GREAT EXPECTATIONS john noble

With apologies to Charles Dickens

I am going to look back over the start of my seagoing career and look at some of the factors that laid the path of the past 59 years! Like many a young seafarer, my career began with great expectations for the forthcoming years! I will take it in steps and trust this look backwards will help you appreciate where my generation is coming from. To borrow another publication, I do not “Look Back in Anger” (with apologies to John Osborne, who wrote the play in 1956)!

In the beginning
Back in the dark ages (1962 in my case) prospective officers had the opportunity to undertake a two year pre-sea training course. My training was undertaken at HMS Conway, by that time a shore based residential school. Much of the history of HMS Conway can be found in the book The Conway by John Masefield first published in 1933. The training course in my day followed a combination of academic and practical lessons. Boat craft was a central feature along with more traditional subjects like navigation and seamanship. After two years I could tie most knots, handle a sextant and communicate using the morse code, semaphore or international flags.

The apprentice
My three year seagoing apprenticeship was conducted under Indentures with Alfred Holt and Company (Blue Funnel). Training involved 18 months on deck, working as a deck-hand alongside the crew. Work involved such tasks as “Soogi-moogi” (cleaning paintwork with a sooji (strong soapy) fluid and waste rags). Topping the ships derricks (26 in total), chipping, scraping, red-lead painting and applying Stockholm tar to the standing rigging were all jobs we undertook. The philosophy was that no ships officer should ask the deck crew to undertake a task that he had not done himself! The second part of training involved understudying an officer on watch either on the bridge or on cargo watch in port. Bridge training involved navigation using a sextant, compass and paper charts. Even today the sextant remains the most versatile navigating instrument capable of taking readings for sun and star sights plus horizontal and vertical angles used in coastal navigation. All too soon, once the training phase was over, it was time to sit the Board of Trade Second Mate now Class 3) exams.

Seagoing career
My first job after obtaining my second mate’s certificate was as mate on a small ship, the Albatross, a 650gt ungeared coaster. The Albatross had been designed as a feeder ship, but on the mistaken assumption that containers would be 7ft 6ins in height. The tween deck was built for 7ft 6ins boxes; as a result she could not be used in the container trade. Keeping watch and watch about with the Master proved a demanding role. The ship was fitted with a magnetic compass controlled auto-pilot. This worked very well, with one issue; just after Cuxhaven on the river Elbe there was a (charted) wreck that was marked as a magnetic anomaly. If the ship passed too close to this area the magnetic compass reacted and, being on autopilot, the ship would take a veer. On board we were prepared, but the river pilots would be highly alarmed when this did occur!
After my RNR training (List 1, course P71), some time was spent sailing to the Baltic with the United Baltic Corporation. The ships were ice-strengthened and that was just as well. An interesting experience while on watch one evening was running the ship hard into a free flowing ice field. I had never seen what ice looked like on the radar and I misinterpreted the image on the screen and piled the ship into the ice, so much so that an ice breaker had to be called to free the ship! Occasionally, while sailing along the ice channel we would become stuck. One method used to “free” us was to place a heavy weight on a runner and swing the derrick from side to side. This caused the ship to roll slightly, thus breaking free and able to sail onward!
Having obtained my Mate’s certificate (Class 2) and married, the short deep sea trips to West Africa were appealing and I sailed with Palm Line. Ships sailing round this coast (Dakar to Lobito) we called at many ports. Loading logs while at anchor in a swell was challenging; huge 10 ton tree trunks would swing about and the skill was to stow them without damage to the ship. Navigationally, the creeks in the Niger delta offered some interesting ship handling experiences. One was to round a sharp bend by digging the bow into the soft mangrove mud and allow the current to swing the ship onto the new course required! Another ruse when sailing loaded from the creeks across the Escravos Bar, where the water depth was, say, 21 feet, was to load the ship to 21ft 3 ins and go full speed. The action of the river bed on the ship’s hull was to clean off all the debris that had built up in the bottom plating and leave a smooth hull bottom. This had the effect of giving us an extra half knot at sea speed, which resulted in gaining a tide when docking in Liverpool or Europe, thereby paying off early!

Shore side employment
After passing my Masters Certificate of Competency (Class 1) and sailing as Chief officer I was encouraged to take my BSc in Nautical Studies at Southampton University and the School of Navigation at Warsash. This was not an easy option as I had to abandon my dreams of command , but given the decline in the British Merchant Navy in the 1970s the only realistic option was the offshore supply sector. Having seen the North Sea at its worst, the option of “driving a desk” seemed more appealing. Limited space means this paragraph is a precis of my shore career. Essentially, I ended up as a marine surveyor working out of the City of London. I did travel world wide between 1980 and 2005 and had many interesting experiences. I ended up specialising in major casualty response and investigation. There are far too many tales to recount, some quite harrowing, where a casualty involved loss of life. I recall back in 1979, while still lecturing at Warsash, becoming involved in the training for “entry into enclosed spaces” following a tragedy when several individuals had died. It worries me today that there are still too many incidents resulting in death following entry into an enclosed space.

Throughout my career the number one consideration has been “Safety of Life”. Nothing, even pollution response, must ever be allowed to impinge on the safety of life message.