Voyage East

by Voyage East- A stirring tale of the last great days of the Merchant Navy (retail) (epub)

  ‘Of course he is,’ said the Senior Midshipman knowingly. I recalled they were on watch together. The conversation turned enviously on Mike’s adultery. We had forgotten our demand. Nobody expected anything to happen. This was just an ordinary bar.

  But she came, a Chinese-Malay girl of the Peranakan, sheathed in a cheongsam of pale blue cotton. She had short black hair above a pleasant face which was marred slightly by smallpox. Expressionlessly she sat down facing us, on a chair drawn from an adjacent table. She met our several stares as a sudden, animal pervasion filled the air. Who was she? The proprietor’s daughter? His sister? Wife? The local prostitute, called on the telephone and hurried here by trisha?

  The cool bar in the heat of the evening was possessed of a strange stillness. Prostitution, it is claimed, exploits women; but that is not wholly true, for the thing cut the other way. We were the victims of our own urges; looking at her we were each stirred.

  The Third Engineer rose. We all stared at him; the powerful physique, the tangled hair bursting out of his open-necked shirt, his dark, flushed face. The girl looked up too, uncrossing her legs and standing to face him. They exchanged glances, striking only in their total impassivity, and she turned and led him away.

  The rest of us sighed, a noise of lust cheated, but also of relief. We avoided each other’s eyes, picking up our beers. The man who had first half-seriously called for a woman coughed.

  ‘What about another round?’

  ‘While we wait…’

  We thought of the bodies coupled in the adjacent room. The proprietor swabbed the bar, above us the punkah revolved and a gecko chased a late fly to its doom.

  ‘Hey, five more San Migs, please…’

  There was about the whole sordid little episode an effect rather akin to that which commonly accompanies the viewing of a cream cake. Once someone else has taken it, gluttony disappears and one basks in virtue, by default. The Third Engineer returned twenty minutes later. No-one asked him if the earth had moved.

  * * *

  With our derricks still topped but swung inboard we sailed from Penang the following noon. Embleton, one of our able-seamen, had gone missing and China Dick was furious. ‘First bloody port…’ I heard him hiss to the Mate.

  On deck the sailors tore down the shelters erected over the derrick controls (a futile act of demolition for they would be re-erected at Port Swettenham) and drove the accumulated debris of our brief stay in Penang out of odd corners with the wash-deck hose. Here and there slings of dunnage remained on deck. Pulo Penang, dark under its dense mantle of vegetation, fell astern and the smooth, calm surface of the Malacca Strait opened before us.

  Lying between the Malay peninsula and the elongated Indonesian island of Sumatra the Strait was peppered with islands and dotted with fishing craft of every size, from small praus and sampans, to lorchas and junks. Often unlit at night, these craft would be a hazard and occasionally fell prey to Indonesian raiders, for this was the period of ‘Confrontation’ between Malaysia and Soekarno’s Indonesia, a phoney war which flared along the jungle borders of Borneo and among the conflicting interests of rival fishermen who met on the high seas. The Royal Navy were much in evidence; the old battle-class destroyer Corunna had been at Penang and that morning we passed a flotilla of gunboats, led by the diminutive HMS Ickford.

  Due at Port Swettenham at daylight the following day we ran down the Malay coast at reduced speed. As darkness closed in we were witness to another electric storm over Sumatra. Huge, thunderheaded cumulo-nimbus clouds a hundred miles away rose over the jungle. Starting from a cloud base of about 1,500 feet these developed vertically to 35,000 feet where their heads were torn to leeward by the jetstreams of the upper atmosphere, distorting their turbulent curling appearance to that of a great anvil. Although rising with a ponderously slow majesty, within the clouds unstable conditions produced rapid vertical movements, whirling water droplets suspended in the warm rising air into sudden contact with ice-crystals, super-cooling the water to temperatures as low as -40°C, so freezing them instantly. Then, too heavy to be supported by the updraughts, huge hail stones drove groundwards with destructive force.

  Not all the droplets froze, some split, producing a negative charge, although the charge of the individual drops remained positive. Despite this, the general charge within the cloud-base was negative, while in its head a positive charge developed. Potential difference between cloud-base and peak, or between adjacent clouds, caused discharges of lightning, great flickering flashes that illuminated the cloud from within, throwing its heavier, whorling flanks into shadow and bursting brightly through its thinner sides. At the distance from which we observed this stunning show no thunder was heard, yet the titanic flaring was bright enough to cast shadows about the bridge and the Mate and I watched in silent wonder as it climaxed, died, then flared again in a display that lasted two or three hours.

  Set behind islands of dense mangrove swamp, the approach to Port Swettenham from Penang was through the North Klang Strait, a narrow stretch of thick, green water that lay flat as sheet-lead. The view from the bridge was of a low, monotonous sea of foliage, here and there enlivened by the brilliant flash of a parrot or the half-glimpsed, flying form of a monkey. Behind the swampy island barrier the river estuary opened out into a lagoon where several ships lay anchored, awaiting berths at Deep Water Point; beyond, the river wound inland to the town itself. Even at eight in the morning the sun was high enough to cause a sizzling glare off the concrete of the new godowns. We slowed, sliding past Glenogle, anchored and waiting to load latex in bulk, and made fast astern of Ascanius. Ahead of her were a Norwegian ship and Jardine Matheson’s Eastern Moon.

  It fell to my lot to spend the afternoon on deck. It was blisteringly hot, though periodic showers swept over us, prefaced by the Malay announcement of rain: ‘Hujan! Hujan!’

  To close the hatches quickly and prevent the cargo from spoiling, huge canvas tents were hooked onto the derrick wires and guyed out with lashings to any suitable fastening point. In theory the water should have run off into the scuppers and over the side, but in practice the weight of a downpour soon formed heavy pockets of water in odd corners of the tent. Running up to the half-deck, I turned out the Midshipmen then called on the derrick gang. Reluctantly they appeared with buckets and we baled the tents while the rain stabbed down like stair-rods, soaking us instantly, but infinitely cool and exhilarating.

  ‘Best use a six inch nail, Jimmy,’ said one of our AB’s, a thin, middle aged man with a once handsome, dissipated face.

  ‘Belay that Roberts…’

  ‘It’ll only fill up again, Fourth…’

  ‘Then we’ll bale it out again…’

  ‘Logical bastard.’

  If we did not attend to the matter, when the rain stopped, the guys would be cast loose and water cascade below. Alternatively the tents might split under the load. Then, quite suddenly, the rain did stop and as if mechanically controlled the sun blazed down again. I was relieved at dinner time, for we were working six-hour deck watches, and went gratefully to the trough.

  The new wharf was some distance from civilisation and I joined a party of officers sitting on deck drinking beer as darkness settled over the ship. Mike was there and the conversation had turned on the morality of prostitution, the Third Engineer’s sexual indulgence having fired the subject.

  ‘Any spots yet, Third?’ one of the juniors asked pruriently.

  ‘He squeezed and he squoze and a bubo arose,’ intoned Mike and I realised he had been drinking before dinner.

  ‘Look,’ said the unashamed Third Engineer, ‘when you’ve got to go, you’ve got to go…’

  ‘Yes,’ said Sparks, still the most ingenuous of the group, ‘but what about the girl?’

  ‘What about the girl?’ They all looked at him.

  ‘He’s going to ask if she enjoyed it!’

  ‘She ought to have done,’ said the Third philosophically, ‘she got fifty dollars!’

  ‘
Yes, but it’s degrading… I mean to have to sell your body…’

  ‘She didn’t have to sell it, Sparks. Not in Penang. Wait till you get to Bangkok…’ An expression of gleeful anticipation appeared simultaneously on the ring of sweating faces.

  ‘Hey, you’re not a cherry-boy, are you, Sparks?’

  ‘A what?’

  ‘A cock-virgin…’

  Sparks blushed and shot an appealing look at me. ‘He’s in love,’ I put in, ‘got a girl-friend…’

  ‘Oh, well…’ They swallowed their beers direct from the can, replacing the empties from the case round which they sat, lonely men most of them, frustrated, drinking because there was little else to do.

  ‘I don’t think it wise, Sparky,’ said Mike with careful solemnity, ‘to take a moral stand. Just remember, a standing prick has no conscience.’

  ‘You should bloody know,’ mumbled someone.

  ‘Now don’t be jealous,’ replied Mike.

  ‘It’s all right for you, you bugger, you’ve got your bread buttered on both sides.’

  ‘You mean I’m married?’ A dangerous gleam came into Mike’s eye.

  ‘Yes.’ It was odd. Most of these men, discussing casual sex with such frankness, knew that what they most wanted was a stable relationship. But at home a new freedom was releasing girls from ideas of fidelity and this knowledge had undermined many relationships. Mike swallowed his beer slowly and we waited fascinated as he turned to his accusers in this kangaroo court of morality.

  ‘Marriage,’ Mike began, belching fatuously and waving a new can of lager so that it sloshed out, ‘is legalised prostitution… you pay for the woman… keep her in clover, and in return, you have your hole.’

  ‘Delightful expression.’

  ‘It’s true.’

  ‘I’m not arguing.’

  Sparks looked at me, an expression of despair on his face. I shrugged and lit a cigarette. ‘Stick to your bird at home.’

  ‘Too right.’

  We were five days at Port Swettenham, seeing in the New Year there. Towards midnight we gathered in the smoke room then, by invitation of China Dick, made our way to the passengers’ lounge. Mrs Saddler made a great fuss of us as her husband drank quietly by the bar with the older man who had first attracted notice by walking the deck during the Atlantic gale. Another married couple rather distantly observed our antics, he tall, rather distinguished-looking and obviously an old Malay hand; she equally obviously a long-time resident of Singapore, but run to seed, colourless, thin lipped, wide haunched and exhausted.

  The skirl of pipes came from a tape recorder over which the Mate stood proprietorially, his feet tapping and a rapt expression on his face. He winked at me once and then became lost in his thoughts. I envied him his amazing self-possession. China Dick was holding court, moving among the slightly embarrassed groups, his short, barrel figure tight-buttoned in the high neck of his Number ten patrol jacket. Both he and the Chief Engineer wore the formal tropical rig. They needed only feather-plumed white pith helmets and swords to look like a pair of colonial governors, but they were affably pleasant, topping up drinks and making light asides designed to put us at our ease. It proved a pleasant contrast to Christmas.

  Mike sat on the whistle handle at midnight while the Junior Midshipman, escorted to the forecastle by a posse of well-wishers, rang the traditional twenty-four bell salute to the new year. Along the quay and off at the anchorage other ships were doing the same. One, a tiny, woodbine-funnelled antique vessel, the Impala, was whooping an ancient steam-whistle. The lounge party broke up after this. Down aft, in honour of our new year, the Chinese let off a sputter of fire-crackers and I saw Zee carrying three bottles of Johnnie Walker aft with a broad grin on his face.

  ‘Captin belong velly good, number one,’ he slurred, his lambdacism too obvious for sobriety.

  ‘Be careful on ladder. No drop bottles.’

  ‘Ya, Ya, be careful… Johnnie Walker velly good, number one first class…’

  For us the evening ended with a darts-match in the seamen’s mess-room. The Fourth Engineer from the Ascanius was narrowly beaten by the missing Embleton who had turned up that afternoon, put on a train by the agent in Penang.

  ‘Like a bad bloody penny, you are,’ growled the Bosun, a disappointed runner-up.

  There was a brief flurry of activity when we sailed that afternoon. The tug heaving our stern off parted her tow-wire and there were fears that it had fouled our screw, but it pulled clear. We swung away, increasing speed as we entered the long, viscidly green corridor of the South Klang Strait. By the time the dinner-gong chimed through the ship we had crossed the Pintu Bar and were headed south-east. We ate breakfast the following morning anchored in Singapore’s Western Roads.

  At that time the combined trade of Penang and Singapore almost equalled that of the whole of Australia, for both were entrepôts. Singapore, even under the constraints of Confrontation, was a booming port, hence our wait for a berth. Both the Eastern and the Western Roads were full of shipping of every description.

  In the wake of the agent’s representative and his welcome bundle of mail we were invaded by a swarm of oddly assorted people eager to trade with us. Elderly Chinese women in shapeless black samfoo pyjamas, their splayed feet bare upon our decks, their grey hair drawn back to reveal the alopecia of age and their rheumy eyes peering through steel-rimmed spectacles, whispered the cry of their trade as, with baskets on their arms, they shuffled along the alleyways.

  ‘Sew-sew, sew-sew…’

  They would undertake any task of sartorial repair for a few coins, darning with the finest of stitches even the most decayed article of clothing. Tall, turbaned and bearded Sikh fortune-tellers prowled the accommodation, dignified men who dealt with recondite matters far above the bodily, elbowed aside by eager Chinese tailors and the lithe Chinese laundryman who, certain of business, collected our soiled tropical whites. Another Chinese laid out his wares for us to see (from Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago to toothpaste) in a shady corner of the centre-castle, and a barber solicited trade. I submitted to the barber as he opened his briefcase and showed me his testimonials in the lid.

  ‘This one from Chief Office of City of Durban…’

  Wong will cut your hair for $2.50 and make an excellent job, the Ellerman Line officer had written.

  ‘This one from Captain of P and O ship Salsette.’ Wong produced his ace card.

  Wong cuts hair like I cut corners. On your own head be it.

  ‘You savvy English, Mr Wong?’

  ‘Oh, yes, sir. Wong number one barber Singapore-side.’ With this non sequitur he produced his clippers, comb and razor.

  Best loved among these visitors were the milk-girls. One among them was a tall, erotically figured Malay girl named Rose, who invariably wore tights and a low-cut tee-shirt. With a large basket of fresh milk and fruit squash supported on a jutting hip, she gathered men like moths round a candle. Crop-headed and hot from beneath Wong’s cotton cape I bought a bottle of squash.

  ‘Who the hell cut your hair?’ asked the Mate as I made my way back to my cabin clasping my bottle of Fraser and Neave’s orange.

  ‘Someone with a sense of humour,’ said Mike sardonically from his settee. I had the fleeting impression he was reading a letter.

  The pilot came aboard as the dinner gong sounded. ‘Why is it we always go on stand-by at chow time?’ Mike asked, making for the bridge ladder, then stopped and said, ‘Bob’s doing the evening on deck, you coming ashore?’

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘Drinking, where d’you think?’

  ‘Should be great. Okay.’

  Keppel Harbour was a long half-moon of quay, backed by godowns. Along this great crescent lay the ships of all nations: smart Dutch liners of the Royal Inter-Ocean line, two Norwegians and a Swede of the Swedish East-Asia Line; one of A. P. Moller’s Maersk Line with her bright blue hull and Danish ensign; three Panamanians, a French vessel of Messageries Maritime, an American ship and th
e high white hull of P & O’s Chitral. There were two of the same company’s drab cargo-liners; one was the Salsette, and I wondered if she were still commanded by the master who wrote Wong’s testimonial. From Madras had come the ancient and creaking hull of British India’s Rajula, one of the oldest ships then flying the red duster, and astern of her a Jardine Matheson ship, Eastern Glory, flying the old taipan’s house flag of a St Andrew cross. Further down lay the Anshun of John Swire’s China Navigation Company, an old rival of Jardine’s, and two of Ben Line’s ships, our chief and sharpest rivals in the trade.

  In addition, there were our own Company’s ships, Bluies and Glens, inward and outward bound, held briefly at this focus of international trade, loading, discharging and trans-shipping cargoes. Some came from beyond the Java Sea, loaded with the produce of Indonesia, their crews half-native from three months on that coast; the austere Glens on the main-line run to Japan, the Cyclops on the Borneo and Philippines service; the Ascanius bound for Japan and the United States, ourselves…

  And all these vessels formed only the arterial traffic. In the roads at lighters, or tucked away in Empire Dock, the smaller ‘feeder’ ships came in from the Natuna Islands, or from Kuching or Labuan, Songkhla or Ko Phukit with their coconuts and copra, their rubber, tin and timber to feed the holds of ships like ourselves. In all, perhaps two hundred vessels, and the number constantly varying as arrivals and departures took place against the sun bleached background of the Lion City, a city that had grown from the foresight of a single Englishman and now teemed with the industrious Chinese who formed the majority of its population.

  * * *

  We berthed ahead of Cyclops; beyond us lay the grey hull of Isbrandtsen’s Flying Architect, the Stars and Stripes over her stern. Her crew had been painting her hull and two men were knocking off, climbing up from the staging rigged under her ensign. They had been picking out the lettering of her name and left the task unfinished for the morning.

  As arranged Mike and I went ashore after dinner. We were joined by Sparks, who had attached himself to us for motives of his own which included, I suspected, a mixture of reticence and prurient curiosity. Mike, the rake-hell and rollicking sailor, rather fascinated him and he had marked me down as a confidant. It was hard to shake off such a trust so we accepted him with a good grace.