Polar Voyages

by Gray, Gordon

  The Arab

  As the Arab was a sister ship of the Gaul, I was excited at the prospect of seeing how this class of ship compared with stern trawlers such as Pict and Cassio. Arab was built in 1971 by Brooke Marine and was identical to the Gaul. Unlike the Cassio and Pict, however, she was a ‘filleter’. This meant that she was able to fillet the fish she caught before it was frozen. All the skin and fish heads were reduced to fishmeal and bagged up on board. Because two frozen fillets from one fish take up roughly a third of the freezer space that a single, whole, frozen fish would, this means that it takes about three times as long to fill her hold as a block fish freezer, which merely gut the fish then freeze the whole body including the head and skin, etc. In turn, this meant that the filleter trawlers took two to three times as long to catch the same tonnage of finished product so tended to be at sea much longer. Whereas a block freezer would expect to be at sea for anything from forty to sixty days, a filleter would expect to be out for sixty to a hundred days.

  Arab looked a solid and workmanlike ship and her design appeared to be well thought out with good accommodation and she seemed to be more spacious than the Cassio. She was also a fine sea ship. During the first twenty-four hours on board, the weather changed for the worse and I was able to experience a Force 8 gale in the Arab. It did not bother the ship at all. She ran down sea in this Force 8 and I watched from the bridge for ages but the seas never even threatened to run up the ramp onto the trawl deck. She did not stop fishing and there was nothing to indicate to me that this was anything other than a fine sea ship.

  The one thing I noticed almost immediately however, was the mood of the ship. What a difference in ship’s mood from Pict and Cassio. Arab was gloomy and the whole buzz that existed in Pict and Cassio was not there. Everyone seemed sullen and withdrawn. The skipper continued fishing the North Cape Bank catching only medium hauls of fish. The RO, a Redifon man, was uncommunicative and did not seem to be interested in helping me understand his job. He and the skipper hardly said a word to each other, again not the norm as these two people spent a lot of time together at sea and were often good friends. He chose to leave the industry soon afterwards. Meals were eaten in a gloomy silence and I tended to pass the time reading. At the time I was reading that super book The World of Suzie Wong by Richard Mason. Having spent time in Hong Kong and having visited Wanchai where the book was set, I was transported back to the sticky heat of a lively, bustling Hong Kong and the street markets and nightlife of Wanchai while I was sitting on a freezer trawler on a grey and gloomy Arctic Ocean.

  By the Monday morning, the Arab’s skipper decided that it was now time to refuel and we went into Honningsvaag, a small town at the northern tip of Norway and the closest town to the North Cape itself. I went ashore with the ship’s agent and I watched Arab as we drove round the bay to the town: her blue hull and white superstructure dominating the small port. The agent put me onto a bus to Lakselv, the nearest town with an airport, about two-hours’ drive away. From there I flew back to Oslo, then home via London.

  Scottish Boats

  We were always looking at new electronics equipment that was coming onto the market and I had to try and evaluate whether or not it had any benefits for the fleet. This covered navigation as well as fish-finding equipment. The best way to do that was to go to sea in boats that had already had the new equipment fitted and talk to the skippers about whether it actually improved their catches or not. As they say in fishing ‘If it does not catch you any more fish then it is a waste of money’, as all the money needed by the company to run itself has to come ‘Out of the Cod End’. I therefore spent time visiting Scottish boats and meeting their skippers and going to sea with a few of them. These included Skipper Buchan in Lunar Bow, a newly-built purse-seiner fishing for herring in the Atlantic to the west of the Orkneys Islands. She had a brand-new sonar that was creating a lot of interest in the industry.

  Chris, a friendly salesman from Kelvin Hughes in Hull (who had sold the new sonar), and I arrived on the quayside at Fraserburgh on a wet and windy Sunday night. Some of the boats were starting up their engines and deck lights were coming on around the harbour. Crewmembers arrived in taxis, some were dropped off by their wives. Some were carrying boxes of groceries for the trip, others just a holdall. Other boats lay dark and silent, their crews safely tucked up in bed at home. Chris and I were warmly welcomed by the skipper as he arrived and we were taken on board. We were given a mattress each on the deck of the main crew cabin. We sailed just after midnight, as Scottish boats traditionally do not set sail on Sundays. Once we had cleared the harbour I settled down in my sleeping bag for the rest of the night.

  We headed north and, as we cleared the Pentland Firth and sailed out into the Atlantic, a strong gale quickly developed from the west. It soon became too bad for any attempt at fishing so the skipper sought shelter in the lee of the Orkney Islands. Seasickness had set in again for both Chris and I so I was glad when we ran for the shelter of the islands. We got inside and anchored while the gale blew itself through. Eventually, after a few hours, the gale and the seasickness had passed by and we set off again.

  The new sonar had a screen like a radar display and it gave a 360 degree view of the surrounding waters as the beam was transmitted out in all directions at once and we started looking for herring. There were other boats in the area now also looking for herring. The sun came out and it turned into a beautiful clear day with a big blue Atlantic swell rolling under us and a fresh breeze was blowing. In the clear light we could see, low on the southern horizon, the cliffs of Caithness in sharp detail.

  The aim of purse-seining is to catch mid-water, or pelagic, fish by laying out the net around the shoal. The boat encircles the fish by going round the shoal to the end of the net that was first put in the water and hauling it in. The net hangs like a giant curtain down into the sea and around the fish caught inside it. When the other end of the net has been picked up, a rope that runs through the bottom of this curtain is hauled in until the bottom of the net forms a big bag, or purse. The top of the net is then drawn in as the boat lies alongside it and the fish are brought on board by big pumps or by brailing them in using small crane nets.

  The skipper found a big herring shoal with the sonar and after carefully working out the wind direction, the direction the shoal was moving in and being aware of the other boats working in the area; he positioned his boat ready to slip the net. The crew were already on deck and with one yell of ‘Let Go’ out of the wheelhouse window, a big, red, rubber buoy was thrown over the stern. This was attached to the net and the net then ran freely out of its stowage area in the stern. The Lunar Bow steamed to starboard round the shoal and, with the aid of the sonar, the skipper was able to keep the shoal and boat in the right positions. Without another word from the skipper the boat came up to the buoy and the purse was hauled in. The ends were drawn up and the catch of herring was brailed up and into the fish tanks in the boat. The whole operation was done with just two words of command.

  The fishing continued for three or four days until the skipper felt he had his quota of fish and we headed for home. However, it was realised that we had more herring than we were officially allowed to land under EEC rules. Therefore, to avoid paying a hefty fine for exceeding his quotas, the skipper had no choice but to dump a quantity of fish back into the sea. This fish dumping is something brought on by the EEC and the Common Fisheries Policy and is regarded by all as a total nonsense, if not a crime.

  Picket Busting

  On the fish dock you had to turn your hand to anything to get the job done. I discovered what this involved during a strike by shore workers on the fish dock. I cannot even recall what the strike was about but I know that the pickets at the entrance to the docks prevented many of the electronic service company vans driving onto the dock. Therefore, to keep the trawlers running and ready for sea we had to find another way to repair faulty equipment. When we had a fault on equipment, such as a radar set or an echo sounder; I
would take the report from the RO and go and talk to the service engineers in their workshops. They would show me on a similar set in the workshop what the problem might be and what the broken part looked like and how it fitted into the equipment. I would then go back on board the ship and try and identify the bit with the fault. As this was in the days before mobile phones so, if I had any queries I had to go all the way back up to the office and call from there. Once I had found the right printed board or module I had to dismantle the set, take it out and, without being seen by the pickets, get it round to the electronic company’s workshop for repair. The next day, after it had been repaired, I did the same thing in reverse. As the pickets roamed the dock during the day we did some of this work at night, by torchlight if necessary. Of course, if I got the wrong bit then we had to do it all again!

  Deep Sea Trawling and The Common Market

  Britain had always had the best fishing grounds in Europe and had controlled her own stocks and managed her own quotas. After we joined the EEC or Common Market, Britain had to fall into line with the requirements and wishes of all the other fishing nations of Europe. This meant that we had to share our traditional UK grounds and that meant smaller quotas in our own waters while foreign boats from Spain, France and elsewhere could come and happily fish alongside our boats. Many traditional British near-water fishing grounds all around the UK were opened up to our European brothers who eagerly came in large numbers. A number of grounds ended up being fatally overfished. There were no other viable European fishing grounds that we could have access to that would balance this out.

  The EEC Common Fisheries Policy has always been a very sore point in the whole fishing industry and I am not expert enough to try to explain it other than to say it was well known within the industry, before we joined the EEC in 1975, that the Common Fishery Policy was not going to help the UK fishermen in any way and that it would spell the end of the UK fishing industry. That came to pass.

  The distant water industry, based mainly in Hull and Grimsby, was decimated by a combination of factors, of which the Common Market’s Common Fishery Policy was one. Other factors included the fact that older freshers or side winders, built in the boom years of the 1950s and early 1960s, now required replacement, or at least expensive hull surveys and refits, to comply with modern insurance rules; the ever increasing cost of fuel oil; the extended fishery limits out to 200 miles in Iceland and Norway: the reduced fish quotas where they could fish as well as the new EEC CFP. Since the 1970s, we have witnessed the total disappearance of the deep-sea fleets from both the Humber ports, the over-fishing of traditional UK grounds by other countries, the continued reduction in catch quotas, the decline in the number of boats and the decline of the once flourishing boat-building industry, particularly in Scotland. On top of that, we have seen the introduction of the insane EU laws that force skippers to dump tons of good, but dead, fish back into the sea if they caught more than their quota allowance.

  Time to Move On

  As the Industry started to collapse in Hull, more and more trawlers were laid up and then sent to the breaker’s yards. My work then became focused on de-equipping ships of their electronics and saying goodbye to ROs. The end was in sight and so I and many others bade farewell to fish dock, a sad end to a great industry and a fantastic community, that was brimming with fine people who understood what tragedy and hardship at work really meant but came out of it as kind, good people who always had time to help you. However, nothing lasts forever and we had to move on.

  The prospects for work in Hull were poor. The decline of the trawling industry affected the economic climate of the town. To find work in the marine industry, I needed to move away from the area and I was lucky to find work in London working for one of the major Marine Electronics companies as a sales and marketing manager. This effectively ended my career in terms of working directly with ships and we moved south to start a new life in the suburbs, commuting into London and a nine to five world far removed from the sea and seven o’clock starts on the market. However, I was now working for a major international supplier of marine electronics to the shipping industry and so spent a lot of time talking to shipping companies and demonstrating new equipments on board ships and getting to know the world of the merchant marine.

  From now on, major trips to sea would be as a passenger and so offered a new perspective. Whereas, before, any places I visited were because that was where the ship went, now I could choose the places I wanted to visit and select a ship to take me there.

  CHAPTER 6

  MV Marco Polo – The Antarctic

  After the excitement of Hull Fish Dock, Doreen and I were working at building our new lives and careers in the ‘Wicked South’, well, London anyway. For me, the international marine electronics industry, and for Doreen, as an Air Stewardess for Sir Freddie Laker.

  However, the tug of the Polar Regions does not go away and after a few years of dreaming and many months of gentle persuasion I convinced Doreen that we really should try and visit Antarctica. She was naturally nervous about some of the reports we had read of small basic ships and the Roaring Forties but eventually we found a trip that met both our needs. We both got such a thrill going to the Antarctic and being in the Southern Ocean, that we later did some trips to the Arctic on different ships and to different areas.

  ‘South’

  When I was about eight or nine my grandfather and I were chatting and I told him that I wanted to see icebergs. He went to his bookcase and handed me a brown-coloured book. ‘Here you are, you might enjoy this.’ The book was called South by someone called Ernest Shackleton. I had no idea what it was about and I thought it must be about the south of England. However, as he had said that he thought I would enjoy it, I read it. It was of course Shackleton’s story of his 1914 Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition. Shackleton became my hero and I have since read it many times and all the other books covering the different aspects of that incredible expedition.

  Shackleton and twenty-seven men sailed in his ship Endurance from Grytviken, in South Georgia on 5 December 1914 and headed south. The aim of Shackleton’s expedition was to try and cross Antarctica, but the Endurance was trapped by the ice in the Weddell Sea before the party were even able to get ashore. After wintering in the ship, trapped by the ice, the ice finally crushed and sunk Endurance on 21 November 1915; nearly a year after leaving South Georgia. They were then forced to live on the ice and drifted round the Weddell Sea in the ice pack for months until they finally arrived back at the ice edge near the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula. Here they launched the three boats that they had salvaged from the Endurance and kept with them on the ice. After struggling for days with gales and fog, sailing by day, sleeping on ice floes by night, if they could; they managed to reach a totally uninhabited and desolate rock called Elephant Island. They arrived here on 14 April 1916; dry land after fifteen months at sea and on the ice. There, they made a camp and Shackleton then set about going for help. He and five companions then sailed over 1,200 miles, in winter, in an open boat, the James Caird, from Elephant Island and made a desperate landing on the west coast of South Georgia on 8 May 1916. Shackleton, Capt. Frank Worsley and Tom Crean then became the first people to cross the unmapped, 3,000-metre high Allardyce Range as they had to get from where they had landed on the uninhabited west coast to the inhabited east coast to get to the whaling stations and help. Finally, almost eighteen months after the Endurance had sailed from South Georgia; Shackleton got back to the safety of the whaling stations and was able to take charge of the rescue of the remaining twenty-two men on Elephant Island. After three attempts to reach the Island, it was not until 30 August 1916 that Shackleton finally got through the pack in a Chilean tug, Yelcho. After five months on the Island, all twenty-two men were rescued safe and well. Ever since I read that book I have been in awe of Shackleton’s achievement and have wanted to visit the Antarctic. However, in the 1950s and 1960s the only ships that went down to the Antarctic were the whale factory
ships and the RN Ice Patrol ship, HMS Endurance. Expedition trips and soft adventure tourist ships had not even been thought of then. If I really wanted to go then I needed to become a whaler.

  In the 1960s, Salvesen of Leith operated an annual whaling expedition to the Antarctic. It was mostly crewed by Norwegians but they collected a number of British sailors from the Orkney Islands and Scottish ports on their way. In those days, they took all sorts of people who would do the many basic, manual tasks on board the factory ship and the catchers. The key jobs on the whale catchers and most of the jobs in the factory ship were skilled or specialised and given to those with appropriate experience. In 1968, I wrote to Christian Salvesen in Leith asking if I could join their annual whaling expeditions to the Antarctic. I received a letter back from Salvesen saying that they were sorry but the previous year’s expedition, the 1967 Norwegian expedition, had been the last one and they were no longer involved in Antarctic whaling. I was one year too late.

  The Voyage

  A few years after I left the Navy, I started to read stories in the press about expedition trips to Antarctica. The idea of expedition voyages had been started by Lars-Eric Lindblad, He was a Swedish explorer, who felt so strongly that people should have the chance to visit Antarctica that he set up his own company to run expeditions himself. He bought a ship and converted it for expedition work. He called the ship Lindblad Explorer and began trips from South America. I then read of a new company called Orient Lines, which had bought and refitted the old Russian passenger ship Alexander Pushkin and renamed her Marco Polo. In 1993, she was to make her first trip to Antarctica on a voyage billed as ‘From Cape to Cape’. The ship was to sail from Cape Town in South Africa down to Antarctica and then land her passengers in Ushuaia in Chile, having sailed past both the Cape of Good Hope and Cape Horn. The expedition leader was to be Lars-Eric Lindblad.