A ‘C2’ Cargo Ship

After accepting an offer to study engineering in the United States, I gave notice to the management of the Union Castle Line and after completing one further voyage with the line as second officer on the Rochester Castle I found myself beached for several months as some business friends of my father tried to find me an inexpensive berth on one of the ships which regularly brought paper to the UK. It did not take long and soon I was travelling to Liverpool to join a C2 cargo ship, the American Harvester of the US Lines and to sign on as a supernumary. She had just finished discharging including reels of paper from mills in the Southern States and was returning empty to Savannah in Georgia to take on another load.

The America Harvester was a 1943 war time built C2 cargo ship of 8,287 gross tons and powered by steam turbines of 6,000shp which drove a single screw and gave her a cruising speed of about 15.5 knots. She was built in Wilmington NC and formally served as the USN transport Rattler before being sold out of the Navy and converted into a cargo vessel after the War ended. My new ship was 459ft long and had a beam of 63ft and a fully loaded draft of 25ft. She had a black hull, red boot-topping, white upperworks, masts and derricks and this was crowned with a tall red, white and blue funnel. And she was a real load carrier with 5 big holds.

My cabin on the boat deck was large when compared with my previous ship but it was spartan to say the least. Everything except for the thin carpet was steel, the door, the bunk, the wardrobe and the chest of drawers were all made of this fire resistant material and once during the voyage when I was bored I beat out a tune around the cabin with a pair of drum sticks borrowed from the steward which was something he thought was hilarious. Walking around the decks I could see nothing but metal in every direction and was becoming convinced that apart from matches for lighting cigarettes there was absolutely no timber on board and that was until I looked at the steel lifeboats. “Oh no, they would’nt” was my first reaction but looking inside each lifeboat I saw that securely stowed were sets of wooden oars. I felt relieved.

We cast off just before midnight and after going through the lock gates entered the River Mersey and that is when I turned in. Next morning found us steaming down St. Georges Channel towards an alter course position off the Irish Coast. After a breakfast of ham, homany grits and two fried eggs (over-easy) and cups of coffee, I was invited to visit the bridge to meet the Captain. He was a tall middle aged man dressed all in khaki, wearing a cap and sporting a trim moustache. He had been a reserve USN officer during the War and as I was still in the RNR we had a lot to talk about.

In the wheelhouse draped over the wheel (round with no spokes) was one of the tallest men I had ever seen, actually he was a little like the old fim star Buddy Ebsen, tall and thin with a sunny smile he rejoiced in the name of Slick. The 3rd officer had the watch and like my last ship there was the Captain and three watchkeeping officers. There were also two cadets (or midshipmen) under training. They worked on deck during the morning, studied in the afternoon and kept watches on the bridge at night. Later that day I received a message from the Captain giving me the ‘freedom’ of the ship seeing that I was ‘shipwise’ and knew my way around without killing or injuring myself.

The ship was very well maintained with painting by the ‘deck crowd’ going on all the time in good weather which is the sign of a good Chief Mate. All the officers were very friendly and I had an open invitation to visit them on the bridge at any time but between themselves I was referred to as the Limey passenger.

The ship had quite a few black crewmen from the US Southern States especially on the catering side and this included all of the galley staff. But wherever they came from all of the crew members were very friendly. One night I was invited to an impromptu jazz concert in the crew mess hall and I was impressed by the skills of the instrument players. They in turn were impressed when I showed that I knew the words of the song Down South.

One day the Chief Engineer invited me to visit the engine room. His department included two ‘express’ boilers, a set of stream turbines and all the auxiliaries in the ship. At sea I had noticed that two of his men, stripped to the waist in the sunny weather, were busily overhauling a couple of the cargo winches. As per every set of good engineers, the engine room was spotlessly clean and the beaming smiles I received showed that my friendly comments were appreciated.

The weather throughout the voyage across the North Atlantic was very good and the sea state was never worse than Force Four and one day the Captain asked me if I could spare some time to teach navigation to their two midshipmen. I had nothing else to do at the time and for a couple of hours each day I did just that. Keeping busy made the voyage pass by quickly and it was not long before we lay stopped off the mouth of the Savannah River waiting for a pilot. As we entered the port I was kept interested by watching several different types of aircraft including old WW2 Grumman Avenger aircraft flying off the nearby USN Airbase. Later I was told that the base was used for training carrier aircrews.

We moored port side to in Savannah and next to a warehouse that was bulging with reels of Kraft and Semi Chemical paper ready for loading. The Captain calculated that they would be heading back, this time to Felixstowe, in about a week.

My training was to take place at the Union Bag paper mill in Jacksonville which lay about 120 miles south, as the crow flies, and as soon as we cleared US Customs a vehicle drew up at the bottom of the gangway to take me to my destination. I say vehicle but it was the largest convertible I had ever seen. It was like sitting inside a small swimming pool and had enough room to sit 4 across in the back.

I was in Brooklyn NY when my training finished and was wondering how I was going to get back to the UK when I had a stroke of luck. My father came to the USA on business and I ‘sweet talked’ him into letting me return with him from New York in a BOAC Boeing 707. The indiginty was that he sat in 1st class being paid for by his company and I sat in economy. Still as he pointed out ‘beggers can’t be choosers’ and he was right about that. We took off in a snowstorm with range to only get to Shannon where we stayed overnight before finishing our flight to Heathrow the next morning. So ended my first visit to the USA and my first flight in a jet airliner and they were not to be my last by a long shot.