There are some jobs worse than what the deck crew does. The engine room has young inexperienced men who do the hardest and dirtiest work and who never get to see the daylight. The Cook needs helpers whose workdays begin earlier and end later; their conditions are hot and greasy and once again they only get to see daylight through a porthole. Which job was the angry boson going to give Ron?

There is a part of the ship which the bulk of the men on a ship never get to see and that is the officers quarters and the bridge. However there are a few non-officer type jobs: servants for the people who run the ship.

There were two women on board! They cleaned and washed for the officers. On most merchant ships women workers were a rarity. Except Norwegian shipping lines where they are able to compete and get jobs in officer country. This was pre-women’s lib and there was still a division between ‘men’s’ jobs and ‘women’s’ work. Still, we were surprised to discover these creatures in what we thought was an all-male environment. One of the women was old and we were told that she was the captain’s wife. The other was young and she became more and more beautiful the longer we were at sea. We weren’t allowed to go into officer country but once in a while we would catch sight of her on the upper decks hanging laundry. Also, there was a purser who took care of the captain’s needs. Aside from these two jobs there was only one other way an ordinary deck boy could work on the bridge.

He could steer the ship! Ron was literally kicked upstairs. His Job? He joined the night watch. The deck crew has only one set of hours and, as I described before, we would get up in the morning, do our days work then go to bed at night. All of the officers and some of the crewmembers had to work watches, which comprised of four-hour segments of work separated by four hours of rest.

Ron started on night watch. He was allowed to stand and stare for hours on the nice warm bridge; looking for danger at sea. Only once did he spot danger; he reported a ship’s light off the port bow. The second mate seemed amused and ordered Ron to describe the ‘light’. Gradually, Ron realized he was reporting the rising moon! This is a fairly common mistake but the whole crew heard of it the next day and he wasn’t allowed to forget it.

I was envious but decided against dropping my own bucket of paint on the boson. I hated the work of scraping paint and painting and began to find ways of avoiding it. An area that needed scraping was inside the air intakes; those huge pipes that look like saxophones on deck. The ones that needed repainting lay on their sides and I would crawl inside with my paint scraper where I found if I actually didn’t scrape paint and remained quiet I could get a few hours of shuteye. This disinterest in work wasn’t impressing the powers that be and I would be made to suffer for it.

The weather was beautiful and as the ship was low in the water, heavily laden, any ocean swells or waves barely affected us. Some days the water was quite active from storm disturbances elsewhere but I still wasn’t aware of what a real storm could do. I wouldn’t experience the terror that the sea can produce until after Japan.

We were just entering the waters of Japan when the captain yelled at me.

Looks like me on the bridge.

The boson was Swedish; he was the only Swede on board. The ship was Norwegian and Norwegians, after events in W.W.II, didn’t like the Swedes much. The boson was also a heavy drinker. Somewhere about the sixth day the booze that some crewmen had managed to squirrel away from the officers began to run out. We didn’t know what was going on and couldn’t understand the sudden tensions that were appearing as men scrambled around searching for any remnants. Tempers were short.

Around two A.M. one morning Ron was awakened by someone bursting through his door. It was the boson with a gun in his hand! Drunk as a skunk and waving his weapon around he demanded the beer that he’d heard Ron had hidden in his bunk. Frightened stiff Ron managed to persuade him that there was no booze here and he left: muttering Swedish oaths.

The next morning dawned clear and sunny. The boson was late for work and when he did make his red-eyed and disheveled appearance he seemed not to remember what had happened during the night. Ron’s cabin mate set the bosun straight and warned him that he was close to being reported to the captain. The ship was truly dry now; all the gummy faces began to take on the glow of abstinence and good health.

The sea was calm; the weather clear as the ship steamed towards Japan. We were well out into the Pacific, had settled into our routine and were healthy and happy. Although we were still chipping paint and painting I really enjoyed the circumstances and I suspect this is when I really began to love the sea. This affection (or affliction) is hard to describe. It’s at it’s greatest when the sailor is on dry land and the responsibilities and dangers of living in a larger society are predominant. On the ocean the ship is your world: you can look over the rail and search the horizon and see no other signs of humans but your own small hunk of metal floating alone. From an oasis of order and satisfaction you can appreciate the beauty and chaos of nature. The ocean is huge and can be overwhelming but those mornings took my breath away.

It took years for this feeling to slowly disappear. Whenever I had an argument with my girlfriend or faced some kind of debilitating decision I was tempted to sign on to a ship, any ship. 

One of those crystal clear perfect days Ron dropped a bucket of paint! He was up on a ladder painting a boom when the full bucket of yellow paint slipped out of his hand fell ten feet and splattered onto the freshly painted green deck. This wasn’t the worst part of the scene: oh no. The boson happened to be walking under the boom when the bucket came crashing down narrowly missing his head but managing to splatter his boots and pants. He was livid. He figured Ron had done it on purpose in retaliation for the gun incident. Well, you can’t fire some one and send him down the road at sea but there are other things you can do. The boson screamed at Ron, told him to clean up the mess then go to his cabin and wait for a new job!

-to be continued…

This is the closest photo I could find of a Norwegian coal transport. Minus the masts it resembles the Belnor.

I said before that the primary reason for a crew sailing on a coal carrier is to dock and undock the vessel. Almost all of the jobs for the day crew were essentially make-work. They wanted us to keep busy and, therefore, hopefully, out of trouble. Scrape rust, paint, scrape rust, paint, then scrape rust and paint again, this was our main job. The ship was only four years old; the carpenter told me that this was middle-aged and the only way for it to have a useful life it had to be protected from the rust all the time. I began learning how much I hate make-work: a lesson I’ve never really shaken all these years later.

When I resumed this story in 2005 I managed to find a pic of the Belnor on line. And, yes, the ship was scrapped when it turned the ripe old age of 8. Couldn’t find a picture this time. It was as if it hadn’t existed.

Once a week the crew would clean and polish the living area. This took a whole day and included mopping the floors, washing the walls and portholes, and finishing off by polishing everything that was brass. Only when comparing our vessel with the ships moored in Yokohama harbour did we realize that, as the hierarchy goes, this was an exceptionally functional and tidy ship. Part of the reason was, of course, the captain keeping a lid on the drinking.

Standard all over the world was the five and a half day work week. This was the norm those days I worked in the foundry and everybody was expected to head to work on Saturday for four hours. The same on ship. Saturday afternoon and all of Sunday belonged to you! We would read, write letters, and gather in the ship’s lounge where there was a fancy radio that would pull in stations from all over the Pacific. Ron and I could tune into Vancouver radio stations and get a little homesick. The second mate, who’s job it was, would dig into his supply of rented movies and every Sunday we would be treated to a full length feature on 16 millimeter (with sound and everything?)

The cook would outdo himself regularly for Sunday dinners. You can imagine how important good food became and we would salivate as we waited for what was usually some kind of meat extravaganza. Another daily treat was at 2:00; Teatime and the pastry cook would come up with enough great confections to make it one of the highlights of the day.

The day was purposely split into as many time consuming segments as possible and the meals plus teatime could last an hour or more. It was mandatory to have at least clean duds on for every meal. So, at the proper time, you would go to your cabin change out of your work gear, go to the dining room for the meal, then return to your cabin and change back into dirty clothes and go back to work. We would get up at six A.M. and do an hours work before changing for breakfast! Around 8 or 8:30 at night the workday would end and rest of the day was ours.

This was the day crews regime which Ron and I both belonged. Things were about to change as during our first week at sea Ron made an incredible mistake, which would change his status for the rest of the trip

to be continued…

On a coal carrier the crew has little do with loading and unloading except to open the hatches and, for the officers, oversee the operations. The coal is loaded with large chutes coming from structures like grain elevators. Railroad car after car is dumped at the terminus and returned to somewhere in Alberta, I imagine. So, on our first day of work we were allowed to watch as they buttoned down the last of five hatches, washed the deck and prepared to set sail.

Docking and undocking; that’s where the crew was needed most and since it was a coal ship it didn’t have a large crew compared with, say, a container ship of the same size. We were put to work. We had to haul the giant mooring lines on board and stow them below in what would probably be called the chain locker. These ropes had to be coiled perfectly in anticipation of docking: it wouldn’t do to have a tangled mess when the stevedores in Japan began pulling them to shore. It was a long grueling job, we were out of shape, and when finished the temptation was to go to bed. But, no way. We were under power and heading towards the first narrows on a beautiful fall evening

I’ve been under the Lion’s Gate Bridge before and many times since but this occasion was as unique as any thing I had done in my short life. The freighter steamed through the harbour as nightfall came. Ron and I leaned on the rail and watched the cars and buses going across the bridge. This was it! We were really going to sea! We watched the walkers on the sea wall watch us; some even waved. We went to our cabins tired and excited.

Morning came and with it whole new world.

to be continued…