The Chefoo

by Mike Briant

‘Well! There’s a job of work for you!’ He stepped back two paces, the better to admire the beautification of the starboard bridge wing, then swung about, fixing each of us in turn with an alert, quizzical eye, seeking and finding endorsement in our ready nods. The Chinese yard foreman, all the while gazed blandly off into space, unmoved by all the approbation, harbouring thoughts of his own perhaps on such unwonted extravagance.

The effect was indeed wonderful, the work beautifully executed. The ship was nearing completion, both bridge wings had been transformed. Teak gratings now surrounded the gyro repeaters to facilitate the taking of bearings, the repeater pedestals themselves, newly encased in handsome teak, brass-bound binnacles.

All this embellishment carried out at the whim of nobody but ourselves, the mere second and third mates, appointed to stand by this new construction, latest addition to the China Navigation fleet. It could only happen in Hong Kong, and only where the ship and the yard which built her belonged to one and the same company.

For our part, uncomfortably aware that we had stepped way beyond our limited authority, the reaction of this man was now of particular interest and his approbation something of considerable relief. This rotund genial man, an almost Pickwickian character, was to be the moving influence of our lives, of the ship, and all who sailed in her. Jock Stuart, her Master, now inspecting his command for the first time, did so with infectious and unconcealed delight, wafting away all uneasiness regarding the beauty of the bridge wings.

By the time sea trials were complete and handover taken place, it had already become clear that Chefoo would be a happy ship.

Jock, a man of natural and irresistible

charm, had an unusual knack of command. He was demanding yet in the most light-handed way, so that even the most bolshy Glaswegian engineer found himself automatically inclined to do his best.

As with all good leaders, Jock’s influence percolated quickly down through the ship’s company. Some of our Chinese crew had served with Jock in other ships.These sturdy, taciturn Tientsin men, forever reliable in any case, held Jock in particular esteem.

Our entry into service was unusual. Unlike her sisters, Chefoo was given no regular schedule, no fixed run. Instead, ours was to be a wonderfully loose itinerary, sent to range over a vast area of the China Sea and Pacific in search of trade.

“We’re off tramping.” were Jock’s words on returning from the Hong Kong Head Office, having called us together in the saloon. It was hardly that, in the traditional sense, but with only meagre bookings of cargo, he had been instructed to go in search of more, to prospect in those regions of South East Asia and the Western Pacific still largely untraded following the devastations of the war, with no prescribed route, to drum up tonnage any where he could and by whatever means he chose. We must search out and grow the trade, the quest largely in our own hands, directed of course by the man himself.

Each succeeding voyage, and they were long far-reaching voyages, took us to new and more remote destinations. The whole thing an unthinkable enterprise nowadays, costly even then in the fifties. The company, no doubt mindful of their pioneering history now prepared to set their cap at a venture.

The results were varied, surprising, in many instances bizarre, in some cases probably not at all profitable. Small parcels of copra and cocoa, hardwood logs, raw rubber and coconut oil were among the more viable commodities which found their way into our holds. But there came also, in those days before environmental concern, trochus shell, turtle shell, bird’s nests, sea cucumber, sharks fin and other exotic commodities. Such found ready consignees in Hong Kong, Singapore, Macao and Taipei.

We lifted evocative tangles of scrap metal, left over from the conflicts in the Pacific, much of it returning to Japan from whence it had come. From Papua and New Guinea we took crocodile hides (Puk-puks), from Guadalcanal and other battle sites in the Solomons, drums of spent bullets and cartridge cases, and from New Britain, a pair of large, exotic, evil-looking snakes destined for the Tokyo Zoo.

The paperwork was often more in keeping with a Lebanese auction house than a reputable cargo ship, oft times without proper terms of carriage, insurance, in some cases lacking even a consignee. Our Number One compradore, with extensive business connections and shrewd entrepreneurship, would nonchalantly put his personal chop on a bill of lading or lay down large amounts of hard cash to secure the cargo, so we traded much of the time Chinese fashion, causing the Mate to leave things as often as not in the capable hands of the compradores and hope for the best. Before long the manifest on the outward leg began to fill out, with more regular bookings, manufactured goods from Hong Kong, Shanghai and more particularly Japan, now beginning to turn out products once more after the devastation of World War Il, these finding ready custom in our remote and isolated destinations.

Jock was in his element, a man well suited for such an enterprise. Supported by our compradores, and their passion for enterprise and commerce, he exhibited a hard business head and nose for trade, typifying his Scottish heritage.

His methods were eclectic and tended to involve everyone around him in one way or another.

Our more remote ports of call (though hardly ports in the usual sense) had, for the most part, no pilots, no appointed agents and often no pool of labour to serve as stevedores.

Most were without facilities to load or discharge anything larger than local prahus, kumpits or trading schooners. We found ourselves taking up unaccustomed roles, recruiting gaily-feathered Melanesians or tattooed Dyaks, introducing them to the mysteries and hazards of the ship’s big steel derricks, and fearsome cargo winches. Officers and crew alike weighed in where needed with slings, snotters and cargo nets, rigged snatch blocks and bull wires to manipulate large hardwood logs, built crude chutes down which to roll coconuts. The ship’s motor lifeboat was put to use rounding up stevedores, running mooring lines and even, on occasions towing log rafts down river.

Jock knew well the value of hospitality to promote business: We threw parties – ceilidhs he called them – to which anybody of any account at all was invited. Our Chief Steward, a prince of the buffet, could put on a noble spread with special provision, the ship victualled by arrangement with all sorts of special delicacies. We soon learned, with very little encouragement, to build Chefoo’s reputation for gay hospitality, sometimes to the concern of local missionaries and the delight of the local vahines. One visit was enough to establish our ship’s acceptance by cast-away ex-pats and fun-loving locals alike.

Pilotage was often a challenge, though no novelty to an old ‘China Coaster’ such as Jock. We carried extensive folios of charts. Some areas of the Pacific, particularly the less-frequented regions of Micronesia, proved hydrographically challenging to say the least, with areas of discouraging blankness appearing on the chart together with surprising references to surveys by Cook, d’Urville, Bougainville and other early explorers. Andy, the second mate, custodian of the charts and responsible for their updating and correction, would sometimes be found shaking his head over an island or reef, believed to be comprehensively surveyed, now appearing miles out of position. Jock would only add to Andy’s anxiety by pressing forward (granted at moderate speed and with constant reference to the echo sounder) into steadily constricting jungle of some river or inlet which had probably known no other ship until then, and which gradually petered out into unhelpful oblivion on the chart.

The demands in terms of ship-handling were beyond those normally faced by contemporary ship’s masters. Jock made light of this, even, on occasion throwing the opportunity the way of the young Mate.

Thus Chefoo would arrive with infinite caution alongside some rickety wooden jetty, her sailors swarming down the ship’s Canton fenders to leap ashore and make fast to the stoutest trees. Or, threading the pass in some coral reef all too visible beneath the glassy surface, put the ship through the evolution of a running moor in a lagoon which, revealing itself to the Mate’s apprehensive gaze, appeared altogether too small.

Jock saw in this unusual deployment of ours opportunities to develop us, his officers, to widen our experience wonderfully. In this he was, as ever, original but perhaps also he was being, in a way, cannily proactive (a term not as yet in use) providing for that which might come upon us before long and which only he could foresee. Each of us was given the chance to learn and practise the other man’s duties. Thus on a whim the second mate would find himself stationed on the foc’sle head, playing the first mate’s part on entering port and becoming familiar with anchors and cables, while the third mate would be sent scuttling aft to face other unaccustomed responsibilities.

Jock enjoyed such exercises, always careful in their arrangement and discreet in his supervision. He would ring the changes, even to the extent of having the lowly third mate bring the ship to anchor in some elementary situation, following the operation with the inevitable enquiry, “So! Did ye learrn something laddie?”

On these occasions he would casually assume those minor duties normally carried out by the third mate, handling the bridge telephones, the engine room telegraph and as often as not, forgetting to write up the crucial bell book. His presence, forever reassuring, was relaxed. He never hovered intrusively, merely murmuring the occasional offering of advice in a laconic burr.

“Use the eyes God gave ye laddie. Take time tae observe. Handling a ship – ’tis a fact – nothing happens that quickly. Take ye’re time so ….. and obserrve. Aye, there’s always time tae obserrrve.”

Not surprising therefore the level of respect all this engendered. It was for us in so many ways the best of times. If any cloud intruded on our horizon it was so small we did not spot it. The only hint was Jock’s weakness, his Achilles heel if you like – Scotch whisky.

The interminable Atlantic convoys of the War had taken their toll and his health was not all it might have been (he would die on the ship within that year, during my watch at sea).

Whisky was a palliative, but a treacherous one. If our Captain took one too many it could render him hors de combat, as happened one pitch black night in the Banka Strait when the steering unaccountably went down (One of the gremlins of a brand new ship). Jock could not be roused! Under such circumstances another Master would soon have lost the support of his officers, maybe even his command. In Jock’s case this would not happen.

We were prepared to cover for him in any such instance should it arise. He must have known his time was running out, but apart from the occasional accession to Johnny Walker, he gave no inkling.

These were the years when Mau’s China was under its severest regime. A hostile, closed-door policy was maintained towards the West. China’s trade links were limited almost exclusively to nations within the Communist bloc, making ships from the West strangers to her ports. Our company, which from its inception had traded in that vast country, pioneering the navigation of her rivers by steamer and the commercial trade of the China coast, found the door slammed in its face.

Forced to look elsewhere for trade, China Navigation still strove by all conceivable means to regain a foothold, some vestige of its former trade. Every opportunity was pursued energetically and diplomatically but with little result.

Permission would occasionally be granted, generally at short notice, for one of our ships to visit a specified port, usually Shanghai. The cargo booked was almost always insignificant, often to the point of insult, under normal practice not worth the trouble. No matter – any such opportunity was never set aside. Thus on the last leg of her maiden voyage, Chefoo, in all her pristine newness was directed to lift a deck cargo of timber from Dairen in North Korea and take it to Shanghai. In fact the ‘timber’ proved to be little better than firewood.

Her decks were piled high with the stuff, stacked insecurely so that all the efforts of our crew with nets and lashings could not prevent it from blowing overboard in anything of a breeze.

As we entered the mouth of the great Yangtse river, leaving in our wake an embarrassing trail of flotsam, we passed another of the Company’s ships anchored at the Woosung Bar.

Hoots and catcalls from the decks of the Anshun, had our Tientsin men sucking their teeth at the undignified loss of face.

On her second voyage, Southbound from Japan, Chefoo came once again to Shanghai.

The formalities as usual seemed endless, the bureaucracy insupportable, the intention clearly to cause offence. Mindful of cautions regularly received, the entire crew from the Master down spent the morning in the bitter cold without complaint on the open deck, while soldiers of the P.L.A., with fixed bayonets, ransacked the ship from stem to stern. Individual members of our Chinese crew were called and interrogated by three graven images clad in olive green Mau pyjamas seated at our saloon table.

At last, the ordeal over, the ship was brought alongside the Bund to load. The cargo arrived pell-mell, mostly in wheelbarrows, a bewildering torrent of small, individual shipments – ten cases of paper umbrellas, twenty earthenware jars of preserved eggs, twelve leaky drums of tung oil and so, on and on. Accustomed as we were to variegated cargoes, none could recall such a profusion of small parcels, each requiring a separate Mate’s receipt with four copies and all to cover such paltry deadweight. The ship’s tallymen dealt imperturbably with the perplexities of stowage, separation, marking, tomming off and dunnaging, while, as the afternoon wore on, the Mate and Number Two compradore conferred ever more frequently over a cargo plan that began to resemble a minute, multi-coloured mosaic.

Conversation at dinner that evening centred around cargoes, bizarre Eastern cargoes, Jock recalling happier days on the Yangtse when cargoes even more bizarre in nature had been the order of the day. The table around which we sat was one of Jock’s personal innovations, fitted during the final days in the yard. Arthurian fashion it could seat every officer, plus the odd visitors or two, and it made for great crack. Seated beneath a watercolour of Chefoo Bluff and paying scant attention to his food, Jock recalled an occasion on the Upper River, approaching the notorious Windbox gorge, when a deck cargo of ‘walky-walky’ ducks had unaccountably chosen to abandon ship in mid river. He had us all right there – the difficulties of holding the steamer in midstream while a determined compradore staff set off into the racing current in opportunistic sampans to round up the flock.

“Aye, there would hae been a thousand or more, yet would ye believe, we didnae lose a single burrrd.” He glanced up as the steward placed a neatly folded slip of paper next to his plate.

“Well now, here’s a thing!” He looked around the table, one eyebrow cocked at our expectant faces, then, never one to keep that much to himself, read aloud. The note was from an old acquaintance of those earlier days just described, formerly one of the Company’s senior shore compradores, now living in abject retirement in a city greatly changed. Jock was invited ashore to visit him. Westerners were not afforded much welcome in the new Shanghai. They were restricted to a very limited area of the city, they were often confronted with stage-managed, anti-West, street demonstrations. A permit had to be carried at all times and all shore leave was limited to eleven p.m.

Jock however was reassuring. The old compradore lived within the permitted area and he would be sure to be back on board long before curfew time.

Ignoring the alarmed warnings of the Chief Steward, he left the ship with a bottle of Johnny Walker Black Label thrust into each of the pockets of his great coat, stumping off down the gangway to the waiting trishaw. The two armed PLA men on guard made a show of inspecting his pass but fortunately no move to search him. Had they done so a great deal of trouble would certainly have followed.

The flow of cargo continued. Then, on the stroke of ten, with more cargo still expected it suddenly and unaccountably ceased, the stevedores immediately taking off into the night. The Mate, called on deck, was discussing this strange turn of events with the third mate when two officials, clad in the ubiquitous khaki, appeared at the gangway. The third mate, sent to head them off, soon returned.

“They want to see the Captain.”

Jock had not yet returned, the curfew still had an hour to run, but the mate thinking it best to keep this under his hat was prompted to initiate what would prove to be a chain of deceit. The third mate went and informed the visitors that the Captain was asleep and not to be disturbed. The Chief Officer was available – a normal enough response.

“The Captain,” came their reply, “Wake him!”

Small deceptions have an awkward way of leading to larger ones. The Mate, unwisely perhaps, decided that this was not the time to change the story. The situation called for a little subterfuge. The third Mate was sent back to the gangway to escort the visitors to the ‘old man’s’ cabin. Number Two compradore was called to act as interpreter and the Mate then headed for Jock’s cabin, knowing it to be open. Jock’s reefer jacket with its four gold rings of command was draped over the back of a chair. The Mate considered the jacket, but only for a moment, then prodded perhaps by the influence of its owner, removed his own and tossed it into the sleeping cabin. Jock’s reefer was not a good fit! He was almost a head shorter than the Mate and considerably more rotund. Too late to change the arrangements however, the visitors were already at the threshold followed closely by Number Two compradore.

It might help at this point to explain the function of the compradore staff as carried by our ships in those days. Chefoo carried eight talleymen, supervised by two compradores, a veritable fourth department and an important one. By earlier standards we would have been considered under-manned – less than two tallymen per hatch! Older ships of the Company carried far larger numbers. Their business was with the cargo and they saw themselves as wholly responsible for its condition and safe delivery. Number Two compradore’s functions went further than the cargo. He was the ship’s purser and unofficial treasurer. He played a vital role in all negotiations with agents, shippers and Eastern officialdom, in many ways he was the ship’s Oriental public relations officer.

Our Number Two spoke several dialects of Chinese and could make his way in both Malay and Japanese. Oddly he still lapsed into ‘pidgin’ when speaking English. A quiet, unassuming man, he had an encyclopaedic memory, an amazing head for figures, and an accurate knowledge of exchange rates (official and black market) and of stock and commodity markets. He was an astute and extremely busy man, utterly loyal to the ship and her people. Number One compradore, no less accomplished, was the head of the department, by tradition far too auspicious a gentleman to take on any regular duties. His was the privileged position to which all Chinese aspire, a life of idleness which is the reward of success. Number One was only to be called upon in exceptional circumstances, for particular advice and then only by the Master.

Number Two, as canny a man as ever held a hand at mahjong, followed the two khaki-clad figures into the Captain’s day room, taking in the situation at a glance, his face as impassive as a mountain pool. The Mate clad in the Captain’s jacket caused no more than the merest flicker of one eyebrow.

The two bony, dead-pan faces above their high buttoned tunics, were meanwhile causing the Mate serious misgivings. It occurred to him that his masquerade was transparent, his youthfulness for starters at odds with the position of command. He recalled with a jolt the double row of ribbons adorning the left breast of the jacket, the dark blue and white of a D.S.O., modestly peeping from under the lapel. In the days when Jock had collected those, he had been in primary school. His fears, however, seemed groundless. The two automatons seemed to notice nothing unusual. There were no formalities, they refused to be seated and he was not obliged to extend a hand, protruding as it did with an unconscionable amount of wrist below the gold-laced sleeve.

Curtly he was informed through Number Two that there would be no more cargo worked that night. He should have his ship’s main engines ready in half an hour, at which time the pilot would board. The ship would be moved out into the stream where loading would be completed in the morning at the buoys further up the Whangpoo. No reason given.

In vain the Mate protested (endeavouring to assume a suitably gruff and indignant tone of voice) that the engines could not be made ready at such short notice. Number Two waxed earnestly diplomatic in translation, well aware of the need to buy time. Without consultation the cadaverous twins relented – to the extent of an extra half hour. The ship must be ready to cast off by 2330 otherwise she would be put under arrest for defying the instructions of the Port Authority. The two nodded their heads in unison, spun on their heels and departed.

Number Two, returning to the Master’s cabin having escorted the visitors from the ship, found the Mate once more wearing his own jacket. The visitors had not, he assured him, spoken to the guards, moreover he was quite certain that this was the first time this particular pair of officials had been on the ship, which meant they had no earlier knowledge of Jock.

So far as they were concerned the Captain was on board and they had delivered their instructions to him. All to the good, Jock’s absence had been successfully concealed and that, so far as Number Two was concerned, was all that really mattered. Provided Jock turned up by eleven thirty all would be well.

“I was worried there Number Two.” the Mate shook his head, “Those two – surely they could see I was too young to be the Captain?”

The compradore shook his head in turn, smiling dismissively.

“No way Sir. These men, they don’t know.” He jabbed at his chin with his thumb.

“Chinese man, you see, no way can makee whisker, no fashion young man for sure. Maybe old man makee sometime.” He indicated the Mate’s beard. “No young man for sure, same belong you.”

Shortly after eleven o’clock the Mate called a meeting of the officers and compradores. Jock’s continued absence was now a cause for real concern. In a city where public communication hardly existed there was no way of contacting him. Soon the ship would be obliged to move and there was still no sign of a returning trishaw. The agent would be on board shortly and the Mate could see no alternative but to reveal the truth. The agent knew Jock and there would be no way of concealing from him the fact that he was not on board. Being a government appointee, he would immediately report the fact to the authorities.

Time for Number One compradore to step in. The little old man was serenely reassuring, sage-like in his advice. Characteristically weighing the odds. There was, he said, nothing to be gained by alerting the authorities. The ship would be made to move irrespective and the revelation of the Captain’s absence would start a train of enquiry which would lead inevitably to penalties – something, he did not need to remind them, the Company could well do without. His small, knowing eyes swept the company, the cigarette in its yellowed ivory holder moving in a broad assuaging gesture. This situation could be handled discreetly. He would take care of the agent himself and keep that one away from the ‘Captain’. The Chief Mate must continue to play his part. In the meantime Number Two would find a way of contacting the Captain wherever he was.

“Suppose Captain no come soon,” said Number One “more better you make one more time Captain. No ploblem. Bymeby all hokay.” His knowledge of local bureaucracy was reassuring. “Not so clever these men, you b’lieve”, turning to Number Two and waving his cigarette interrogatively, seeking confirmation.

Number Two nodded back fully in agreement. The Mate, though not happy at the prospect and the risks involved in unofficially assuming command, knew enough to depend on these men, especially on the wisdom of Number One. That one he guessed, was playing things close to the chest with a shrewd understanding of his own people – albeit under a misguided regime.

The pilot arrived on time, some species of political commissar hovering at his elbow. Jock was still adrift. In other respects all was ready, the bogus captain standing by on the bridge, now (on Number Two’s advice) affecting Jock’s ‘brass’ hat in addition to his jacket.

Each officer assumed the station of the one above him and ‘Sparks’, the radio officer, stepped in as substitute for the Third Mate. With her Doxford engines thumping, Chefoo moved away from the Bund and out onto the dark river, everything proceeding as normal, though leaving behind her Master, adrift somewhere in that dismal city.

An hour later the ship was secured fore and aft to the buoys. Her starboard anchor had been ‘hung off’, the cable now shackled securely to the forward buoy.

As Andy, the second mate on the focs’le head, ordered the slipwire slacked off a sharp squall came out of the night blowing down river. The ship surged to her moorings, a spatter of sleet filming the wheelhouse windows and there came a sudden commotion from up forward – sailors running with heaving lines and the beam of a flashlight sweeping back and forth on the water. In the wheelhouse the focs’ le telephone squawked briefly.

“Man in the water!” came the second mate’s voice. One of the buoy jumpers had been tossed into the river, the mooring buoy tilted steeply by the effect of the unexpected squall.

A heaving line was dropped in reach of the man’s desperate grasp followed by a lifebuoy from the break of the foc’sle kept him afloat. The attendant sampan reached him and hauled him to safety.

“Okay, they’ve got him.” Spark’s voice came from the telephone. “All fast forr’ard.”

The pilot, looking very much relieved, presented his chit, which the Mate signed in a fair representation of Jock’s hand, then descended with his chaperone to the waiting sampan. As the telegraph rang ‘finished with engines’, feelings on board Chefoo were mixed. The charade had clearly succeeded, but where, for heaven’s sake was Jock? How long before this little farce blew up in our faces? As things panned out, we would have done better to concern ourselves more with the job in hand and in Jock’s own words, taken ‘time to observe’ .

Jock arrived in a sampan a full hour later, tired but twinkling, a little tiddly but unabashed. His truancy it seemed remained undiscovered. A jubilant gathering took place in the smoke room over coffee, Jock smiling from one to the other as he was regaled with accounts of how we had coped without him. There was an atmosphere of homely relief, of things being once more complete. The quartermaster, on duty at the gangway that chilly night, was the only witness of a brief exchange between the loudah of the sampan which had returned Jock to the ship and Number Two compradore.

A thick envelope changed hands and was hastily stowed beneath the loudah’s padded cotton jacket. A brief salute and he plied his yuloh, sculling off into the dark. Even in these straitened times things could still be ‘arranged’ in Shanghai.

The Mate woke with dawn barely lighting the porthole, sleep broken by a sound distinctive and disturbing but which for a moment seemed without relevance.

The first junk, coming alongside with cargo? The sound came again and brought him from his bunk, grabbing at his clothing in clumsy haste. There was no mistaking now the clink, clink, clink of a large anchor chain running out over a gypsy. As he tore out on deck, expecting to see some other vessel close aboard with anchor cable paying out, the quartermaster came running from the gangway and he realised with a shock that this was coming from his own forecastle head. The Third Mate was ahead of them both, clad only in a towel. As they mounted to the forecastle head, teeth chattering he threw his weight on the handle of the windlass brake. Their combined efforts brought the gypsy abruptly to a juddering halt. The chain rose ponderously as it brought up under severe strain, hauling the slipwire short as it did so and parting it with a spectacular twang, narrowly missing the Third mate’s naked legs.

The cable compressor which had evidently been overlooked in the distraction of the man overboard situation, was now screwed tight, rendering the chain properly secure. The three paused to get their breath. Andy arrived, sheepish and muttering self condemnation, then hurrying off again to get power on the windlass. Peering down from the forecastle head at the turgid surface of the river, the ship was seen to be lying across the tide, her stem pointing towards the opposite bank away from the town. The ebb was sliding past at a good five knots. A strong icy wind blowing down stream played on the starboard bow, adding to the strain on the mooring.

On the bridge, Jock eyed the Mate over his cupped hands as he lit a cigarette, listening to his report. No word of condemnation, mindful perhaps of his own causative part in events, not about to dwell on the irony. He nodded as if to say “Let’s see what has to be done then.”

Chefoo, in the blustery grey dawn, lay awkwardly across the Whangpoo at an angle of about forty degrees to the stream. Her anchor chain, leading to the forward mooring buoy, now out to starboard, had run out close to two shackles (nearly two hundred feet) before the brake had been applied. She had fallen right out of her berth, with the brunt of wind and tide on her starboard shoulder. The after mooring buoy now layoff her starboard quarter with the three remaining stem lines as taut as bowstrings. The fourth had already parted.

On either hand and directly astern lay ships, junks and lighters at buoys or at anchor. The nearest, a group of Ningpo trading junks, lay horribly close under Chefoo ‘s port side and in imminent danger should her stem swing in that direction.

Jock, his chin tucked well in, spent some time assessing the situation. The obvious solution it seemed was to slack off the stem lines until the ship once more stemmed the stream, then heave her back into position on the anchor cable.

This option however was not open to him. Any slack on the stem lines would put the ship among that cluster of junks on her port side with predictable chaos and confusion. As a result of her falling out of position, Chefoo’s stem now lay abreast of the bows of the ship moored immediately astern, a large Russian cargo ship. If Chefoo chose to take a sheer to starboard, which she might well do when the anchor chain was hove in, her stem would almost certainly collide with the Russki’s bows. We were hemmed in on both sides.

With power on the windlass, the Mate was instructed to heave tentatively on the anchor chain. As the first links came in over the gypsy one of the remaining stem lines parted and the telephone from aft came urgently alive.

“No more heaving for’d” the Second Mate implored, “The stem lines won’t take it, only two left.” Jock stroked his chin and lit another cigarette.

The Chief Engineer arrived and reported the engines ready in another five minutes. The Third Mate meanwhile kept the Aldis lamp clattering away in the direction of the signal station (No V.H.F. in those days) in the hope of obtaining the services of a tug. The station did not respond and Jock baulked at the idea of using the ship’s whistle in order to gain their attention.

“We’re not in that much trouble we need to go braying like a lame donkey.” But with still two hours to go before slack water and the wind on the increase, we seemed to have trouble enough. The remaining stem lines could part at any moment and Jock’s hand never strayed far from the engine room telegraph.

At last the Third Mate’s efforts were rewarded. There came an answering flicker from the signal tower on the Bund. “You must wait.” And that was all.

In vain the compradore staff screamed at the junkmen on the Ningpo traders alongside, telling them to get their craft out of harms way. The smoke from their early morning cooking fires was snatched away from their high stems by the wind. With barely a backward glance over their shoulders, the stolid junkmen, squatting on their haunches, dug their chopsticks into their rice bowls, ignoring the nemesis towering over them. They would be ready to get their anchors and move upstream come the flood. Until then the foreign devils could wait and whistle, no matter, them and their big ship.

Scores of other junks, taking advantage of the ebb, came sliding headlong downstream on either hand, their tattered sails filled with the following wind. Most were fully laden, many steered with stony equanimity by old crones in padded clothing and caps with errant flaps, their menfolk busy with other more demanding tasks.

With full daylight came at last a welcome tug, bustling up the river towards us. A raucous voice barked in Chinese over a loud hailer.

“Pilot wanchee come aboard.” interpreted Number Two. “More better you make Captain, all same fashion before, Mistah Mate.”

Tiredness and strain were by now having an effect. There was scant enthusiasm for a resumption of the charade but Jock saw the wisdom in Number Two’s advice. This could easily be the same pilot who had handled the ship the night before. The discovery of a different man in command could provoke awkward enquiries. Mate and Master hastily exchanged jackets, Jock sending for his raincoat and donning it over the jacket, having failed to get it buttoned around his middle. By the time the pilot appeared on the bridge, a further change-round of duties had been instituted. But here was by no means the same pilot! This was a round, roly-poly character who shook the ‘Captain’s’ hand, accepted two bourgeois cups of coffee and smoked several filthy capitalist cigarettes while he attended to Chefoo’s troubles.

With some assistance from the ship’s engines she was nudged effectively back into her berth and held steady by the tug while a sampan ran additional lines, the pilot chatting amicably with Number Two throughout. Jock the while busied himself unobtrusively with the bell book in the corner of the wheelhouse.

The job complete and Chefoo once more secure, the pilot prepared to leave. He paused on his way to the companionway and nodded in the direction of Jock, firing a query at our compradore. Jock, somewhat chastened, continued to scribble industriously. Number Two replied at some length, prompting the pilot to let out a surprising bellow of laughter!

Still chortling, he shook the hand of the bogus Master and headed towards the companion, giving the real Captain, now completely flummoxed, a friendly pat on the shoulder as he passed. By the time Number Two returned, having seen the pilot off the ship, Jock could hardly contain himself.

“What fashion you talk pilot ‘long me Number Two?” he wanted to know.

“Pilot he speak, ‘What pidgin this Third Mate, how come he too much old man?’ ”

Number Two grinned toothily. “I tell him ‘Third Mate him one time Captain long time. One day catch him one big ploblem, miss him ship, too much trouble. Now makee Third Mate all time.’ ” Jock’s indignant snort was belied by the familiar twinkle!

“I’ll thank you for my jacket back, if you please Mister Mate.”