The voyage out.

Whites

Somewhere in the Eastern Mediterranean we were ordered into white uniform. This, coupled with the warmer weather, had a great effect on the whole of the ship's company and passengers.

'Mantola', 1948, Winch Wallah on the left, Chokra, or Bridge Boy, on the right

The Gujerati khalassees (deck crew) removed the second hand warm clothing they had bought in London's East End, and appeared in bare feet, blue tunic and trousers, the tunic belted at the waist with a red cloth, and a white Jinna cap on their heads. The four sekunnies (quartermasters, or helmsmen) dressed in similar fashion, but tended to have more embroidery on the backs of their tunics. The Serang (Bosun) had a lot of embroidery on his tunic, a red cloth band tied in a clove hitch round his cap, the long tails hanging down his back; round his neck a long thin silver chain with Bosun's whistle looped into his red belt. The two tindals had similar silver chains with whistles. Finally there were two chokras (boys) who kept bridge watch with the sekunnies and carried out errands and odd jobs.

Officers and the senior cadets appeared in their starched white shirts and shorts, long stockings and white shoes. We three appeared in our Number Tens and brass buttons.

As soon as the weather improved, the deck crew set about rigging the portable swimming pool on the Port side of the foredeck, just forward of the superstructure. This consisted of stout 2" planking, and vertical angle irons at the corners top support the stout canvas lining, painted light blue on the inside.

After the pool had been set up, the deck crew assisted the kassab (lamp trimmer, or store keeper) to remove all the contents of the forepeak store room and stow it on top of No.1 hatch. This was in order to cut down the tonnage dues payable when transiting the Suez Canal.

For the same reason, the after bulkhead of the Chief Officer's Office was taken down. This office was an add-on to his cabin on the Port side of the Boat deck, forward.

Cadets Oppen, ?, Derek Slope, Alastair Gordon, sitting on No.3 hatch, Boat Deck. (my second or third voyage)

Food and Tobacco

After the strict rationing of food and in the UK in 1947, this life in the 'Mantola' was another world. Although we ate earlier than the passengers, our menu was the same, and the food was plentiful, varied and well cooked. We soon came to enjoy the curries which were part of every lunchtime menu. Mealtimes were one of the abiding pleasures of the day. The Chief Steward, Chef and Baker were English, and the rest of the catering staff were Goanese.

We smoked cigarettes, Alistair Ewing, Boris Gordon and I. Actually, I think the whole crew smoked tobacco of one kind or another. In the London Docks we were allowed 200 cigarettes a week from the bond, and we used to get through them quite easily. Duty free cigarettes were ridiculously cheap and we did our best to chain smoke whenever the situation allowed. I remember Ewing smoking two at once in a daredevil kind of gesture. Players Navy Cut were a popular brand, and they came in flat tins of fifty. However, we were not allowed beer or spirits.

Many of the Indian crew bought uncut tobacco leaves. These they would chop up finely, roll one uncut tobacco leaf up into a thin hollow cylinder, tuck one end in to close it off, fill the inside with chopped tobacco, and tie it round the middle with red thread. This was called a 'biddie', small but very strong. After lighting the biddie, it was often smoked by closing a hand into a cylinder, placing the biddie vertically between the index and second fingers, applying one's mouth to the thumb end of the cylinder and, blocking the other end of the cylinder off with the other hand, taking a deep breath. The result was a flood of dense tobacco smoke straight down into the lungs.

In Beira I was fascinated by the dockers driving our Clark Chapman steam winches; the only way I could tell that they were smoking was by the occasional drift of smoke from their nose. The lighted cigarette was kept entirely inside their mouth.

The first discharge port was Port Sudan in the Red Sea and by now it was getting uncomfortably hot in our number 10's. We were put on gangway duties and cargo watches, and we met the Fuzzy Wuzzies for the first time. They were recruited from the neighbouring hills in order to discharge our cargo, and they were a handsome, dark, fine-nosed race with an incredible bush of crinkly hair into which they rubbed various substances which combined to give off a really violent smell. Each man was equipped with a wooden scratcher some nine inches long, pointed at one end and carved at the other. The carving indicated his tribe. They would frequently scratch their heads with this, before returning it to its parking place in the mop of hair.

After a call at Aden for fuel and water we commenced the long leg down to Mombasa. Once we had arrived on the East African coast, our working life entered a new phase. The passengers departed, discharge commenced, and we were employed as a gang, cleaning holds, removing and stacking dunnage, scaling and painting.

I learned first hand about the discharge and loading cycle of a hold containing general cargo.

The layers of cargo were separated from each other by dunnage wood, painted marks, and long, wide lengths of sacking material which we called 'separation cloths'.

A lot of pilfering went on the the holds. This probably started in London, as the cargo was being stowed. It was difficult to detect, and the powers that be seemed to accept that pilfering would occur. Cases of tinned food in particular such as pilchards and processed cheese would be found open and the contents broached.

Cadets Slope, Boris Gordon, Nobby Clark, Brian Palmer, ?, Boat Deck, Zanzibar, 1948. We had been cleaning and removing dunnage from No.3. Boris and Nobby had just washed & changed.

The dockers in Mombasa would pilfer from the Tanga cargo; the Tanga dockers would pilfer from the Dar es Salaam cargo and so on. Half empty tins of fish, bully beef, cheese etc. would be thrown down the gaps at the ship's side, between the side frames and behind the wood sparring. Dockers would urinate etc. down the same gaps. The cargo for Beira, our last port of call, was at the bottom of each hold of course, and a large part of the Beira consignment was cement.

As we progressed down the coast and the cargo in the holds lowered, we helped the Seychellois carpenters, contracted for the coastal voyage, to repair the horizontal sparring against the ship's side frames. Then, as the holds emptied, we helped our Chinese carpenters to repair the bilge boards, and overhaul the bilge non-return valves. We were required to clean the cement, tins and everything else out of the bilges of our hold. On 17th November 1947, in a letter posted from Zanzibar on the homeward voyage, I wrote 'All I ever wear for working in are a pair of dungarees and sandshoes. The sweat simply pours off you, and your dungarees just drip from the bottom, especially when you are inside a bilge, scraping out cement with your hands, and hardly being able to see your hands for cement dust, that keeps burning your throat.'

After working all day, Arthur Brooks wouldn't let us go ashore in the evening unless we were wearing our Number 10's with all those gold buttons. That was enough to keep me on board except for once, in Mombasa, when we went to the Mission to Seamen to see a film. However, we were able to get ashore sometimes during the day; we had a good football team and the Mission Chaplains organised regular matches against other ships in port.

We began to meet BI Cadets and learned that, from a Cadet's point of view, the Home Line M's were the worst, and Mantola the worst of all, because of Claude. Many Cadets on the Coast in their third or fourth year were acting Third Officers, because of the shortage of Certificates.

It seems strange now, but we all bought tins of ham, lard, and powdered milk to take home. The amount we were allowed to bring was restricted.

The cargoes we loaded for home included copper ingots and slabs from Beira, bales of seisal, tobacco, tea, essential oils, patchouli, and ivory tusks.