by David McRobbie

That was the Daily Express headline on or about the 29th October 1961, giving its front page report of what happened when a crew member deliberately started a fire aboard the British tanker, Regent Eagle. The event happened late at night and exactly midway on a voyage from Aruba to the UK.

My late brother, Gordon and I had both been to sea as engineers. While he kept at it for a few more years, I settled in Australia and took up another line of work. As ex-Merchant Navy men will, we often swapped stories of our times at sea, which is how I learned about that voyage into terror.

Many years later I was a radio programme maker with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and thought that Gordon’s experience would make an excellent radio feature. I was struck by the drama and theatricality of the event. It happened late at night while the ship still had four days to go before the end of the voyage. It created a lot of suspicion and distrust amongst the crew. I asked Gordon if he’d mind writing down his thoughts and recollections so that I could use them in creating my fictitious version of the story.

Eventually this was done and my play, The Beethoven Tapes was broadcast on 29th July 1984. I made fiction of the characters and the event and devised a culprit and gave him a motive for the crime. But for Gordon and the crew of Regent Eagle, it was all too real.

So here then is my late brother’s recollection of those four days at sea.

About 11 pm, I was asleep in my cabin. A bell rang and kept ringing. I remember my jumbled thoughts. That’s the Chief Engineer ringing down to the pantry … but there’s no one in the pantry at this time of night … there’s only one other bell in the alleyway. The fire bell. I was wide awake.

I looked out of the port, which faced forward towards the centrecastle. There was a huge column of blue flame coming from the tank next to the swimming pool, number five centre. It was roaring straight up, higher than the superstructure, higher even than the signal mast, making the aerial whip side to side with its force. It was like a giant Bunsen burner. Figures were running across behind the bridge.

Still in my room, I picked up my torch and stuffed my pockets with several packets of cigarettes. It wasn’t fire-fighting on my mind. There was no way I was spending a miserable night in a lifeboat without a smoke. I looked around my room, imagining it would be the last time I’d see the place and couldn’t think of anything else I wanted to take with me. I remember a character in The Cruel Sea, Morell, it might have been, leaving his cabin and thinking the same thing.

With my lifejacket on, I stepped into the alleyway as the Chief Engineer came down the steps from his room above. He shouted at me, “Start the diesel generator. There’s a fire.”

He was fairly excitable, but in this case he was right as my fire station was at the main switchboard. It hadn’t entered my head to go anywhere near the engine room, my main thought being to make for a lifeboat. Not feeling happy about things, I ran down the engine room ladder and without bothering to check, turned on the starting air for the Ruston diesel generator. She kicked into life straight away.

At the switchboard I transferred the load from the steam generator to the Ruston, then stopped the steam engine. Down below I could see the Fourth Engineer starting the general service pump, putting water pressure on the deck hydrants. I’d done my bit and didn’t see any sense in hanging around down there, so went back up top.

Out on deck, the fire was already out. A couple of ABs were holding a fire hose, squirting it over the side, looking at each other, waiting for someone to tell them what to do next. I went to the tank coaming, not stopping even to wonder why the lid was open at sea. The things you do under stress! I actually shone my torch into the tank and could see the liquid, AVGAS, or aviation fuel about ten feet from the top.

It’s crazy to think about it now, but I called to the two sailors, “its okay, lads. The fire’s out.”

Regent tankers carried about a dozen passengers, usually refinery staff heading to or from the UK. We had about ten aboard at the time and the Chief Steward, whose emergency duty was to look after them, fussed around, making sure they were in a straight line and wearing life jackets. The only problem is that he’d assembled them right above the open tank where the fire had been.

By this time most of the crew were up and about. Some of the deck crew were showing the Old Man and the Mate what they’d found. Two cargo tank lids had been opened, numbers five port and centre. It was no easy job lifting one of those lids which were heavy, dome-shaped covers about five feet in diameter. They were usually dogged down and sealed on a thick rope gasket, then beaten tight by four turnbuckles, like over-sized wing-nuts. For this job the sailors normally used spark-proof copper hammers.

Somehow an unknown person had managed to open the two tank lids and swing them aside. As the sailors pointed out, whoever had done this had dropped a roll of marlin twine into each tank, then pulled out the fuel soaked ends and zig-zagged them across the deck from the tanks into the centre-castle. This elaborate and lengthy fuse-laying had obviously been done to give the man time to get away. But away to where?

With the fuses laid, the fire bug had made several goes at lighting them. The sailors found a number of spent matches on the deck, not something you often see on tankers. As it happened, only one tank had caught alight. Frightening as it was, the fire was easily put out. The sailors already had a washing down hose lying on deck so it was just a matter of picking it up just as the general service pump kicked into action. There was none of that futile standing around waiting an age for water to appear at the nozzle.

When the cold stream hit the hot coaming, the fire was snuffed out straight away. That was when I arrived on deck to do my silly act with the torch, peering into the tank and stating the bleeding obvious.

Outward bound we’d had a fire drill which had been a shambles. The fire pump wouldn’t start, a sailor burned his leg on the smothering steam pipe and another one bumped his head during boat drill. Yet when faced with a sudden real emergency, everything went like clockwork.

There was a story that one crew member lowered the starboard aft lifeboat single handed and in the dark and without instructions. The main engine had been stopped at the time, which was fortunate as had we been under way the boat would have been dragged below the water.

So, to the post mortem. After a head count the full implication dawned on us. Whoever had done this was still aboard the ship, and we still had four days to go before reaching the UK. About alibis, I had none, being fast asleep in my cabin. Two other engineers had been together, having a late night drink. Four out of the eight engine room staff had no alibis. The old Man and the Mate had been together and the Third officer had been on the bridge doing the eight to twelve. It was he who saw the sudden glow from the fire and raised the alarm.

Out of a total ship’s complement of about fifty, quite a few had no one to vouch for them, giving rise to an uneasy, distrustful atmosphere on the ship. I thought at the time, whoever did this only has to keep quiet and he’ll get away with it.

Next morning the old Man had positioned himself at the after end of the amidships boat deck, looking aft. He’d organised the Mate and himself into six-hour watches, which they kept up for the rest of the voyage to Holehaven in Essex.

There were other precautions. The ladders leading down to the tank deck were securely roped off. The weather doors from the sailors’ and firemen’s alleyways were hammered shut, as were the centre-castle doors.

A couple of light bulbs wanted changing in the centre-castle, and since I was the electrician, I asked the old Man if I should see to them. Quite bluntly he said, “No.” He was normally a happy type and certainly the most human Captain I ever sailed with.

The engine room doors were also locked. When it was time to change watch, my junior and the fireman waited at the engine room door until midnight when the Fourth and his crew let themselves out. We took the key and locked ourselves in. Not the best way of doing things as it’s usual to meet down below to do a proper handover/ takeover.

A pair of sailors patrolled the accommodation at night. When routine called for me to check on the fridge machinery and the steering gear, they went with me and saw me back to the engine room. Such were the arrangements for those final wary and suspicious days of October 1961.

There were no other fire raising attempts or alarms. Outside Dover we made a lee to allow a launch to come alongside. Aboard were a number of detectives, not from Scotland Yard, but Essex County Constabulary. They started their enquiry, questioning everybody and taking fingerprints.

When it came my turn, it was disappointing. Their questions didn’t seem searching enough – not much beyond the usual taking of particulars in a very polite way. The truth is they were out of their depth and had no idea of what it was like on a tanker. Added to that, some of them were nervous about being so close to so many hundred tons of our cargo.

It didn’t stop them taking flash photographs in the centre-castle, the gassiest part of the ship. They used the old type of flash bulb, the kind that was known to explode from time to time.

When we got alongside in Holehaven, the police carried on looking busy, but didn’t seem to be getting anywhere.

We engineers had a meeting and agreed we wouldn’t sign on again unless they got whoever had started the fire. Meanwhile the company sacked the entire crowd, not officers and the chief cook. There were some disgruntled remarks. One AB told me in his previous ship he’d received a bonus for fighting a fire. “Here,” he said, “they sack you.”

Since the engineers had started packing their gear, the Marine Super came aboard and was horrified at the thought of the ship being held up. Tankers usually turn around in thirty-six hours, but not on this occasion, it seemed. It was easy enough to get a new crowd in that time, but a bit harder to muster a whole team of engineers. The Super assured us that they’d get whoever did this thing. He wouldn’t have it on his conscience to send the ship back to sea with that man still aboard.

As these tense negotiations were going on, the police announced that they fancied one of the sailors as the culprit. Shortly afterwards they marched him off the ship with his gear in plastic bags, ushered him into a police car and away.

After we’d all signed on, we heard that the police only took the man as far as Benfleet railway station where they let him go.

The company took the old Man off, saying that if they made an arrest, he’d have to give evidence in court. After another round trip, the old Man rejoined the ship to report that there had been no progress with the investigation. He told us, “They’re still working on it.”

Later, I had a chance to ask him what I should do if I found myself sailing with one of our former crew who didn’t have an alibi. The old Man said, “I can’t talk for you, Mac, but I know what I’d do.

And there we left it.