Towards mid-1965, I was nearing the end of my second year as a deck cadet with the Blue Star Line and by which time had served aboard four of the Company’s ships, traversing the globe to countries and ports in North and South America, Australia and New Zealand.

On frequent occasions the opportunity to steer the ship had been taken, but invariably for relatively short periods. On a whim on the part of the O.O.W. rather than as a formal part of any training syllabus, when either sharing a watch, or perhaps, more likely when either scrubbing out, polishing brass or cleaning the windows in the wheelhouse on the instructions of the mate, I would be offered a ‘trick’. On each such occasion, the autopilot would be disengaged when I would be given the course to steer, duly repeated by me and told “She’s all yours”.

As anyone who has helmed a large deep laden conventional merchantman for the first time may testify, it usually took a bit of compass chasing, invariably by over compensation of helm, before getting the measure of her, particularly as in my case, the four ships ranged upwards of 8,000 tons gross, including one double reduction geared turbine steamer and all of which at ‘full away’ had conventional large slow revving (circa 100 rpm) fixed pitch propellers. Thankfully however, and to the relief of the O.O.W., I was usually quick to settle down and become familiar with the slow helm responses and individual foibles of each ship.

All this changed when, shortly after completing the long trans Pacific and Atlantic passages from New Zealand to Liverpool aboard the big seven hatch Clydebank built 13,000 ton twin screw motor ship Wellington Star, I was instructed to report to London Victoria Station at 1100 hours on Sunday 25th April 1965 to accompany several other crew including Mr. Tait (John, not Harry!), Chief officer, on ‘Golden Arrow’ and ‘Rome Express’ rail journeys across Europe via Paris and Modena to Genoa, where we would join Santos Star, a ship about which I gleaned Mr. Tait, during our conversations on the long overnight train journey, admitted to having no prior knowledge. as a casual observer of the construction of her identical sister some 6 or so years previously at Alexander Stephen’s Linthouse yard on the Clyde, as the Liverpool based associated Company Lamport + Holt’s 3,005 gross ton Chatham, later to be renamed Mendoza Star, I was able to sketch out for him the general characteristics of our sister ship. We had each been assigned to undertake three back-to-back round voyages from Mediterranean ports via the Canaries to the East Coast of South America. So from one of our largest deep sea ‘food ships’ in Wellington Star, I was to serve aboard Santos Star, at 3,775 gross tons, one of the Company’s very smallest.

Our white hulled ship was a banana doors equipped ‘freezer boat’ completed during late 1959 by Brooke Marine at Lowestoft as Constable for Lamports and the first of the two essentially identical ships to trade initially on banana related services from the Caribbean and Brazil to US, UK and Irish ports. During 1962, Constable and Chatham, were transferred to Blue Star, duly renamed and later placed on a newly established refrigerated meat service from the river Plate to Italy via Spanish and French Mediterranean ports. Such was the success of the service that within a short period, each was to be lengthened by some 16 metres adding one cargo hold and increasing gross tonnage by approximately 600. During late 1964 and early 1965 they were joined by three marginally older but broadly similar sized rather sleek ex fruit ships, Genova Star (ex Norefjell) acquired from Norway’s Olsen & Ugelstad, Padova Star (ex Parthenon) and Barcelona Star (ex Piraeus), from Laiesz & Co.’s Hamburg based Afrikanische Frucht Gmb.

On arrival at Genoa, I duly signed on Santos Star, soon discovering that whilst she was gyro compass equipped, our little ship carried neither radar nor autopilot and only seven deckhands. My cabin mate and I would make up the watch on wheelman, lookout, standby and associated ‘farmer’ duties with the Senior AB sharing with us the Mate’s 4-8 watch for the duration.

There was little demand for cargo space on southbound sailings (other than during the southern hemisphere winter when citrus fruit and/or bananas might occasionally be picked up on inducement at either Recife, Rio or Santos for Argentina), so after loading a small consignment of Italian manufactured domestic refrigerators at Genoa for our bunker port of Tenerife, we ballasted down and secured for sea.

We departed Genoa’s congested harbour on a beautifully clear and warm late spring day. After “full away”, the old Man repaired to his suite abaft the wheelhouse, I was to take first wheel on the Mate’s 4-8 watch. The latter commenced pacing the starboard bridge wing and in peace, clearly relishing the afternoon sunshine. Wishing to impress by way of my steering skills, I was, perversely, to become ever more exasperated with my apparent inability to hold course, and with, embarrassingly, the gyro steering compass repeater ‘clicking’ away at a rate reminiscent of radio room Morse!

It was not long of course (sic) before my O.O.W. was to periodically glance astern and with a frown, cast dark looks in my direction. in recollection of my ‘first tripper’ experience of taking the wheel for the first time aboard the much larger circa 10,400 grt Ulster Star, also on a meat run to Buenos Aires, when the advice given was that when she is ‘headed’ off course in any kind of sea, only when it appears she’s not going to recover by herself, should compensating wheel be applied. Well, apart from the fact that we were presently traversing a flat calm sea, without even the slightest of swells, clearly such advice had no application here!

Soon I was ‘invited’ to leave the wheel, step out to the bridge wing briefly to observe that astern was our extremely well defined, deeply curving and in the opinion of the Mate, somewhat artistic wake. Followed by his question, “Would you like to go back and sign that?” I returned to my ‘grating’ with the thought “What a way to begin six months with this guy”.

I was driven now to analysis of the problem. a study of the main engine ‘tacho’ repeater located immediately adjacent to the helm indicator directly ahead of me on the bulkhead above the wheelhouse windows, revealed that our main engine (a 7 cylinder M.A.N. unit coupled directly to the shaft and not much bigger than that fitted to a largish trawler) was turning at a quite unexpectedly high 212 rpm!! This combined with the increased effect of our reportedly unmodified rudder, post hull lengthening, then little wonder the Mate’s views on my demonstrated and manifestly ‘artistic talents’! With now much reduced compensatory wheel input and all, now rather less mysteriously was well. Later towards the end of our southbound passage and by then rather more practised, I was wheelman for approach to the river Plate pilot station and ongoing early phase of the somewhat hazardous shallow water estuary passage towards Buenos Aires. Later, at the Pilot’s request and the old Man’s instruction, I found myself at the wheel for port entry and arrival at our Dock Sud berth. Thereafter and with full measure of her, I seemed to become the ‘Mud Pilot’, helming for many such incidences during my time aboard Santos Star.

Small by Blue Star standards, she was by virtue of her reduced crew complement, a hard working ship. Fortuitously Blue Star paid its cadets overtime (at 2/4d per hour, 12p in today’s money). High labour hours were required to prepare the ship with her five holds to truly exacting standards of cleanliness and subsequent regulation hygiene related fumigation for the loading of chilled and frozen beef carcasses and most importantly pass muster of our fully insulated cargo spaces by the critical and experienced eyes of the Argentinean Health inspectorate. This would lead to issue of our ‘fitness certificate’ to load freshly slaughtered beef. In consequence and for the duration of the southbound voyage, the ‘crowd’ and deck cadets were essentially on maximum permissible overtime to achieve such requirements. For those on the 4-8 watch therefore and taking into account one hour each for morning and midday meals (cadets were required at all times to don full uniform for officers’ saloon dining), overtime was accumulated at the daily rate of 6 hours whilst at sea. From Genoa to the Canaries, the first but shorter leg southbound, routine washing down, soogiing, deck maintenance and general hold cleaning duties formed our primary tasks. after departing Tenerife however, whilst the hands focussed on deep cleaning, repainting and/or varnishing the bulkheads and decks of all the refrigerated hold spaces below, cadets’ daily off-watch duties were centred upon the cleaning and sterilisation of many thousands of galvanised meat hooks and chains used for the hanging stowage in the refrigerated lockers of individual chilled beef quarter carcasses to be loaded at (mainly) Buenos Aires and Montevideo. Aboard Santos Star and sister Mendoza Star, this somewhat rudimentary process consisted, following thorough wash down to remove previous post discharge detritus from hooks and chains, of sterilisation of accurately counted and formed bundles’ immersion in a 40 gallon boiling water filled oil drum. It was located at the after end of the foredeck and fed by a flexible pipe connected to a starboard main deck alleyway located steam line connection to the ship’s donkey boiler. Following some minutes’ immersion, said bundles would quickly dry, to be distributed to each hold’s booby hatch, according to the varying capacities of each tween deck refrigerated locker. This sterilisation task, weather dependent and usually of around 5 days duration in total, was clearly of a heavy duty sweat inducing nature normally undertaken within tropical and subtropical latitudes. Generally however, such labour was regarded by the cadets as “a good bronzy weather job”!

For those tanker men, general cargo, tramp and ore carrier crews and lay readers not conversant with the carriage of chilled beef, the stowage process took the form of a muslin shrouded beef ‘hind’ quarter, shoulder borne from the tweendeck hatch square to its designated stowage position by a dock labourer, being suspended upended via the carcass upper leg from a deckhead positioned hook in the insulated locker space, a short length of chain then attached to it, and a beef ‘fore’ quarter, similarly muslin covered, suspended by chain and second hook, to hang below its corresponding hind quarter. Successful carriage of this highly temperature sensitive commodity depended solely upon the reliability of the ship’s refrigeration plant and the ability of ‘The Chief Freezer’, the refrigeration Engineer, to monitor and strictly maintain the temperature of the beef carcasses at 29 degrees Fahrenheit (with a 4 degree temperature tolerance) by means of regular carcass temperature test sampling. Frozen beef, usually of a lesser quality, plus offal related products were normally loaded in the vessel’s lower holds (close stacked) in frozen condition and shipped at 15 degrees Fahrenheit with a tolerance of +/-2 degrees. all such information would of course be ‘old hat’ to those seafarers of yore who served on the ‘BA run’ with L+H, Houlder Brothers, Donaldson’s South America Line, royal Mail and of course, the ‘Star Boats’.

Whilst loading at BA, Montevideo and occasionally ‘topping off’ at smaller river Plate ports and/or Brazil’s Rio Grande, cadets were, together with the three Mates, tasked with supervision of the loading process, focussing particularly on appropriate coloured tape ‘markoff’ of ‘parcels’ of product for specific consignees, the progressive drawing of sketch cargo plans showing their corresponding locations in each compartment and ensuring avoidance of damage to the particularly tender, freshly slaughtered beef carcasses.

With the ship battened down for the long northwards passage, my mate and I were returned to crew watches on the 4-8. again placed on overtime deriving ‘day work’, we scraped and painted superstructure, decks, deckhouses, derricks and winches plus the rather more ‘exacting’ tasks of cleaning bright work and varnishing taffrails etc. on the bridge and the beautifully crafted standard compass platform on the monkey island. Add to these the cleaning, restoration and replenishment of the ship’s boats (the latter under the supervision of the 3rd Mate, presumably to ensure that barley sugar supplies were not totally decimated!) and our days passed quickly. Overall our little ship took on a yacht like appearance on deck. She was the only Company vessel in which I sailed with an all-white hull, superstructure and deckhouses and where ‘eau de nil’ coloured paint (similar to the pale green colouring applied to inboard surfaces of the bridge for glare reduction purposes) covered the main and fo’c’sle weather decks. Such was attention to detail that if a rust patch had the ‘temerity’ to appear on these decks, it would be scraped down to bare metal, thoroughly wire brushed to pristine condition and immediately given at least one coat of varnish, followed by two coats of red lead and finished off with one coat of ‘flat’ and at the very least one coat of gloss ‘eau-de-nil’ deck paint!

With less pressing requirements during the early phase of our northwards passage, the Mate, if in generous mood, might permit us a Sunday afternoon off before watch duties, to catch up with dhobi etc. With a less than full hands complement however, such generosity was the exception rather than the rule.

Bypassing the Canaries northbound, our ports of call were to include Valencia, Barcelona, Marseille with voyage termination at Genoa. The beautiful Mediterranean weather of the northern hemisphere 1965 summer whilst aboard Santos Star was enjoyed by all, in particular the Mate, who not unexpectedly took advantage of the many opportunities whilst alongside at our discharge ports to have the hands repaint our white hull, boot topping, outboard superstructure sides and of course the funnel. Whilst they set about these tasks, the job of repainting the all-white (yes white!) bower anchors and ‘fleet’, the ship’s name fore and aft and replacement of the white lead packing around the banana doors fell to us cadets. With her deeply flared bows, the setting of a bowsing-in wire from the break of the ship’s long fo’c’sle, round the stem and back to the break on the opposite side became necessary for us just to reach the anchors and surrounding shell plating. During the course of this work suspended on our staging and invisible from fo’c’sle deck level, at ‘smoko’ the Bo’sun appeared to have forgotten us, so knowing that the ship’s punt was still alongside the pilot ladder to the weather deck further aft, we abandoned our stage in favour of a cooling swim and via the punt and boarding ladder, to enjoy large crew size mugs of ‘conny-onny’ sweetened tea and freshly baked ‘tabnabs’ in the crew messroom. As one of the very smallest units of Blue Star’s fleet, it was to become apparent that both prospective and newly promoted Masters would on occasion be appointed to our mini-liner for introduction to the practical aspects of command and later experience. When circumstances permitted, it was not unusual therefore to find our Captain occasionally stepping aside in favour of the Mate assuming command under supervision, usually for either a port arrival or departure, with the more junior deck officers moving up a grade for the duration. This entailed my own elevation to Third Mate with full responsibility for managing bridge functions under our temporary Master’s command. Such exercises were to stand me in good stead for the future.

As could be expected and for the purposes of operational continuity, Company practice dictated that only partial crew changes were to be affected at each Genoa turn round. on one such occasion, when around half the crew complement including the Master, 2nd Mate and half the hands had left us, the decision was made by London to have the ship briefly dry-docked for hull cleaning and application of fresh antifouling. With the Mate in charge on the bridge, 3rd officer up forward and myself down aft, we gingerly manoeuvred her into dry-dock to complete the specified tasks. As my first ever dry-docking, the exercise proved an interesting and significant learning experience. Surrounding us were numerous vessels under various states of repair or modification. In a floating dock immediately adjacent to us was a mid-size Mobil tanker undergoing retrofit of a bulbous bow, for installation quite simply over her original and seemingly unmodified conventional forefoot and cutwater. Afloat on our opposite side, lay the recently remodelled and modernised ex Dutch colonial and round the world service passenger liners Willem Ruys and Oranje. Now renamed Achille Lauro and Angelina Lauro respectively, each with its somewhat extreme and characteristic midships ‘tumblehome’ and resplendent in their newly profiled bows, remodelled superstructures and black wing topped white star adorned blue funnels, they were in the final stages of fitting out prior to service on Flotta Lauro’s emigrant routes. I was to learn later that in only a matter of weeks, each was to suffer serious fires at Palermo and Genoa respectively and which as a consequence, considerably delayed their entry to service, initially from Southampton and Bremerhaven to Australia.

Soon we were out of dry-dock, had signed on replacement crew, gained a new Master and departed ‘lightship’ for yet another southbound voyage. after deposit of our harbour pilot and ringing down ‘full away’, we became hugely impressed with our little ship, with her now spotlessly clean narrow beamed destroyer-like post lengthening hull as she slowly overhauled one of Italia’s ageing but nevertheless sleek, stately and recently renamed ‘Three Musicians’ series of 13,000 ton passenger liners, also outbound for the river Plate, at a recorded and creditable 18 knots.

By late September, it was now the turn of the Mate and 14 other crew members including myself, to pay off our pristine little ‘yacht’. With the fruits of my mainly overtime labours burning a hole in my pocket, I was happy to proceed on leave to the UK, returning by air on a brand new BAC 1-11 jet of British United airways (of which the Blue Star Line group was at that time major shareholder), departing from Genoa’s then newly opened airport to London Gatwick.

Within a month, I was instructed to join my next assignment, the 8,400 grt refrigerated motor ship Newcastle Star at Liverpool under the command of fellow Scot, Captain John S.M. Hunter, for what in the event would be two round voyages to South and East Africa and onwards to Australia. I was soon pleasantly surprised to discover that Mr.Tait had also been appointed to this ship. I had been promoted initially to the position of ‘acting’ 4th Mate, later confirmed to full status and nominated to O.O.W. duties on the ‘8 to 12’. No more routine ‘tricks’ at the wheel for me….. ever!