On 23rd October 1968 I signed off the Rangitoto. Mr. Moxley, the New Zealand Shipping Company recruitment officer asked me why I was leaving so I told him that I wanted to study for my second mate’s certificate and that there were too many distractions on the Rangitoto and I also needed my own cabin to study quietly. “Don’t worry about that”, he said, “I’ll sort you a berth on another one of our ships if you like. Go home and take your leave and I will be in touch”. Say no more.

Back in Hull on leave I met up with one of my old mates, Mick Harrison. Mick and Bob Mahoney had both married and settled down with girls from the same street off Beverley Road. The girls had been friends since childhood and Mick told me about a third girl who was also friend of his and Bob’s wives who also lived on the same street. The girl was single and Mick arranged for us to meet on a blind date. It worked. She was petite and pretty and we got on really well and soon a romance developed. Her dad, Norman (Nobby) Clark, was a trawler engineer on the St. Dominic so she was used to her dad being a away at sea for three weeks at a time but would she be happy with absences of several months? Time would tell. In the meantime, with me and hired car and every night being Saturday night while I was on leave, we just had a good time and enjoyed each other’s company enough for us to decide to get married. I was only home for three weeks leave so this seemed fairly quick, not as quick as Fred de Cosse though as a white wedding was planned for the following year depending on when I would be home again.

When my leave was up I received a call from Mr. Moxley asking me to return to London. He explained that he had found me a berth as quartermaster on the cadet training ship the RMS Otaio which, he said, would suit me down to the ground as I would have my own cabin and have access to the cadets’ tutors should I need it. However, the Otaio wasn’t sailing until December so in the meantime he wanted me to join a new ship called the MV Manapouri which was going around the land before leaving on its maiden voyage. So, leaving Madeleine to her wedding planning, I returned to London.

The Manapouri

I joined the Manapouri on 14th November in the Royal Docks in London. The Rangitoto was still in port so I managed to link up with some of my old mates, Joe, Fred and Danny for few days before sailing on my new ship. The Manapouri was a slick new ship described as a refrigerated freighter but designed for the container trade with cranes, derricks and hatches operated by hydraulics. Containers were an up and coming thing in freight transport with the big metal containers being lifted straight from the ship onto the back of a lorry or railway wagon. They meant quick turnarounds in purpose built ports away from the main dockland areas. The container trade was in its infancy in the 1960s and no one could envisage the huge container ships that would dominate and revolutionise world trade in the 21st Century and the Manapauri built to the best specifications of the day in 1968 in Japan would, at only 9,505 gross tons (4,457 net), be tiny by comparison.

Captain Guyler, who I knew from the Rangitoto, who seemed more at home on a general freighter, skippered the Manapauri. The accommodation on the ship was quite luxurious, as you would expect on a new ship, and I quite enjoyed the month spent taking her around the land. This also meant I could continue my courtship by regular telephone calls but unfortunately didn’t get a chance to return to Hull. We paid off in Newport, Wales, on 11th December and I had to travel directly to London to join the RMS Otaio. A young AB from Deal tried to persuade me to go with him on the Houlder Brothers meat boats where you could earn a lot of money but as arrangements were being made to plan a wedding I felt it best to stay with the New Zealand Shipping Company rather than risk the unknown.

RMS Otaio

I signed on the RMS Otaio the next day, 12th December 1968. The Otaio was the company’s cadet training ship built in the John Brown yard in 1957. The ship carried refrigerated cargo and was fairly large at 13,314 gross tons (6,875 net). The Otaio carried about 40 deck and 20 engineer cadets which meant that the only deck crew were five quartermasters, a boatswain (Angus from Skye), lamp trimmer (an old seaman from Shetland who had something against Papists which he voiced at any opportunity), carpenter, and deck boy. We were called quartermasters but in fact we never had to take a watch never mind steer. Instead we were on day work with instructions to help train the cadets in practical seamanship. In addition to those mentioned above there were also a seamanship instructor and a doctor. The ship also carried a PTI (Physical Training Instructor) but was unable to recruit one for the first voyage.

Work on the Otaio meant getting back to grips with the real work of a seaman rather than the cushy life of a quartermaster on the Rangitoto. Leaving our last port for the main sea voyage meant stripping the derricks, overhauling and greasing the blocks, oiling the wires and stowing the lot down the hatches. When nearing our first port this whole procedure was reversed and being the youngest of the ABs meant that I spent a lot of this time up aloft unshackling or shackling the big top lift blocks. I never minded working up aloft, in fact I didn’t mind most of the jobs involved in the general ship maintenance that we were asked to do except chipping. I hated chipping. I hated the noise, the smell, the metallic dust that clogged your throat, and the shear monotony of the task. As promised by Mr. Moxley I had my own cabin next door to Ted the mess man so that I had the privacy and quiet needed to carry on my own studies. I was also quite comfortable and I would go on to do two voyages in the ship and, in a way, the Otaio was going to change my life.

I have already mentioned the Seafarers Education Service that also ran the College of the Sea. This organisation was noted for putting libraries on ships and arranging correspondence courses for seafarers wishing to further their education, but in addition to this they also employed ship board tutors and joining the Otaio for the trip out to New Zealand, equipped with a basket of materials, was a young artist and teacher called Peter Knox. Peter soon got to know most of the people onboard and based himself for his classes in the cadets recreation room. We were all invited if we wished to observe his demonstrations and try using the art materials ourselves under his supervision. He also delivered a number of lectures on art using slides which I found quite fascinating. He also encouraged me to try painting myself, something that I hadn’t done since Boulevard school before Trinity House, and, although I was not brilliant the results were not bad and I enjoyed the process. This meant that most nights after we had finished our overtime, which was usually painting a cabin or something like that, I would join Peter’s class and a lifelong interest in art developed. Peter introduced me to the works Chagall, Giotto, Gauguin and many others which stirred my curiosity and made me realise how limited my nautical education at Trinity House had been and I wanted to learn more.

The first voyage was on a similar run to the Rangitoto without the stops in Tahiti so it was a long passage across the Pacific from the Panama Canal to Auckland. On the New Zealand coast we visited Auckland, Gisborne, Napier, Wellington and Lyttleton before heading the same way back. In Auckland Peter (the artist) asked me about the Snake Pit and if I could take him there. I explained that it was a pretty rough joint and not one that I would normally visit but as a one off I would risk it. In fact the night went very well as for once there wasn’t a fight just good-natured drinking and joking ending with a big Maori woman stuffing my head up her T-shirt, briefly disorientating but I survived. I thought that would have been enough to quench Peter’s curiosity but no he had enjoyed himself so much that he went back alone the following night. The next morning a visibly shocked Peter turned up at my cabin to tell me how he had gone to the bar and had been sitting enjoying the ambiance when suddenly the whole bar had erupted with bottles and chairs flying, punches being thrown and a general bloodbath. He felt lucky to get out alive.

In Auckland, with Peter’s advice, I bought a few bits of art equipment myself to continue my new hobby and a few books on artists for interest. Peter himself left the Otaio to join another ship. He would spend a few years travelling like this for the Seafarers Education Services before settling down in the North East to become a full time artist, what a great way to earn a living. I was very lucky to have met him, very lucky to have been on that ship for that voyage as his stimulation would, in part, shape my future career choices.

The Otaio visited smaller ports that had not been part of the Rangitoto schedule like Gisborne, a small and friendly port on the east coast of the North Island in an area known as Poverty Bay. This was where Cook first landed in New Zealand and he gave the area the name of Poverty Bay because he failed to collect fresh water and rations due to the less than friendly reception from the local Maori people which left a couple of them dead. The main export from Gisborne was, as you would imagine, New Zealand lamb and to facilitate this there was an abattoir and meat processing plant on the quayside, which we were allowed to visit.

After a pleasant stay in Gisborne our next port of call was Napier on Hawke Bay, Cook had a better reception in this area just having to warn the locals off with a few muskets shots and the odd blast of a friendly canon. Napier as well as being port was also a seaside resort but it seemed very reserved and quiet compared to what we would expect in the UK and seemed stuck in another era. The beaches seemed nice though and there were nice park areas on the sea front, one with a statue of Pania of the Reef, a sea nymph who legend had it lured sailors to their death on Napier’s off shore reef. She didn’t manage to lure us though and we sailed safely on to Wellington, Lyttleton, and then home via Panama and Curaçao, although instead of shore leave in Curaçao we were required to help the engineers change a piston liner, which had to be done quickly during the few hours we were in port bunkering. In fact we worked through most of the night to complete the job. And then home.

The Otaio paid off on the 31st March 1969 in London and I returned to Hull after agreeing to return for a second voyage. In Hull plans were well on the way for the wedding and house hunting was also on the agenda. Madeleine’s mother wanted her to have a big white wedding as the eldest daughter had got married at the register office and she felt she (the mother) had missed out so the wedding was arranged to take place at St. Mary’s in Sculcoates, with a reception at the Dorchester Hotel on Beverley Road on the 2nd May. I thought this was cutting it a bit fine given that I would need to rejoin the Otaio about then but it was out of my control. On the house-hunting front we soon found a house for sale opposite where Madeleine lived in Cromer Street that would suit us as a starter home. I didn’t mind living close to her parents as I got on well with them and I would be at sea a lot anyway. It was just a small house in a terrace with a front room, living room, kitchen, three bedrooms (but one had been fitted out with bath) and the lavatory was in the back yard next to the coalhouse. At the front was a tiny front garden. The house cost £1,200. Yes. £1,200! I have had monthly Visa bills bigger than that! But it still seemed a fortune at the time and we had to get a mortgage! Unfortunately the sale had not gone through by the time of the wedding but would be completed while I was away at sea.

The wedding took place on the 2nd May. My brother-in-law, Jack, who was my best man, instructed the taxi to drive past the church and to the nearest pub which turned out to be the aptly named (for me) the Golden Ball where we had a couple of pints before heading back to the church. Unfortunately although it was May the church was very cold so it meant that I spent most of the service dying for a pee.

After the wedding we went to stay in an apartment in Bridlington, mainly out of necessity rather than for a honeymoon, as we had nowhere else to stay until our house became vacant. It was only for a few days anyway because I had to return to London to sign back on the Otaio on 8th May, married five days and then away again for five months, such was the life for a sailor and his wife.

I did manage to get home once for a day or two while we were going around the land before the main voyage but the main communication was by telephone during this period and then by mail once the voyage commenced proper. There were no mobile phones, satellite or internet communication in those days. Around the land took in Antwerp, Liverpool and Glasgow and we had a fairly new crew although the boatswain, Lampy, seamanship instructor and Ted the mess man remained the same as did most of the officers including the mate. Joining me for this second voyage was a nice chap called Fred Hurd from Hull, a large jovial Irishman from Cork called, you’ve guessed it, Paddy, an AB from Stornoway called Murdoch who was going out to New Zealand to settle as he had married there, and an ex-navy AB called Clive. Going around the land we didn’t have a full complement of cadets so with only having five ABs and a deckboy it was essential that everyone pulled their weight but it seemed we had a weak link. Clive who, despite being a really pleasant bloke and shipmate, did not seem to have much of an idea of what was going on and did his best to avoid showing his lack of knowledge by volunteering to fetch any tools or equipment that we needed like if someone said, “We need a big stiltson for this job”. “I’ll fetch it”, would be Clive’s response. We quickly realised that after leaving the navy, Clive would be about forty. He had only been on ships with large crews and from our conversations we also discovered that his job in the navy had been as a PTI. I suggested to him that the Otaio might need a PTI as the company had been unable to recruit one the previous trip but Clive scoffed at this suggestion saying that he had finished with all that business when he left the navy.

One day I was chatting to the mate and I asked him if we had recruited a PTI and he said that they hadn’t been able to find one so, just in passing, I mentioned that Clive had been a PTI in the Royal Navy. The mate suddenly showed interest and asked if I thought that he would be interested in taking on the role and I answered that of course he would. Of course Clive said that he wouldn’t take on the role when I told him about the conversation with the mate but as soon as he was told that a uniform came with the job he accepted. The mate said that he was relieved to have been able to fill the position but not as relieved as we were to get rid of Clive.

The five quartermasters were now Fred, Paddy, Murdoch, myself and Joe, a Liverpudlian who supported Everton to the point that I think that everything he owned was Royal blue, including his work boots. The voyage this time would be a bit different as we were to sail around the World eastwards which meant, because the Suez Canal was closed due to warfare, sailing south through the Atlantic, short stop at Cape Town for mail, across the Indian Ocean through the Southern Ocean and the Great Australian Bight, until we reached our first port of call, Melbourne.

One day I was sitting in my cabin when the door burst open and Ted the mess man asked me to come quickly next door to his cabin. Our deck boy, a big strapping six footer of a sixteen-year-old, was on Ted’s day bed with eyes rolling and limbs flaying about. Ted said he was just sitting there chatting when he went into these spasms. I got Ted to help me lift him onto the deck and then sent him for the doctor while I held the deck boy’s head to stop him hurting himself. The doctor, who came just as the lad was quietening down, said he had had an epileptic fit and we had done the right thing in looking after him and all we could now was wait until he came around. When he recovered the deck boy said that this had been the first time that this had happened and didn’t know what had triggered it. Sadly we knew that this young lad’s dream of becoming a seaman was now over. The captain tried to arrange for the lad to continue at sea as a catering boy but this was also refused and we all felt for him.

We had a good crew on the ship and we all got on well together. The cadets were a good bunch of lads and were happy to share in our banter. Unfortunately, I can only remember one by name and that was because he was subjected to a bit more banter than any others, his name was Darling. The conversation usually went something along the lines off, “The mate must really like you” .

“What do you mean?” “The mate must really like you a lot.” “Why?” “He always calls you darling.”

We had a pleasant stay in Melbourne which I remember as being a very nice city in a kind of green European way. On a sunny Sunday local people would take a leisurely walk along the quayside looking at the ships while I also remember spending a warm afternoon sitting outside a bar on the marina. From Melbourne we sailed up the coast to Sydney.

I had previously been to Sydney on a tanker which meant that it was a considerable distance to the city centre but the Otaio docked in a much more convenient position. We tied up late in the afternoon of our arrival and Joe and Paddy asked me if I wanted to go ashore for a cold beer. I didn’t need asking twice and we set off to find a bar, which meant crossing a bridge known as Pyrmont Bridge. It was rush hour and people were making their way home after a hard day’s work and as most lived in the suburbs they were crossing the bridge in the opposite direction to us. I was busy yapping to Joe and Paddy when a guy casually walked by us and as he passed said, “Good day, Bob”. We stopped and looked to see who it was and looking around smiling and carrying his lunch box was Mick Parkinson from Hull who I had last seen sitting on the quayside in La Spezia after he jumped ship there. When you have travelled over 12,000 miles to the other side of the world the last person you expect to bump into is an old mate from your hometown. Joe and Paddy’s faces were a picture of disbelief.

While we were in Sydney, Murdoch and I decided to look up a couple of other mutual friends. During the second voyage I did on the Rangitoto the swimming pool attendant and another topside steward had jumped ship in Auckland, travelled by train to Wellington, and then caught a ferry to Sydney therefore entering Australia legally. The journey had been well planned in advance and they had even kept their plan secret from their closest mates. Murdoch had been on the Rangitoto before me so he knew them as well so we arranged to meet them in the Kings Cross area of Sydney where they were living. They were working as window cleaners and making big money. This doesn’t mean that they were going around the street balancing a ladder while riding a bicycle. These guys were working from cradles on the Sydney skyscrapers. Apparently the Aussies weren’t keen on the job but our friends liked it because they could start early in the morning and finish at lunchtime before the sun got too hot, and they were well paid in the process.

From Sydney we sailed to Auckland and continued down the New Zealand coast stopping at the same ports as the previous voyage. In one of these there was a shortage of dockers so we were asked to make up their numbers and we would be paid at New Zealand docker rate, which was considerably more than our normal pay. We were set to work unloading boxes of butter from railway wagons. This meant either picking the box up in the railway wagon and putting it on a kind of conveyor belt made of steel rollers or picking the boxes off the conveyor and stacking then onto a pallet ready to be lifted aboard the ship. The boxes seemed small and light and we felt we had really cracked it as we totted up in our heads what we would do with the extra money for so little effort. But after an hour the boxes seemed to get a little heavier, and then heavier still, then even heavier. By the afternoon they felt like they were filled with lead and we wanted the day to end as our arms and backs ached but the work continued. It was the same the next day and we were relieved when we finally emptied the last wagon and then waited with anticipation for our wages. We had all expected to be paid in addition to our normal wages for helping out like this to make sure the ship kept to its schedule but in true shipping company fashion our ship’s wages were deducted from our docker earnings and we were just given the difference – it hardly seemed worth the effort.

Our final port in New Zealand was Dunedin deep down in the south of the South Island. While on the New Zealand coast one of our jobs had been painting the ship’s side and in Dunedin we just had to finish it off by re-painting the white line around the ship’s hull using a painter’s punt. We were painting around the stern of the ship when there was a sudden splash in the water so we looked expecting to perhaps see a fish but then there were more splashes as the punt was surrounded by a group of small penguins that put on a marvellous display of swimming skills for us. The penguins also reminded us that we were in the southern hemisphere and that our homeward voyage would take us further south to even colder waters.

During my time on the Otaio I was elected shipboard convenor. This arrangement, a sort of floating shop steward, had been negotiated by the National Union of Seamen following the strike and the idea was that if there was a grievance aboard ship then the convenor would act as the spokesperson and take it up with the captain and officers concerned. Generally there was little to convene on the Otaio as it was a pretty happy ship but I did learn a lesson that stood me in good stead when, in later life, I became more involved in more important disputes and negotiations.

The lesson I learned was to never respond immediately to an issue and wait until all the facts of case were apparent. An example of this was when the boatswain complained about the food. Now the food on the ship was not brilliant but there was always plenty of it and no one else had complained so what was the real problem? Answer – the boatswain had had an argument with the cook two days before the complaint. I always found the captain and the mate to be very amenable, however, I did take one instance very personally and it was that old class-consciousness thing again.

The problem arose because of a chair. Just an ordinary wooden chair with arms. The chair had been in my cabin from the day I joined the ship and to me it was just a chair that I used to sit at my writing desk or relax and read. Everyone had a chair in their cabin and, while they may have been different designs, I didn’t think that mine was in any way extraordinary. Then one day returning to my cabin after one of the captain’s inspections I found my chair gone! I asked the boatswain who had been around while the inspection was going on what had happened to my chair and he said the mate had taken it. I went straight up to see the mate and said,“Why have you taken my chair?”

“It was an officer’s chair and it shouldn’t have been there.”

“It has been there since I joined the ship last trip, you had no right to take it.”

“It’s an officer’s chair”, he said again.

“What do you mean “it’s an officer’s chair, are your arses different to ours?”

“No, it’s because it is made of wood and has arms, crew should have metal chairs.”

“I don’t think I have ever come across anything so trivial and pathetic before. The chair hadn’t been stolen, nobody missed it, no-one even noticed except you.”

“It’s not that big a deal is it?” “Can I have it back?” “No.” “Then yes, it is a big deal for me.”

Up until this time I had been happy on this ship but this was, in my opinion, blatant class distinction and I didn’t like it and it soured theway I felt and the mate, who I had previously liked, went down a long way in my estimation.

The voyage home from Dunedin involved some pretty nasty weather, fog, mist, snow, heavy rainstorms, squalls and gales. We experienced all of these during our voyage through the most southern part of the Pacific and then the Drake Passage and around Cape Horn into the Atlantic. Even the Falklands Islands were swathed in murky mist so it was a relief to head north in the Atlantic to meet the warmth of the tropics. Our only stop was at La Palmas in the Canary Islands. There was no shore leave in Las Palmas but we did have a couple of bumboats vying for trade. Finally we docked in Liverpool and paid off on 2nd October 1969. Joe came to Lime Street station with me for a few beers before I caught the train to Hull Paragon. I had been married for five days and away for five months, and, although I didn’t know it, I had just completed my last deep-sea long voyage.

This is an extract from Bob Addey’s book,

“Changing Course: Fishing Trips, Merchant Ships and New Directions” published by Riverhead, Hull.

Also available from Amazon