by Voyage East- A stirring tale of the last great days of the Merchant Navy (retail) (epub)
I thought I saw the image fall from its cherished pedestal; then knew that, for the Mate, it would remain in situ. He was an old believer, destined to die uncured of his folly. Or proved right by a small miracle.
He put the pipe back in his mouth and spoke through tightly clenched teeth.
‘Screw stars this morning.’
* * *
Luzon, largest of the Philippines, lifted its jungle-clad peaks above the horizon and we swept past Corregidor Island into Manila Bay. The Filipino capital lay along the far shoreline, a white shimmer that took shape as we approached. Overhead roared a brace of American jet fighters and two Yankee warships loomed jaggedly among the assorted freighters anchored in the roads. We reduced speed, moved through them, embarked our pilot, then passed the breakwater and edged alongside a vacant pier.
‘I can’t stand this place,’ remarked Bob, as he wrote up the log and we prepared to work cargo. ‘Violent lot, the Filipinos. D’you know, I got shot at in some bag-shanty up the coast and lost two teeth when some slant-eyed shit knocked me down a hatch.’ Grimacing, he lifted a dental plate with his tongue and a metallic click.
‘What did you do? Call him a slant-eyed shit?’
‘Funny. No, I caught him with his fingers in the ’tween-deck cargo. He hit me while I was shopping him. Knocked me clean out of the ’tween-deck and I came to spread-eagled on a load of hemp in the lower hold.’
‘All in the line of duty.’
‘You’re bloody flippant this morning.’
‘Got some mail to read.’ I waved two aerogrammes miraculously forwarded from Hong Kong.
‘You bastard…’
‘Mind I don’t knock the rest of your teeth out.’
‘Sod off.’
Bob had his revenge that evening when the officers were invited to attend a shippers’ party. It was my misfortune to be officer of the deck and I left the accommodation after dinner that evening to the hiss of showers and snatches of song. Intended to drum up business, the party carried with it that faint whiff of corruption for which Manila has since become notorious. The shippers, prominent Filipino traders and businessmen, arrived with their wives and mistresses. A temporary air of glamour invested Antigone’s otherwise empty passenger-lounge, so that even the Mate seemed to be back in the pedestal-building business.
Among the guests was a weather-beaten and elderly Finn. Judging by the slender and lovely creature upon his arm, his vigour was undiminished. I saw her only briefly, when I came up to consult the Mate on some detail of our discharge.
‘A handsome piece, eh? The result of Spanish and native miscegenation.’ He leered, seeing my inattentive eye wandering.
‘She’s a cracker…’
‘And there’s hope for an old dog too, you see.’ He jerked his head in the Finn’s direction.
‘Who the hell is he?’ I asked. ‘Doesn’t look much like a shipper.’
‘He’s Old Man off the ship ahead of us.’ I recalled the nondescript Panamanian-flagged freighter that lay beyond our bow. ‘At one time he commanded the barque Pamir when she was under Erikson’s flag, and prior to that he was Second Mate of the Moshulu in the last grain race from Australia.’
I could see the Mate was enjoying himself, talking to a kindred spirit, a man who formed a living link with the great tradition, whose company would reinspire him, banishing the megrims of Hong Kong.
‘The last grain race,’ I said, recognising the title of Eric Newby’s superb account of life on the Finnish four-masted barque. I should have liked to talk to him myself, but under the Mate’s forbidding stare I tore myself reluctantly away.
Two days were sufficient to discharge Clytemnestra’s outward cargo and to load her homeward consignments. Bales of hemp for cordage and matting were taken aboard for Oslo, Copenhagen, Liverpool, Dublin and Glasgow; bags of copra for Bremen and Hamburg, out of which swarmed the tiny black insects we called ‘copra bugs’. They would henceforth infest the ship until we reached cooler latitudes.
We turned south from Corregidor, slipping beneath the green slopes of the Loro de Pico, heading for the Mindoro Strait and the passage through the archipelago. Island after island passed astern, each one under its mantle of lush, dense jungle. Deep water ran through the strait and navigation was, in Bob’s phrase, ‘a doddle’.
We were bound for the enclosed expanse of the Sulu Sea, a great triangle of water which was usually calm, its smooth surface mirroring the blue perfection of the sky, puckered here and there by a moving zephyr, or disturbed by a lifting shoal of flying fish being chased by bonito or albacore. Sometimes the distant spouts of migrating whales might be seen, or a turtle would be left rocking in our wake. At night the cloudless arch of the sky showed again the magnificent constellations of the equinoctial belt.
But there was another mood to the Sulu Sea, for it lay in those crucial latitudes where tropical storms were generated, great meteorological upheavals such as the cyclone we had dodged in the Bay of Bengal. Vast warm masses of air that rose simultaneously and were spun off northwards by geostrophic force, deepened hereabouts into the mighty winds of the China Sea typhoon. This geostrophic force was a function of latitude; below some seven or eight degrees either side of the equator it was negligible, and regions set within this zone were immune from such terrible visitations! Thus was derived the native name for Borneo, to the south of us: ‘the land beneath the wind.’
Newly independent Sabah, formerly British North Borneo, was a Malaysian state which, together with its neighbours Brunei and Sarawak, shared a border with the hostile and sprawling Indonesian province of Kalimantan. It was a country of mountainous jungle, primitive and beautiful, the habitat of exotic birds and butterflies, haunt of the legendary orang-utang, the ‘man-of-the-forest.’ Deep valleys lay under a heavy mist every dawn, until the morning sun burnt off this exhalation of the virgin rain-forest. Such valleys and mountain ranges made communication by road impossible. The sea hereabouts retained an importance lost elsewhere on the world’s coasts, and its ports were reminiscent of an earlier century, of Conrad and the characters of Lord Jim and Victory. Occasionally this sense was heightened by the sight of an ancient, superannuated steamer, still earning her Chinese owner a living.
One such relic occupied the other half of the two-berthed wharf at Sandakan, and might have been the S.S. Patna herself. We tied up astern of her, dwarfing her 900 gross registered tons.
‘She’s been around this coast for years,’ Captain Richards remarked as he left the bridge and paused at the top of the ladder to look about him. ‘Commanded by a Chinaman… a leper…’
Conrad’s dark vision of the loneliness of men occurred to me as I watched the Old Man retire to his cabin.
Antigone and the replicated Patna lay on the outer side of the wharf. Its inner face was occupied by native coasting craft, the praus and tongkangs that crept out from the creeks, braving the Indonesian attacks, to bring the produce of their villages to this little entrepôt. Some was going direct to Singapore in the Patna, some further afield in our own gaping holds. Beyond the wharf lay the bustling town centre, the police head-quarters, the market and bus station, pulsing with a life that radiated from the focus of trade and amid which our arrival was ‘an event.’ One caught, just before it vanished for ever, a glimpse of what it must have been to be a seaman in Conrad’s day. The big ports were too grand for us now; there were other, newer, preoccupations to amuse their inhabitants; the age of tourism was about to dawn and that vapid spender, Jack-ashore, was becoming as despised in the East as he already was in Europe. In the few remaining neo-colonial enclaves, air travel had reduced the sense of expatriate isolation that had made Conrad’s generation of merchant seamen welcome. In general we had suffered a down-grading, become the ‘white trash’ of Mike’s perception.
But in such small and remote places as Sandakan then was, sea-transport maintained a precarious pre-eminence, a vital link with the world beyond the jungle and the mountains and the desultory guerrilla warf
are that flared sporadically along the border with Kalimantan.
China Dick was aware of this increase in his standing and soon we learned we were to be hosting the local dignitaries. The news caused mixed feelings.
‘Load of bloody empire-building snobs,’ Billy spat ungraciously into his beer.
‘We are of one mind, for once,’ agreed Mike.
‘I’m not going.’
‘Why not? Few drinks, good time…’
‘Good time? Bullshit!’ Billy turned disgustedly away.
‘You’ll be there, Billy,’ Willie Buchan ordered, ‘and in your best bib and tucker!’
‘And what the fuck does that mean, Second?’
‘Red Sea rig…’
‘Bloody hell!’
We mustered as pressed men, in our Red Sea rig of long trousers, open-necked shirts and epaulettes, but became willing enough when we caught sight of the police inspector’s daughter and the agent’s young wife. As though in answer to Billy’s apprehensions, there were the inevitable older, dessicated women left by the vanished tide of empire, but the air of faint disparagement they brought with their clubby husbands and their perfume, soon dissipated on a wave of good fellowship. It became a jolly, informal, suburban occasion, unmarred by any incident beyond the giggling tipsiness of the agent’s over-flattered wife and the excesses of Sparks, who took it into his head to get stinking drunk. He was spirited away by Billy, who had suddenly burgeoned into the life-and-soul of the party.
‘Did you get him to bed all right?’ asked the Purser.
Billy nodded.
‘Was he okay?’
‘Tired out,’ replied Billy. ‘He gave one great big technicolour yawn.’
Those of us with off-duty time next day to take advantage of it, accepted a reciprocal invitation to use the dinghies of the local sailing club. After an invigorating thrash round Sandakan’s blue bay we returned aboard to find that a darker side of Conrad’s past had caught us.
‘How many of them?’ I heard the Mate ask the agent, standing in his cabin doorway as I came into the shade of the alleyway after the blazing sunshine of the deck.
‘Only two.’
‘Only two! D’you know how much trouble one D.B.S. can cause? Two idle buggers will make a hell’s kitchen of this ship, damn it!’
It was an old-fashioned and well-intentioned system, this compulsion to assist distressed British seamen, a hangover from the days when illness, injury or misfortune could leave a man stranded in any port in the world. On application to the British vice-consul, a berth would be found for him on the next passing ship flying the red duster. But a D.B.S. was not compelled to work; he was given his food, a berth and a free passage, and our two passengers, we learned, were not the victims of any misfortune. They had been cooling their heels in custody after a night of drunken and violent revelry. The Mate was experienced enough to anticipate the effect their idleness would have on certain of our crew. He was not to be mistaken.
They came aboard under police escort just prior to our departure, two grubby and cocky young men, unashamed at the spectacle they made, grinning about them and staring up and down at my whites as I met them at the top of the gangway.
‘It’s a focking Bluie, Jimmy,’ one of them said. ‘Anyone ’ere from Tranmere?’
The two smartly turned-out policemen seemed glad to be rid of them. ‘Take home, sir,’ one of them said, ‘you welcome.’
‘Right pair of prats,’ remarked the Chief Steward, emerging briefly from the accommodation rubbing his hand over his paunch. We stood and watched the two vagrants being led off by the Senior Midshipman towards the hospital where they were to bunk.
‘Just our bloody luck!’ he said, and I recalled he came from Tranmere.
We left Sandakan to a waving of hands and handkerchiefs. Beneath the green spread of a peepul tree, on a sward of lawn stretching down from a white bungalow, the flutter of frocks showed where we received a fitting farewell.
Arrival at our next destination was timed for dawn, for this was a tiny anchorage, encircled by a horseshoe of islands, unlit and dangerous to approach in the dark. With the sunrise astern, China Dick conned Antigone into the shelter of Bohihan Island with the help of a home-made chart. (There was no Admiralty chart of sufficient scale and we carried one made by Blue Funnel officers, adding to it as we gained more information).
Antigone shuddered as her screw went astern, then stopped. China Dick gave the order to the forecastle: ‘Let go!’
There was a splash, a cloud of rusty dust from the spurling pipe as the starboard cable rattled over the windlass gipsy, and the ship lay still, awaiting her next load of cargo. Almost immediately we were surrounded by small naked boys in dugouts, part of the indigenous population of fisherfolk, who dived for the loose change we flung into the water. It was necessary to import several gangs of men to handle the large seraja logs we had come to load. They arrived from the mainland in a ramshackle motor craft which formed a temporary residence while they worked Antigone. On Bohihan itself lived the Chinese Superintendent and his family, the representative of the Borneo Timber Company, who oversaw the collection of freshly felled logs that arrived periodically from the hardwood reserves in the rain forest surrounding Darvel Bay. These were corralled in ‘necklaces’ of stapled and chained logs, rafted to facilitate both the towage from the mainland and their retention at Bohihan until the arrival of the monthly ship.
Free of duty that afternoon, Bob and I took the motor lifeboat away in company with some of the engineers, Sparks, and a handful of seamen and Chinese firemen. The engine burst promptly into life and seemed to have healed the rift between departments. We beached the boat, unloaded a case or two of beer, and began to splash about on a tiny sandy islet inexplicably called Honeymoon Island on our chart. Here we fooled about, skylarking in the shallows and swimming over the reef, heedless of sharks, marvelling at the beautiful coral, among fish so fearless that one could tickle them, and so extravagantly coloured that it seemed necessary to touch them to prove their reality.
There was a single tree on the island, a gnarled and stunted thing whose roots clawed at the sand, desperate to suck up sustenance into dry and rustling leaves. Small pools lay among the tangle of its roots and along these curious walking-fish clambered upon their front fins. This discovery so fascinated us that we forgot the tidal source of the water, and within the few minutes of our irresponsible neglect, the heavy lifeboat had grounded, left high and dry by the ebbing tide.
‘Bloody hell!’ said Bob, suddenly aware of the burden of seniority.
‘Marooned on Honeymoon Island and not a judy in sight,’ bemoaned one of the sailors. ‘You won’t arf cop it from China Dick, Turd,’ he added happily, tipping back his head and swallowing a beer.
Bob looked despairingly at me. ‘We’ll be here for hours…’ We walked across to the boat and tried to estimate the speed of the rise and fall.
‘I didn’t even know there was a rise and fall here,’ I offered in commiseration. ‘…at least, not much.’
‘I bet Mike did.’
‘Well, he scored an own goal. He’ll have to stay on deck until we get back.’
‘Whenever that is,’ Bob added miserably.
We endured hours of being sunburned to a lobster red despite our assiduously acquired tans. We improvidently drank the beer too quickly, preferring it to the fresh water in the boat. This and the sunburn gave us all throbbing headaches. We had tried to minimise the effect of the sun by staying in the water, but the shallows over the reef were warm and the sun’s radiation struck through. No one swam beyond the reef. Sudden insecurity had kindled a fear of sharks, and the precipitous descent of the sea-bed intimidated us. Our only profit was a few coral heads and the majestic sight of two white-headed sea-eagles that circled with languidly spread pinions over the summit of Bohihan.
‘Hey Turd, have youse seen dem fuckin’ vultures?’ asked one of the sailors pointing.
‘They’re eagles, not vultures,’ replied
Bob.
‘Dey’ll still eat youse when yer dead,’ the seaman persisted, enjoying the discomfiture of the officers.
‘When you’re dead, mate,’ put in the Fourth Engineer, ‘nothing’ll touch you.’
We were not popular on our eventual return. Our plight had been observed from the ship, but we had been left to our fate. Mike, almost as exhausted as ourselves, was blasphemously succinct. ‘By Christ, a fine pair of bloody mariners you two are. Haven’t you ever heard of the tide? It goes in and out and up and down just like you stupid pricks.’
And, of course, China Dick sent for us. We were arraigned before him in immaculately starched whites which seared our raw skin. It was late, and he had been cooling his choler with the better part of a bottle of gin.
‘Well now,’ he said, his voice softly modulated with a menacing Welshness, ‘are you proposing to insult me with an explanation?’
He looked from one to the other of us, before settling on Bob. ‘Well, Mister?’
‘No, sir.’ Bob displayed a manly acceptance of full responsibility that was in the finest traditions of the Company, not to mention the Boy’s Own Paper.
‘You were careless… neglected the elementary precautions of good seamen… displayed a measure of incompetence that surprises and disappoints me.’
His eyes included me in this general condemnation of our professional abilities. Bob sensibly remained silent.
‘I shall expect to see your observations as to the tidal heights here added to the hydrographic data on the chart. Do you understand me?’
‘Yes sir.’
He waved us away and we slunk into the alleyway.
‘Been bad boys then, have we?’ lisped the Mate, in imitation of the Old Man. ‘Du, shouldn’t have been caught out, should you?’
He fixed us with a half-smile and retreated behind a screen of tobacco smoke, puffing vigorously in the belief that it deterred mosquitoes.