wind was being
maintained. The steering did not become any easier, nor did the
Captain’s temper become any sweeter. No more men were logged
for an inability to steer the ship, so it may have been that the Mate
had spoken to the Captain on the matter. It became just a matter of
standing behind the wheel – even hanging on for dear life on some
occasions – and applying the helm one way or another until the ship
decided to respond. There was really no effort being made to steer
a course as such, it became more a sense of pointing, or trying to
point, the ship in the right direction. From the snippets of
information we were able to glean from the officers, what with the
ferocious gale force winds, and the currents, we were actually
losing ground quite steadily, and had been for some time; but as
long as we did so with the bow of the ship pointing in the right
direction, then that seemed to be the best we could do under the circumstances.
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