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'Chindwara' for one voyage I

I joined the 'Chindwara' in the Royal Albert Docks, London, on the 10^th October 1950, for the start of her second voyage. Life was a bit difficult to begin with. Although I was senior to most of them, I just didn't have the knowledge or experience of any of those cadets who had already done one voyage. If I didn't like it I only had myself to blame; I had asked for a cadet ship enough times.

Life down in our 'tween deck accommodation was very like going back to boarding school, and the relationship between officers and cadets was similar to that between schoolmasters and schoolboys. Dormitory fights and jolly hockey sticks, everyone in blue dungarees or jeans and blue shirts, sheath knives and marlin spikes dangling from thick leather belts round their middles.

The Senior Cadet (Chief Petty Officer) was all-powerful and lived in his own cabin. Next in importance came the P.O.s, Port and Starboard, and they had a cabin to themselves. The rest of the Cadets had sorted themselves into senior, intermediate and junior, and lived in two dormitories.

In the 'BI News', No. 4, June 1950, there is a list of cadets serving in 'Chindwara' during her first voyage, in order of seniority, as follows: -

J.N.Pickering, J.M.B.Wells, H.Nightingale, L.P.Conway, A.B.Weller, C.H.Oppen, J.H.Killick, R.Webb, W.Dinsdale-Young, J.Edwards, J.C.Forbes, C.P.Smaje, M.R.Corfield, A.M.Bolus, G.J.Wright, D.J.Harker, S.D.Lester, R.Jackson, G.Scott, D.J.Neal, P.E.Hayward, E.Leech, J.G.Kemp-Luck, G.Cruikshank, A.E.Dove-Meadows, T.D.Lilley, T.N.Robertson, B.H.Agnew, G.R.Sharp, P.M.Ireland, M.R.Callender.

This list doesn't include two Cadets who 'jumped ship' in Australia- Mike Gavin and a.n. other. Mike came aboard when we were in Australia on the second voyage, in order to collect a few things he'd left behind, and I had a brief chat with him. He told me he'd spent some time on a sheep farm.

I think Pickering, Wells, Conway, and Weller left to sit for their tickets before we sailed, leaving Nightingale as CPO, and Oppen and Killick as POs for the voyage. I have a feeling that Scott was also shifted, on the grounds that life on board didn't accord with his religious principles.

New faces for the second voyage included me for a start, Alan Tulloch (who later became a Southampton Pilot). Two or three new cadets joined; their names escape me.

The Master for 'Chindwara's first voyage was Captain C.S.White. 'Uncle' Ben Rogers had been Mate during that voyage, I think, and was promoted to command the vessel for her second voyage. Uncle Ben was R.N.R. and during the war had been stationed in Port Said. One of his jobs had been to teach British pilots how to defend themselves if the Germans arrived, and this is how he had become friends with my father, and had received the honorary title of 'uncle' from us children. Little good it did me, however. Or my brother Grahame, who joined 'Chindwara' in late 1951.

In nominal charge for deckwork and seamanship were an ex-NZS Bo'sun, Campbell I think his name was, and a Bo'sun's mate, also from NZS.

The Officer i/c Cadets was Henry Severs. Henry took us for our classroom periods, and went into huddles with the POs to arrange football matches, cricket matches, hockey matches, dances, parties, etc. Deck work was organised by the Chief Officer via the Bo'sun.

Both dormitories were on the Port side, the forward one containing the 'Starboard watch'. I was in Port watch in the top bunk of the aft outboard pair, and 'Charlie McArthy' Ireland occupied the bunk below me. Our bunks were arranged two high, in a fore and aft direction, across the forward and after bulkheads. I remember our bunks well, because Ireland and I were both woken early one morning when a cold wave came in through the porthole close by. I met Ireland years later, during a football match in Dar es Salaam. He was the Goalie, and also the Master of the Bank line ship we were playing.

With fourteen to a dormitory, and two dormitories, there were rushes for everything, showers, toilets, food, washing machine. We were all hungry, all the time. I joined the others in making myself bacon rolls at breakfast and keeping them in the fridge until our 'smoko'.

The ship had been presented with a 27 foot Montagu whaler by a Mr. C. Denham Christie of Swan Hunter 'who explained that though the whaler had seen many years of service, he hoped that it would be of some use in the instruction of small boat sailing.'

John Killick was a fine seaman, and he gave me a lot of help to begin with. He showed me the sort of knife to buy (a cobbler's knife, with wooden handle and short, flat blade with squared end, easily sharpened), how to coil a wire when there was a twist in it, how to deal with a holiday in fast drying paint, how to clean my working gear with salt water, teepol and a bass broom, then rope them up and lower them overside to get rid of the dirt (I lost a good pair of jeans doing that). All those things a good cadet ship man should know.

John Killick took his 2^nd Mates ticket at about the same time as me, and went into Cable and Wireless. He was in command of one of their ships when he died in Singapore, after collapsing during a game of squash with the Second Engineer, in the early 1980's I think.

The senior cadet in the Port watch was Dinsdale-Young, a big lad who used his aggressive seniority to sprawl along the table in the middle of our dormitory during smoko, with the punka-louvre blowers trained down on him.

I was told that during the first voyage the senior cadets had tried to get the junior cadets to do their dhobi for them. They didn't succeed for long, mainly because of the majority of junior cadets.

Fortunately, I was able to get into the swing of things and thoroughly enjoyed the voyage. I can still recall the pleasure of being on forward lookout in the middle of the night, in the Indian Ocean in a calm sea and under a starry sky, sitting on the breastplate with my legs dangling over the bows, leaning back on the jackstaff and with nothing ahead of me but boundless sea.