Growing up in Lee-on-the-Solent

by John W Green

  Next morning I presented myself at the ship and went to meet the Chief Radio Officer - I was to be the fourth radio officer. He told me the ship was to be in dock for two weeks, but I could stay on board and make myself comfortable, and make myself familiar with the ship. Then he said to me: ‘can you touch type?’ ‘No,’ I replied and he passed me a book, a tutor on how to learn to touch type, and said: ‘Learn to type before we sail, you’ve got two weeks. I’m going on leave today and I’ll see you the day before departure.’

  For the next fortnight I spent about eight hours a day going through the exercises, over and over again, moving on chapter by chapter to learn the required skill from the book. By the time the Chief returned, I had managed to make a pretty good fist of it. I was really enjoying my life on board. Even though there was only a skeleton crew on the ship, the food was still five-star, added to which I had a very nice cabin on the promenade deck. The day after the Chief Radio Officer returned, I got to meet the other radio officers and some officers from the Purser’s office, who were in the same ‘cabin block’ as me. Before the day was out, some passengers embarked and we set sail for Hong Kong. Our first port of call was to be Southampton, to collect the remainder of the passengers. I was getting reasonably good at typing messages from the Morse-code signals that I received through the headphones, but the euphoria over my newly acquired skill was soon to be shattered. We were sailing down the Solent and I was on watch with the Chief Radio Officer, when a passenger came to the radio room wanting to send a telegram to Australia. I wrote the message down, my first, sat down and set the transmitter to the correct dial setting and started tapping out the appropriate Australian call sign on the Morse key. I knew that I had to get the message off fairly quickly, because once we had arrived at Southampton the transmitter would have to be shut down.

  The Chief Radio Officer tapped me on the shoulder. ‘What are you doing?’ he said, ‘Calling Sydney Sir,’ I replied. ‘Well switch the bloody thing on!’ Not a good start.

  RMS Corfu

  It didn’t take long for the passengers to embark, and almost before I knew it we were sailing down the Solent on our way to Hong Kong. When I had left home to join the Corfu in London I had told Jean that I would be back in eight weeks. I wasn’t.

  Although I was sea-sick when we went across the Bay of Biscay (there were no stabilisers on ships, even luxury liners at that time), I quickly recovered from ‘wishing that I could die’ when the ship turned east as we entered the Mediterranean and the temperature began to rise. Life on board began to be a wonderful experience. Number Tens uniform, which consisted of the white high-neck jacket and white long trousers with white shoes and socks, became de rigueur. Ten days after leaving London we arrived at Port Said where I stepped ashore on to the jetty for about an hour, and I was conned out of half a crown by a gully-gully man who performed incredible sleight-of-hand tricks. I really believed that the half crown had never left my upturned clenched hand, but it had, never to be seen by me again. This was the mysterious East. Then it was on through the Suez Canal where a number of ships travelling through it, in a convoy, towered above the surrounding desert as they slowly and, in a way majestically, made their way south. Someone pointed out to me what they said was the Sweet Water Canal running parallel to the Suez Canal, just after we left Port Said. The water did not look particularly sweet but that did not detract from the magic of the scenes unfolding before me. There were camels being ridden or led on the road that ran alongside the canal together with carts being slowly pulled along by various other animals. In fact everything appeared to be happening at a very slow leisurely pace.

  The life of luxury continued on board as we made our way ever south. After we passed Ismailia, we left the Canal for the open sea, the Red Sea. I had not expected the sea to be red, which of course, it wasn’t. Neither had I expected it to be a clear, sparkling and azure blue, which it was. Four days later, after we had sailed the length of the Red Sea, we arrived at Aden in the early morning - and we left again in the evening. When we left Aden we were now in the Indian Ocean. Our course was east to our next destination, Bombay. It was during this part of the voyage that I received a reprimand from the Chief Radio Officer. He gave me instructions one morning to go and check the batteries in the lifeboats on the promenade deck, to ensure that they were all fully charged, together with other checks on the lifeboat radios. This meant that I had to undo the tarpaulin that covered each lifeboat in turn, so that I could clamber up a small ladder and lift the tarpaulin in order to scramble into the lifeboat and then crawl around under the tarpaulin, to get to where the batteries and radios were stored. To do the job I changed from my Number Tens into white shorts, a white short-sleeved shirt and white long socks and white shoes, and spent over two hours doing the task. After I had changed back into Number Tens I reported to the Chief. Someone must have said something to him because the first question he asked me was ‘Have you been on the promenade deck in shorts?’ ‘Yes sir,’ I replied. ‘Didn’t you know that dress of the day was Number Tens?’ ‘Yes sir, but ... ’ ‘There are no exceptions. Especially on the boat deck which is used by first class passengers. Do not do that in future.’ I made an apology and, suitably abashed, returned to my cabin, as I was not on duty until 4 o’clock, because I was on the dog watch - that is, four to eight in the morning and evening - with the Chief. I got on quite well with him, despite my occasional errors, and I was learning quite a lot from him. Of course, climbing around in a lifeboat in Number Tens would have made the uniform really dirty, but that would have been of no consequence, because there was a first-rate laundry service on board which was free for crew members, and which was very quick, with next-day returns. The items came back in pristine condition and starched. In fact the trousers were starched so thoroughly that it took at least a couple of minutes using a table knife to separate the sides of the trouser legs sufficiently to get your feet into them.

  When we duly arrived in Bombay ‘The Gateway of India’, I had a brief ‘run ashore’, and it gave me another and different glimpse of the Mystic East. My first impression was a little tainted: I thought that I was following a trail of blood, where someone had been injured, but it turned out to be a trail of betel nut juice. The locals were in the habit of chewing betel nuts and spitting out the blood red juice as they walked along. I was to get different impressions of this city sometime later. After our brief call at Bombay we next headed for Colombo in Ceylon, and arrived there just three weeks after we had left London. At all the ports of call on this journey out, the Corfu departed on the evening of the day that she arrived. After leaving Colombo we rounded the southern tip of Ceylon (Sri Lanka) and headed east again across the Bay of Bengal to the port of Penang. As far as sight-seeing was concerned, the Chief was very good, and always allowed the third radio officer and me to have a run ashore at the brief stops. Not many of the other officers seemed to bother much about going ashore, probably because they had seen it all before. After we left Penang we set sail to the south, bound for Singapore.

  It was during this two-day journey that I was to gain a different insight into life aboard. I was, of course, the most junior officer and my cabin was grouped with those of seven other junior officers on the promenade deck. One afternoon, one of these officers from the Purser’s department told me that there was to be a clandestine, after midnight, party in our ‘accommodation block’, to which a few young lady passengers had been invited and who had accepted. He then added that I had been given the privilege of hosting the party in my cabin and the cabin opposite. What this really meant, as I learnt later, was that I was to be the ‘mug’ who picked up the tab for the drinks.

  He then told me what drinks to order and then proceeded to give me a lesson in duplicity. He said to order three bottles of gin, take one of the bottles and soak off the labels, unscrew the cap of the bottle and put it in the fridge. Then when any of the young lady guests say that their Gin Slings or Tom Collins or gin
-and-tonics are too strong, that is the ‘water’ that we kindly use to dilute their drinks. Later that night, or rather in the early hours of the next morning, the party went ahead. I don’t know whether the ‘fake’ water was deployed at any time. In fact I found it extremely difficult to work out what was happening. There was a great deal of ‘milling around’ - about half a dozen female passengers did attend, and one in particular, a young ballerina who was with some touring company that was heading for Singapore, became the centre of attraction. Initially the lighting was set at a subdued level; after a while it was dimmed even further and the ‘party’ continued very quietly. It appeared as if the activity had now become dispersed over more cabins. After a couple of hours some, but not all, of the female passengers left for their own cabins. The young ballerina kept disappearing at regular intervals with different officers in turn, for half an hour at a time. Just before half past three, one of my fellow officers came up to me and whispered ‘it’s your turn after me and I’m next.’ I don’t know if it was a send-up or if what I thought was happening was really taking place, but before he had returned with his temporary ‘inamorata’, I had gone on watch and didn‘t get to be invited to go where all had been before. This came as a mixture of relief and disappointment. As I saw it, this would be a test of whether I would be accepted into the ‘clan’; it seemed a bit like the running jump off the cliffs at Elmore to join Charlie Beeches’ gang that I had done all those years ago. As I had a long-time girlfriend at home, I was really uncomfortable about it, and had decided that if and when my turn came, I would take the young lady to my cabin and say that, if she didn’t mind, could we just sit and talk - that is, if I could maintain my resolve. In fact I was not sure that she would have suggested any other activity with me, because even without standing on the tips of her toes, as ballerinas do, she was about four or five inches taller than me. Fortunately I was never put to the test. This incident gave me a different perspective of what it meant to be an officer and a gentleman. I know that sounds a bit prudish of me, but I really thought the trick with the gin was a bit underhand. Plying a young lady with drink in order to have your ‘wicked way’ with her was one thing, but the fake water didn’t seem quite on. Years later, when I saw the film School for Scoundrels, it occurred to me that the ‘substitute’ water could easily have been included in the film’s collection of ‘dirty tricks’.

  When we arrived at Singapore, the young ballerina and colleagues plus some other passengers disembarked, and later that day we headed for our final destination - Hong Kong, where we arrived on 3 May. I was quite in awe of this oriental city. We berthed alongside at Kowloon, the mainland part of Hong Kong. After the remaining passengers had disembarked, the unloading and loading of the main part of our cargo began. This was to be a longer stop and there was plenty of time for runs ashore. I took a ferry trip across to Victoria or Hong Kong Island, where I took a trip to the top of the Peak, the highest mountain on the island, by way of the Peak Tram, a funicular railway. For me, this was for me the high point, both metaphorically and physically, of this outward voyage. The views from the peak were spectacular. I took a second trip the next night, and the view was a glimpse of fairyland. As was only eight years after the Second World War, brightly lit cities had not yet become established in UK. After this experience I was very much looking forward to the voyage back home, to tell them about some of my experiences, but fate was about to intervene.

  Three days after our arrival in Hong Kong, I was in the cabin of the third radio officer with two other junior officers and we were playing cards. The Chief Radio Officer knocked on the door and came in. ‘The radio officer on the Orna has been taken ill with appendicitis and one of you two will have to take his place - sort it out between yourselves, ’ he said, nodding at the third and myself. I was quite pleased that he hadn’t just selected me because that indicated that I had been doing OK. We decided to cut the cards for it ... lowest card goes. My pleasure at not being selected was short-lived .... I drew the lowest card.

  Shanghaied

  Everything then moved at breakneck speed. I gathered together my ‘goods and chattels’, some in what was known as a merchant navy officer’s luggage. That meant they were in brown paper parcels. The next thing, I am standing in the radio room of the Orna with the ‘Man from Marconi’ going through the various pieces of equipment, with a running commentary that was an express course on how to operate them. I was still standing there with a parcel under one arm - the Marconi Man had left - when I heard the anchor being weighed. In a daze I sat down at the receiver, switched on the transmitter and sent the appropriate Q code message to let Hong Kong know that the Orna was leaving port, bound for Singapore.

  The trip down to Singapore represented a huge learning-curve for me. My cabin was situated immediately next to the radio room, behind the Bridge. One of the first things I had to do in my cabin was to lower the mirror over the sink. My predecessor must have been as tall as I was short, and he must have been reading ‘How to Win Friends and Influence People’ because there was a label on the mirror that read ‘every day I get better and better’. When I read it, I wished that he had got better from his appendicitis before it became necessary for me to take his place. It was two days before I found the ship’s radio accounts; they were interspersed in the pages of a magazine that he had been reading and the magazine was in a pile with other magazines.

  I gradually got to know some of the other officers when I went to the mess at mealtimes. A few days after joining the Orna, I happened to say in the mess, at the table, that I would be home for Christmas. They just laughed. I didn’t think they needed to laugh that much. ‘More like in two years time! ’ they added. It occurred to me that would be the same length of time as National Service. Apparently what had happened to me was a means often employed to ‘press gang’ radio officers into the British India (BI) fleet - a sister company to P&O. They knew that I would not be going home for two years, and they were correct. I have, since then, referred to this as the time when I was ‘Shanghaied’ in Hong Kong.

  There were just over a dozen British officers; most of the Engineering officers were Scottish, the remainder of the crew consisted of over three dozen Asians, mainly from India or Goa. The Orna was a cargo ship with the call sign GJGK; it’s funny how some things stick with you.

  I wrote a letter to Jean, which was posted off when we arrived in Singapore, to let her know that instead of being back by the beginning of June, that in all probability I wouldn’t be home for two years. She told me later that when she received my letter she broke down inconsolably in tears.

  Although the Corfu had left Hong Kong a couple of days after the Orna, she was a faster vessel, she arrived at Singapore soon after us. I decided to go across to ‘my old ship’ firstly to sort out my drinks bill and then to say cheerio to the officers that I had got to know. I was told that at the same time that I was on board, the ballerina’s father was also visiting. There was palpable panic in the air, and there appeared to be remarkably few officers in the cabins on the boat deck or in the public areas. As it was, it turned out that the father had come on board to thank the officers for looking after his daughter .... Little did he know! It began to look as if what had been said to me at the clandestine party was not a send-up after all.

  After saying goodbye to the few former fellow officers that I could find, I made my way back to the Orna. It was then that I realised that all of those I had sailed with, and those that I was to sail with in future, would just be ‘shipmates that pass in the night.’

  I was quite pleased to discover that the Orna was not too bad at all. In fact she was on a coveted regular run from the Persian Gulf to Japan. Although not as luxurious as the Corfu, the food was quite good - no more ‘filet mignon’, but roast beef from now on. My cabin was probably as good as the one I had had on the Corfu, but the radio equipment was nowhere near as good: there was no High Frequency transmitter to make long-range connecti
ons. Suddenly my world had shrunk and all communications would now be via the nearest Medium Wave radio stations, in the area of wherever the ship happened to be. There was no typewriter in the radio room, so everything was to be hand-written from now on. I was really disappointed about that.

  We left Singapore and made our way to Colombo, then up to Bombay. One of the perks of being a radio officer was that once the ship was in port, a lot of the time was your own - there were no watches to keep. During our stay in Bombay one of the deck officers took me to Breach Candy Club on a couple of occasions. This was an exclusive club with a great swimming pool and an exclusive atmosphere. I was surprised that this club did not allow Indian nationals to be members. This seemed to be a throwback to the British Raj which had ended in 1947. It was here that I was introduced to a club sandwich, and on one visit, I also saw a Black or Shite Hawk as they were known, suddenly drop like a stone from out of what appeared to be a clear blue sky and take the meat from the plate of someone who was sitting at a table eating their lunch. Iced tea was a very popular drink at Breach Candy; it was very different and amusing to hear a mother say to her son: ‘drink up your tea, Michael, before it gets warm.’

  After Bombay we made our way up to Karachi, which seemed to be a dry, arid and dusty place with camels everywhere. Although we spent nearly two weeks there, I didn’t bother to go ashore. Once we had loaded our cargo, we set off for Colombo, calling briefly en route at the port of Tuticorin near the southern tip of India. Then we were bound for Japan, with brief stop-offs at Singapore and Hong Kong.

  On the run ashore in Hong Kong on the Kowloon side, I came up against the peril that Dad had warned me about. The most hazardous or productive activity, depending upon your intentions, was to stop to look in the brightly lit shop windows. It seemed that within seconds of pausing to look at the goods on show, a young lady would be standing alongside you. They all appeared to wear calf-length high-collar silky dresses with a slit in the side that went from calf to halfway up their thigh - it was known as the Hong Kong split, and was worn almost as a uniform by the ladies of that calling. Invariably these young ladies, who were offering you their ‘services’, for some unfathomable reason claimed to be exiled White Russian princesses. If these claims had been true, the Russian royal family would have been the most extended royal family in history, and all of them with oriental features. I took heed of Dad’s warning, but that was to change.