by Voyage East- A stirring tale of the last great days of the Merchant Navy (retail) (epub)
Our ignorance of Buddhism came up in conversation when we returned to the ship. ‘Have you read Sidharttha, by Herman Hesse?’ asked the Mate. I shook my head. ‘You should.’
‘You’ve seen the temples, then?’
‘Not since I was your age.’
I asked the Junior Midshipman whether he had enjoyed his afternoon. ‘Yes, very much. It’s certainly something to write home about.’
‘Yes.’ We watched the first whore of the night swarm over the poop rail.
Captain Richards distanced himself from the crew’s lechery. He had little concern, disorderly though it was, provided it did not interfere with the ship’s routine. Indeed he had been dissuaded from any form of moral guardianship by the agent, who had confirmed the Mate’s story of a British ship-master who had turned his firehoses on the sampans as they gathered under his ship’s stern. As a consequence the labourers had walked off his ship, refusing to work cargo. The story made some sense of the indifference of the gangs to the presence of their women amongst us. A system run on ‘cum-shaw’ and kick-backs was probable, though unproven. All manner of oriental business was conducted on such lines, condoned by usage and common practice.
‘Oh, the Old Man gets his baksheesh,’ affirmed the Purser cynically when we were discussing the matter, ‘don’t you worry about that.’
I never did discover the truth, but had long ago learned that only the naive gave anyone the benefit of the doubt where money was concerned.
We left the wharf at Klongtoi the next afternoon. Along the mudflats small patches of earth and mould adhered to the rotting stumps of nipa palms. Small sampans retreated up the creeks that receded into the green-brown lushness of the interior – fronded tunnels which turned purple in the fading light. Women could be seen cooking on the verandahs of huts, children playing among small dogs and here and there the saffron robes of an indigent monk begging amongst them.
The sun set as we reached Samut Prakan, touching the great white dagoba with gold. The reliquary stood like a huge, inverted pudding basin from which a tall, tapering series of spirals towered into the sky, rising to a golden needle-point. It caught the departing daylight after the jungle had fallen dark. A few kites wheeled against the sky then, giving up the hunt, glided down to roost, while the clicking chirrup of the cicadas died away.
‘Farewell to the city of angels,’ said the Mate, staring astern as if in search of some lost illusion.
The river held its jade glow for a little longer as our trembling hull cut through its stillness, then turned the colour of steel and, at last, fell back to the open sea beyond the bar.
The Isle of Fragrant Waters
We steamed south-east out of the Gulf of Thailand, slipping into the familiar, comforting round of the ship’s routine, passing ‘bits of strange coasts under stars, shadows of hills in the sunshine, men’s passions in the dark, gossip half-forgotten, faces grown dim.’ Thus reminisced Conrad in the introduction to Nostromo, and I recalled ‘The Secret Sharer’, a story of his set in the Gulf. He had cause to know those waters, having taken three weeks to work the barque Otago down to Singapore with a sickly crew and a jinx to hinder him. Delay was to dog us, too, though not on such a scale, for round Cape Cambodia we began to lift to a low swell, rolling down from the north-east as we followed the curve of the coast of Indo-China across the mouth of the Mekong Delta.
As we edged away from the Vietnamese coast the swell steepened and the wind slowly increased to a strong breeze, bringing to mind the old weather couplet:
Long foretold, long last,
Short notice, soon past.
We were in for a blow.
The Mate began to worry about the cargo, for the stows had been broken down in our discharging, and although the Carpenter had ‘tommed-off’ what he could, heavy weather could dislodge the wooden planks and beams jammed skillfully and wedged with care to stop the cargo taking charge.
‘Where’s the bluidy lookout?’ asked the Mate suddenly.
‘On the fo’c’s’le,’ I replied, whipping up my glasses, to find the catwalk across the bow empty. We had not yet shipped any seas but a sudden sensation of panic uncoiled in my belly that we had lost him over-board.
‘Who is it?’
‘Embleton, sir.’
‘Bluidy hell! That bugger skated on thin ice in Bangkok… get up there and have a look. If he’s asleep, leave him and let me know.’ I went forward as a spy, but with expectations less cynical than the Mate’s. I descended to the centre-castle, went past Number Three hatch, and paused by the contactor house at the head of the well-deck ladder. I half expected to see a limp body, pallid in the dark swirl of water that had accumulated at the after end of the well-deck. The sibilant hiss of the sea took precedence over the muted rumble of Antigone’s racing engines as she drove her bow into the swell. The sea rose to her sheer strakes, black and suddenly very close. I chose my moment and made for the forecastle, legs leaden with compression as the ship heaved upwards beneath me, light as a feather as the deck subsided, falling through twenty feet before theatening to crush me again with the massive upsurge of her buoyancy. I reached the forecastle ladder, hoisted myself up and dodged round the windlass. Fearing what I might find, I scrambled over the low breakwater as the cables chinked in the pipes and Antigone climbed upwards into the sky. My guts surged into my throat as she fell back. Two geysers of water roared up the hawse pipes and collapsed in dark rushing streams, foaming aft, deflected over the side by the breakwater. I was soaked to the knees, half off-balance, and my torch beam wavered around the triangle of deck beyond the pipes.
Embleton lay asleep, half-tucked under the grating upon which he should have stood his watch, his face as innocent as his mother supposed him to be. Feeling the guilt of the informer, I worked my way back to the bridge.
‘He ought not to be up there, sir,’ I said, ‘she’s shipping…’
‘He’s asleep then?’
‘Yes.’
‘If-he was awake he’d have rung and asked to be shifted.’
The Mate picked up the forecastle telephone, pressing the bell insistently. Lifting the glasses I saw Embleton wake with a feral shrug. His arm went out to the phone.
‘You’re asleep on lookout, Embleton,’ I heard the Mate say. ‘Get yourself up here.’
I watched Embleton’s progress down the deck, half thinking he would be washed overboard, but he arrived safely. He gasped his denial with an affronted dignity that made me wonder if I had been deceived.
‘You were asleep on lookout,’ the Mate repeated, cutting short the torrent of defiance, innocence and outrage that Embleton began. ‘You’ll see the Master tomorrow morning. Now go below and call your relief.’
Embleton passed me swearing under his breath. I could smell the beer on him. At the after end of the boat-deck he stopped and rounded on the distant bridge.
‘Scotch bastard!’ I heard him bellow into the rising wind.
The full force of the gale struck us at dawn. Grey and tumbling seas foamed down-wind towards us, their streaming sides streaked with spume, so that the violence of Antigone’s pitching increased. The regular motion of the swell was now compounded by the wind-driven seas and the ship staggered occasionally, thumping into the walls of water. Her rivets screeched, she panted with a strange clicking noise and flung white sheets of water a hundred feet from her thrusting bow. Embleton was arraigned for punishment. This formal process was held in the Master’s cabin and known colloquially as a ‘logging’, for the entire transaction had to be recorded, verbatim, in the ship’s Official Log-Book, a document supplied by the Board of Trade into which all such events, plus dates of boat and fire drills, the list of the crew, their conduct, notes of protest and sundry matters involving the discipline, business and regulation of the ship were recorded. It was distinct from the Mate’s, or Deck, Log, which contained the record of weather and navigational details. The Official Log-Book was filled in by the Purser acting as clerk and I wondered, as I joined the Mat
e, cap under my arm, whether successive occasions such as this had given him his dry outlook.
China Dick sat at his desk looking at the Mate’s written report. There was a knock at the cabin door and the Bosun ushered Embleton in, then waited behind him, representative of Embleton’s interest.
Embleton looked round at us, scowling at me ferociously. After a moment Captain Richards turned and regarded Embleton.
‘Well, Embleton…’
‘Mister Embleton, Cap’n.’
China Dick ignored the interruption ‘…Here you are again. You went absent without leave in Penang and were docked a day’s pay and your train fare to Port Swettenham. You misbehaved in Bangkok…’ His crime in Singapore had gone undiscovered.
‘What the fuck did I do wrong in Bangkok?’
China Dick turned to the Purser, allowing the frantic pen to catch up. I could just see the expletive recorded for posterity.
‘You know very well there was trouble in the seaman’s alleyway. Count yourself fortunate that you didn’t end up on the carpet for that…’
‘There was others involved… dis is fucking victimisation. Yeah, victimisation. You got a note of that, eh?’ Embleton stepped forward, wagging his finger at the Purser. The Purser nodded, his face a mask of neutrality. I saw the Bosun’s hand on Embleton’s arm, restraining him.
‘And now,’ went on China Dick smoothly, ‘you have been found asleep on lookout during the four-to-eight last night.’
‘Who says?’ Embleton swivelled to me.
‘I say, Laddie,’ put in the hitherto silent Mate, his voice low and menacing. ‘You were asleep on lookout.’
‘How d’you know I was asleep. I might have ducked down behind the windlass for a quick drag…’
‘The Fourth Mate came forward and checked,’ said Captain Richards with an air of exasperation.
‘And you didn’t wake me, you bastard.’ Embleton turned his fury on me, snarling with bared teeth so that I felt the full force of his malice.
‘I told him not to wake you, Embleton,’ snapped the Mate. Embleton’s eyes remained on my face. He knew he was powerless against the Master or the Mate, but a mere junior officer was a different matter.
‘D’you have anything to say?’ Captain Richards asked, almost wearily.
‘Yeah. I wasn’t asleep.’ He was on the defensive now, gauging our reaction to his protest of innocence. Our eyes watched, opaque with disbelief and he was compelled to ridiculous justification: ‘I was just resting.’
China Dick turned to the Purser. ‘D’you have that? Embleton says he was “just resting”.’
‘I have it, sir,’ nodded the Purser, his pen continuing to fly over the lined pages.
‘This is a serious offence, Embleton. While I gave you the benefit of the doubt in Bangkok, your conduct does nothing to persuade me that I should do so again.’ China Dick’s mellifluous English picked his words with barbed precision and we waited for sentence. ‘You will be fined two days’ pay, your bar account will be stopped and you will not be allowed ashore in Hong Kong.’
‘Bloody hell, Cap’n, you can’t do that!’ Embleton exploded. ‘This ain’t the fucking Bounty, this is the nineteen sixties… you can’t stop my shore-leave. I know my rights!’
‘And I know my duty, Embleton! You were fast asleep on lookout and that endangers the ship!’
‘You’re a right bloody shower, you bastards…’ Embleton scowled round at us.
‘Come along boyo,’ said the Bosun, ‘don’t get yourself into more trouble…’
We could hear Embleton protesting in the alleyway as the Bosun took him aft. At the boat-deck door he flung one final imprecation at us. ‘Bastards!’
‘Cythral,’ growled China Dick looking up and dismissing us. ‘Thank you gentlemen.’
‘Always one fly in the ointment,’ remarked the Mate in the less tense atmosphere of the alleyway as we trooped out of the Master’s cabin.
‘The trouble is the buggers don’t really want to come to sea,’ said the Purser, as if men like Embleton besmirched his own calling. ‘They only come to make a few bob.’
‘And trouble,’ added the Mate.
‘Aye, and trouble.’
‘Don’t know why we bother with buggers like that.’
‘Keep the Unions happy and uphold the rule of Law,’ said the Mate sarcastically.
‘Strike a defensive blow in the class war,’ I put in sententiously, knowing the Purser’s penchant for such references. He rounded on me with astonishing ferocity.
‘Our class has no champions,’ he snapped, turning into his cabin. The Mate raised one prominent eyebrow and pulled his pipe from his pocket.
‘Just responsibility, Laddie. No power, just responsibility.’ And sighing, he too entered his cabin, leaving me in the alleyway feeling stupidly inexperienced.
The ship shuddered as she butted a heavy sea. Outside the wind was increasing and though we assembled on the bridge at noon, the grey scud that overcast the sky prevented our finding our latitude. We were alone in a heaving desolation of water, the sky thick with it and the horizon furred and indistinct. We sank into the gloom of bad weather, retreating to our bunks when our duties were over, breathing the stale, uncirculated air that was also thick with the taint of bad conscience. As I dozed in my cabin in half-hearted pretence at reading, I was disturbed by a faint scrabbling at the door. Sparks, pale with what I presumed was sea-sickness, asked if he could speak to me.
‘Yeah, sure. Come in.’ Reluctantly I stirred myself, sticky with sleep in the enclosed and humid atmosphere of the accommodation.
‘I, er…’
‘What’s the matter?’
‘Well… it’s… it’s bloody embarrassing,’ he managed in a rush and I could see the pallor was fear, not sea-sickness. It was more than embarrassment that had driven him to his confession, for I knew what was coming.
‘I think I’ve got a dose.’
‘Oh, shit…’
It was out now and he could let it flow in a torrent of relief. ‘I went with one of those Bangkok girls, you know… she got into my cabin one night and, well, one thing led to another, and… well, you see, there’s my girl-friend… she’s my fiancee really, we’re engaged…’
‘Have you told the Doc?’ He shook his head unhappily and I sensed he was close to break-down. ‘What are your symptoms?’
‘Well…’ he seemed to consider the question.
‘Have you got a discharge? I mean does it hurt when you pass water. I’m told it’s like pissing through broken glass… eh?’
‘No, nothing like that.’
There was a greater fear than the clap. ‘Any hard red spots?’ I was doing some sums in my head and cursing Mike at the same time. Sparks shook his head.
‘No… no spots.’ He swallowed. ‘That’d be syphilis, would it?’ he asked, his voice barely audible above the rumble of the engines and the howl of the gale.
‘Well, it would, yes. But if you’ve got nothing to show, why are you worried?’
He shrugged. ‘It’s a feeling… a sort of pain… I don’t know…’ He was plunged in an abyss of misery.
‘Look, see the Doc. As far as I know nothing shows for nine days.’
‘But the Old Man’ll have to know, and then…’ Sweat was pouring off him.
‘I suppose you didn’t use a johnnie, or an Anti-VD kit?’
He shook his head. ‘No.’
‘Well, don’t worry. It can be cured.’ I forbore to tell him all the horror stories one had heard, or about the symptoms sometimes taking three months to emerge, feeling sorry that Mike’s foolish practical joke had had such a devastating effect. ‘Look, have a beer and try and forget it.’
‘Okay. Thanks.’
‘Look forward to Hong Kong.’
‘What’s it like?’
‘In a nutshell, the most fantastic place on earth.’
* * *
As we brought Antigone’s head onto a more northerly course, a mood of cheerful expec
tancy filled the faces of our Chinese. Despite the gale, the poop showed signs of spring-cleaning. Normally scrupulously tidy, the Chinese nevertheless cleaned everything. Rows of washing danced in the wind alongside the drying bodies of fish and extemporised dust-pans made out of Teepol cans cut in half (the thrifty Chinese fashioned such artefacts out of the ship’s refuse). Gaily painted and drying in the gale, these turned alongside the fish and the washing under the wings of the docking bridge.
The Chinese quarters under the poop were a distinct contrast to those of the Europeans. Whereas our cabins were temporary abodes from which we decamped the instant we were given leave, the Chinese regarded the ship as their home. Where we reckoned our service aboard in months – though our senior officers sometimes stayed for years – the tenure of the Chinese was for much, much longer. Their chieftan was Chao Ven Ching, the Number One Greaser, a tall, cadaverous man with a pigeon chest, whose neck was as thin as a chicken’s and whose hoarse voice was attributed to the opium he took. Whatever the truth of this claim (and the penalities for possession of the drug were Draconian), he was all-powerful, a man to be reckoned with, who condescended to take orders from the Second and Chief Engineers, holding them in higher esteem than the Mate or China Dick himself.
The Chinese were a self-contained and self-regulating community. They had their own cook and galley, their own customs and hierarchy. They maintained a spotless ship and were rarely any trouble.
The bunk-space of every Chinese crew-member was his tiny home, a neat, personalised cubicle filled with photographs of an extended family, a small vase of plastic flowers, perhaps a shrine or book of Maoist philosophy, a shelf of books, a porcelain bowl and box of mahjong. At night, particularly in the still of the tropics, they played mahjong avidly, the click of the bricks loud on the messroom table, the excitement high in their conversation, for Chinese seamen were great gamblers and would bet on two flies crawling across a porthole. At Christmas China Dick had sent them all a couple of drinks and at Chinese New Year they would invite us down to their great feast. Occasionally the Mate, gratifying a minor vice, would send aft to the Greaser’s cook for a Chinese supper. He and the Purser, the men among us British most wedded to the ship, would relish their surreptitious indulgence with evident enjoyment. But for the main part we did not impinge upon their privacy beyond the Master’s daily rounds at sea.