Cock and Bull Stories

by Peter Anderson

  I was excited but a bit nervous. My old mate Noel McGirr, a vet from North Canterbury, had been caught up in the previous shipment, some months earlier. As tension developed between the US and Iraq, shipping into the Red Sea and the Gulf came to a juddering halt. The result was that Noel’s ship spent eight weeks in the Red Sea waiting for developments and for a place to land the 80,000 sheep.

  Noel didn’t seem to mind that, but I really didn’t want that to happen to me as our business just wasn’t big enough to cope with my long absence. So as I boarded the ship in Napier in June 1991 I was excited but nervous.

  Loading took two days. A hundred and ten thousand sheep (that’s right 110,000), mostly recently shorn crossbred hoggets and a few merino two-tooth wethers, arrived in trucks and were run up into races six decks high, and settled into pens of about 800 each. While the crew, including the Indian First Officer, had done this before, they really knew nothing about sheep.

  The pens, only about 1.3 metres high, and much too low for a man to stand up in, were just big enough for every animal to lie down. Along one side of the pens, which ran longitudinally down the ship, were the water troughs. On the opposite side were the feed troughs. The deck was cantilevered so that each pen was angled about 10 degrees to left or right. The idea was that water or any liquid would accumulate on a flat surface, but not on the slope. The sheep defecated on the steel deck and the resulting pad of dung quickly dried, firmed and became quite acceptable as long as it stayed dry.

  The problem was that some moron had positioned the water troughs at the peaks of the cantilevered decks, instead of in the troughs. The feed troughs were situated there instead, a ludicrous situation. When it got rough, as it was for the first few days of our voyage, the water troughs spilled over onto the dung pad, which became wet, slimy and, as it got warmer in the tropics, ammoniacal. This very basic design flaw in the sheep decks caused the ammonia levels to become dangerously high.

  For the short trip from Perth, in the relatively benign Indian Ocean, it probably didn’t matter, but from New Zealand, the ship had to cross the rugged Tasman Sea, then run under Australia, fully exposed to the Southern Ocean. The result had been a lot of ship deaths on previous voyages from New Zealand, and the issue of animal welfare was coming to the fore.

  To be fair, a lot of the deaths from previous trips, notably one on the Cormo Express where I believe more than 5000 sheep died, had been due to conditions in the tropics. Heat stress, suffocation and high ammonia levels had contributed, but overcrowding was a base cause.

  My trip was a bit different. The job of the vet, who was acting for MAF, was to observe, record and report on the journey. Every sheep that died had to have either a post-mortem done or a reason given for its death.

  The routine went like this: I would rise at 6am, have a shower, then breakfast in the saloon. By 7.30 I was in the sheep house. The Bangladeshi seamen had by then searched through the pens and were depositing the dead on the companionway beside the pen. On most trips, the deaths were very low for the first 10 days, but on this trip they began immediately. It was rough, force eight to nine, and after passing through Cook Strait and heading due west for Bass Strait between Tasmania and the Australian mainland, we were hammered by near hurricane-strength weather. The seas were huge, with great sheets of water reaching the bridge, 120 feet above sea level, as we ploughed into it. On the second day, the captain, fearing for the ship’s safety, bore off a little to soft en the pounding, and slowed the ship to six knots, a snail’s pace.

  The sheep didn’t cope well. They had been shorn, fed and vaccinated in the assembly farm in Hawke’s Bay in vile, wet, cold midwinter conditions. Many developed pneumonia in the first week. Others wouldn’t eat the sheep nuts on offer. This is called inanition — not eating — and the empty rumens of many of the first post-mortemed animals told the story. Anthropomorphising a bit, I believe that the ship’s motion had the same effect on them as it does on people before they get their sea legs. They were seasick.

  It was rough for 10 straight days until we passed Cape Leeuwin and turned northwest into the Indian Ocean to the west of Perth.

  From the beginning, the mornings were spent doing a lot of post-mortems. I eventually did more than a thousand, and that was less than half of the dead.

  After lunch (and the meals were terrific, with a choice of Eastern or Western dishes), I would gather an assortment of measuring kit and go to the several measuring stations I had set up around the sheep houses. I measured wind flow, humidity, maximum and minimum temperatures, and ammonia levels at the same sites each day on every deck, and recorded the deaths and their causes.

  Then I’d go back to my cabin and put all the data, which I had recorded on a dictaphone, into the official recording sheets. It was a bit tedious, but because the ship was always making progress, there was enough to keep me amused.

  Dick Mahoney helped me with the post-mortems on most days, partly to reduce his own boredom, and we enjoyed each other’s company. In the evening we would go to the saloon, have a few beers with the officers, watch a movie or read. Sometimes I would go to the bridge for an hour or two.

  Of course, this was in the early days of personal computers. The only computer on the ship was in the radio room. They had a teach-yourself-to-type programme so I started on that and by the end of the voyage I could touch type about 20 words per minute, not much but a start.

  The time I loved best was on the bridge. Watching the workings of a big ship and the decision making was fascinating. This was before GPS was available commercially. There was an old Sat Nav receiver which would give a position line on which the ship lay, but it took another reading a few hours later to find our exact position by a cross bearing.

  The only radar set was old and once we were in the Indian Ocean, where few ships were expected, they turned it off most nights to ‘save wear’. I asked the Captain what would happen if a yacht was in our path? He just shrugged. Too bad.

  The captain was a difficult and unpleasant character. John Gracias, an Indian, was a difficult man who didn’t inspire loyalty in all of his officers. Half of them steered clear of him as much as possible, while the rest did their best to ingratiate themselves with him. The result was that he and his acolytes ate first, then as they finished, the other officers came in and ate separately. It was not a happy ship but it posed a dilemma for the two New Zealanders. We compromised and started our meals half an hour later than the captain so that we could eat both with him and the other officers, most of whom we got on better with.

  The deaths mounted as we went north over the equator and into the Arabian Sea: we were losing 50, 60, 70 sheep per day. The merino wethers on the main deck were doing the best. They adapted wonderfully well and it was rare to find a dead one. Of all the complement, they were the group that survived best and made a net weight gain over the voyage.

  As we entered the Straits of Hormuz, there was a general buzz around the ship. Iran, who commanded the Straits, was very hostile to the West. An international separation zone on the chart showed very specifically where ships could go, and where they must not go. Apart from the risk of collision with the many oil tankers that ply their seaways, the Iranians were highly likely to shoot at anyone in their territory. Only a few months earlier, US fighters had downed an Iranian airliner, so it was a place of great international tension.

  I went up to the bridge at about 1am as we approached the Straits, to see the fun.

  To get around the sharp point of Oman, we had to turn 30 degrees to starboard for a few miles, then straighten to port for a few more, before turning sharply to port to get into the Gulf, all the while staying in our own shipping lane.

  The first leg was OK. We passed a few ships to port, going the other way, their lights bright and clear. But as the time came for our turn to port, a larger, faster ship appeared from behind, overtaking us on our port quarter. To turn to port would have put us directly on a collision course and a collision of two large ships is definitely s
omething to avoid, particularly with hostile neighbours waiting to pounce.

  The duty third officer, a nice Indian named Ross (who had his new bride on board and protected her like Fort Knox, even from our completely civil attentions) became agitated. He called the new ship several times on channel 16, the international calling channel on VHF radio. There was no reply. In five minutes, if we could not turn to port, we would be in Iranian water and in trouble. With a wild look in his eye, the third officer gave the helmsman the order: ‘Hard a starboard!’

  I could see what he wanted to do. He meant for us to do a complete circle to starboard, a 360, and tuck in behind the faster ship as she eventually turned to port in the Separation Zone. In daylight it would have been relatively simple. But this was a 40,000 ton ship in the middle of the night doing 16 knots in a narrow seaway with a dangerously hostile nation waiting for an excuse to cause an incident.

  As the big ship swung out of line, heeling hard as she turned to starboard, Ross became completely disorientated. As he came towards the 180 degree turn mark, he suddenly saw the lights of the overtaking ship on our starboard side and ahead in the pitch dark night. The international rule known to all mariners is that ships pass each other port to port when going in opposite directions. Confused and terrified, Ross countermanded his own order and sent us heeling back round to port. It was a frightening moment. A large ship careering around the Separation Zone doing a figure eight, with a panicked third officer in charge.

  I watched in awe and some apprehension, and I believe I even said something calming to the panicking officer. As he realised where we were, he did relax and brought the ship in behind the faster overtaking vessel. It was a pretty exciting moment. As we turned to port again, into the safety of the Gulf, Ross turned to me.

  ‘Don’t say anything to the captain, will you,’ he muttered. He was not one of the captain’s friends.

  In the morning I had a look at the ship’s log. There was no mention of the course change which had nearly caused a disaster. And I didn’t tell the captain.

  A day later, unbelievably, we stopped off at Dubai, in those days a dirty small dump of a town, to load pails of paint, one at a time from a lighter alongside. It was 40°C and about 95 per cent humidity. Without the breeze created by the ship’s way, 400 sheep died of suffocation and ammonia inhalation in about two hours while I raged at the captain. It was completely avoidable. We were only one day’s sail away from our destination, Dammam, where the sheep were to be unloaded. It was just one example of the indifference to animal welfare I witnessed many times on that trip.

  When we docked at Dammam, 24 hours later, a horde of very young vets came on board. They wanted to blood test 300 sheep for Brucella melitensis, a disease never present in New Zealand. To argue with officials in their own country is pointless, but I knew that delay on board would lead to more deaths. I watched these young Saudi vets trying to collect blood. They were pretty hopeless, so eventually Dick and I pulled overalls on, shouldered our way in and did it for them. It took a couple of hours, but it would have taken them days.

  Over the next two days, every bureaucratic reason for delay appeared. It was by now 42°C in the shade and 1000 more sheep died in that period, and over the two days of unloading. The only saving grace was darkness falling at 3pm. The thousands of burning oil wells lit by the retreating Iraqis in Kuwait, to the west of us, only a couple of weeks earlier, had created a vast sky full of black smoke. By 3pm it was so dark we needed lights on to work.

  There was further drama as I came to disembark. A private soldier waved his AK-47 at me and made me open my suitcase on the wharf in the full midday sun. I motioned to get under the gangplank to some shade but the cocking of his weapon made me think better of it. He took my camera, my film and my skinning knives.

  Later in the Hotel Oberoi, in Dahran, I looked out from my window to the hotel grounds. A swimming pool with a few women swimming in it! Now when you’ve been at sea for five weeks, you do miss female company and just to see a woman is a pleasant change from the all-male shipboard company. I grabbed my bathers, boxers you understand, not budgie smugglers, jumped into the elevator and went rapidly to the ground floor. Military presence was everywhere, a legacy of the war which had only just finished. I approached the armed guard at the door to the courtyard. He stepped in front of the door. ‘No, sir.’

  ‘It’s OK, I’m just going for a swim.’

  ‘No, sir, now is ladies. Seven o’clock is men.’ We really were in an Arab state. Defeated, I plodded back to the lift and went to my room.

  A couple of days later Dick and I took a bus to Bahrain, the secular island state in the Gulf. The bus took us 50 kilometres across a causeway, really an eight-lane bridge over shallow water. Halfway across was the border post with Saudi Arabia with a myriad of stretched limousines travelling in both directions. At the border, Saudis in traditional dress disembarked, went into some changing rooms then returned to their limos. But now they were bejewelled, in Western clothes, shirts unbuttoned to the waist, cleavages prominent and burkhas gone. They were off to Bahrain to party.

  In the other direction, similarly dressed, exhausted partygoers were doing it in reverse. Emerging in full Arab gear, women properly covered, they had had their fun and were returning to the strict Muslim country of their origin.

  I mused. What hypocrisy. How could people be so two-faced? Another of life’s lessons learned. Dick and I were relieved to be in Bahrain, got thoroughly sloshed at the airport lounge and headed for Hong Kong.

  Afterwards I wrote the required report for MAF. It didn’t go down that well. I was critical of the ship, the systems and the animal welfare situation. I said that any New Zealand farmer going on this trip would never send sheep away for live export again. I was asked to change my report, for political reasons, but I couldn’t do that. The New Zealand SPCA got hold of it, and I would like to think that changes were made as a result. Not long after, the trade for live sheep exports from New Zealand dried up. It was simply too far to send them on the available ships.

  I was asked to do another trip, but declined. For me, the tedium and the lack of animal welfare standards weren’t attractive.

  This wasn’t the end of my affairs with the sea. Soon after this trip I bought our first keeler, and for the next 10 years we sailed around the Marlborough Sounds and Cook Strait, both cruising and racing. It’s a marvellous environment and I learnt a lot about myself, and particularly about the weather. As a sailor, you are always watching the weather. I even did one ocean trip on a 40 foot yacht from Hawaii to Tahiti with three friends, a fantastic experience.

  I don’t know that any of my time on the sea has improved my veterinary skills, but as a relief from the stresses and strains on a practising vet, I can give it my unreserved approval.

  MR SCROPE AND TOBY — PA

  Some animals with chronic incurable diseases such as diabetes can, at the best of times, be a challenge to manage. For instance with diabetic dogs or cats the requirement for insulin varies with exercise and dietary changes and regulating the dose requires monitoring of blood and/or urine glucose levels. Many pet owners manage this admirably, regularly testing glucose levels, strictly controlling diet, and ensuring they have regular and consistent exercise. Cats naturally can be more of a challenge but I suspect no more than Toby, the little pug dog I had to deal with.

  Toby belonged to a delightful old English gentleman, Mr Scrope, whose career in later life had been to purchase horses for the Royal Mews, the Queen’s London stables. He retired to Blenheim to be nearer to his daughter but some years later after his wife died was forced to enter a very pleasant old people’s home. Toby was allowed to accompany him.

  Toby’s problem was that he was a diabetic. Unfortunately a common end result of poorly controlled diabetes is blindness. Toby was therefore a blind diabetic dog in an old people’s home. His other problem was that he had an insatiable appetite and while he might have been blind, his nasal passages worked extremely well.
Scraps of food can be easy pickings, even for a blind dog, especially one that has spent some time in an old people’s home. Blind or not, he knew the best routes to the areas where the clumsiest inmates lived and where there was a good chance there could be some tasty morsels. So we had a blind little pug dog with uncontrolled diabetes, a ravenous appetite and thirst, some incontinence at times, and to top it off he didn’t care too much where and when he defecated. Despite significant efforts by the nurses at the home to get the insulin dose right and control his diet, it was really a ‘no-win’ situation. However, he seemed happy enough.

  I got into the enjoyable habit of dropping in most Friday evenings on the way home from work to give Toby a check over. It was a pleasure on my part because Mr Scrope had some fascinating stories to tell about his life and he was a great storyteller. We would sit for an hour or two while he spoke and together we would enjoy a nip or two of one of the very good single malts he had stashed away, Toby sleeping peacefully beside the bed.

  Mr Scrope seemed to enjoy the visits as well and he became confident that I knew what I was doing with Toby. I didn’t disillusion him with the fact that really there was not much I could do. However, his confidence in my ability to heal grew to the point where one morning I got a ring from him.

  ‘Peter, Peter, I want you to be my doctor. The others are no damned good around here. I have been very poorly for the last couple of weeks and those darned doctors have not been able to make me feel any better.’

  ‘Goodness me, Mr Scrope, I don’t think I can legally, ethically or any other way become your doctor. I’m a vet.’

  ‘Of course you can, my boy. You are just as well trained. James Herriot is a very good friend of mine, you remember, and he’s as good as any doctor. You have much more effective medicines than they have and I want some more of that medicine I have here for Toby. I have been taking some myself.’