again to Boulogne and anchoring in the outer harbour where, with a valuable cargo, we will be safe once more. Unfortunately, this harbour is also full, so despite it being a dirty winter night with heavy snow, we are soon ordered back out to sea again.
When I come off watch at midnight, our baker is moaning that his bread won’t rise. I haven’t been in my bunk for more than ten minutes when a sharp metallic noise similar to that of a telephone can be heard followed by a huge explosion as we are hit by torpedoes from both sides. The shock throws me from my bunk onto the deck. My porthole is blown in, but the cabin lamp still burns with the glass intact. The pasty face of the baker shows up through the opening where my heavy teak cabin door should have been.
‘Well,’ I say, ‘did you get your bread to rise?’
‘Bread,’ he says, ‘yes, it’s risen alright, through the galley skylight. What’s wrong?’
‘What’s wrong? By the sound of the water coming in I should say she’s sinking fast. You had better hop it for your boat.’
I must say I am a bit confused; there can be no other reason for putting on my bowler hat and leaving my camera on the settee. I have planned for such an emergency by packing all my papers, a few treasured relics, a clean collar and tie, some tobacco, and shoe polish into a small attaché case. With this slung over one shoulder and my sea boots clutched in one hand, I run along the smoke-filled alleyway. A sixth sense warns me of imminent danger and I stop to strike a match. A yawning chasm is right at my feet; I catch a glimpse of a body floating on the coal-scummed water far below. The low side bunker hatches and coamings have been blown up and the deck split wide open. Nothing can be done, so I cautiously reach around the corner for the short iron ladder leading to the boat deck.
The stokehold watch below have all been killed instantly except for one poor chap who has dragged himself up the fiddleyviii ladder with his thigh bone protruding through his trousers. Some of the crew in running from forward to the boat deck have fallen headlong into the bunkers to be drowned like rats in a trap. The wooden Marconi house on the bridge has collapsed inwards leaving the radio operators to climb through the deckhead. There is no time left but to make for the boats. Only a Swede and the two wireless men are standing by my boat, which we quickly lower with the two operators sitting inside. The senior radio operator has the seat of his striped pyjamas missing; the junior operator is so nervous that he cut the boat’s painter as soon as it hit the water, allowing them to drift off, gesticulating wildly, into the snow and the darkness beyond.
‘Where’s the captain? Where’s the captain?’ I hear the old mate yell.
‘In the bloody boat, and waiting to shove off!’ someone answers.
There is no time to dawdle, for the ship’s decks are awash. I jump off into the pitch black and land on somebody’s foot to the sound of some horrible language. We shove off hurriedly, knowing that from this very moment our pay will stop until we get another job. It does seem a bit mean, but those dividends must be paid. The hard case second engineer, who had tried to be paid off in Le Havre, appears to be the only person happy to be getting off the ship. I get quite friendly with him because he is the only one in the crowd with any money.
Eventually we get picked up by a tugboat and taken into Boulogne, where the captain lines us up on the quayside for a roll call. We’re as cheerful as cold boiled rice on a winter’s morning, and it’s certainly one of those. Shivering on the quayside whilst the authorities fill out forms, the man with the protruding thigh bone now has a chance to die.
The third engineer, normally a cheerful soul but hurt about the feet after getting out of the engine room, has managed to procure a bottle of whisky from a steward aboard the hospital ship. I climb into an adjacent bunk and we make the best of what is left of an eventful night. The people on the hospital ship have little concern for ‘expenses’ and serve us brandy and Bovril to combat the cold and to soothe our nerves.
In the afternoon we make the cross-Channel crossing onboard a heavily escorted steamer that was blown in half and sunk on her return journey. There is some delay at Folkestone in examining us; we look like members of a raided nightclub after a fancy dress ball, with some of us in uniform and some in rags. The six-foot senior wireless operator is wearing a short flannel hospital coat with sky blue trousers, the junior operator is in uniform with my sea boots, and the third engineer has remained in his greasy boiler suit with a tasselled yachtsman’s cap. I look the most respectable with my bowler hat, as if I were some clerk going to work after a hectic night out. We are certainly a weird looking collection for a shipwrecked crew.
Outside the docks a gentleman offers to pay our tram fares to the station; God bless him and his family for a dozen generations, and the Canadian soldier who gave me a packet of cigarettes. Generally though, the people of Folkestone just stare and grin at us. I suppose they think we are some advertising stunt. On our arrival in London, the crew is sent to the Sailors’ Home for the night, but the place is so full with shipwrecked seamen that our lot have to sleep on the floor. I go home by the tube to North London. The ladies on the train eye me rather disdainfully, as if it were high time I was in khaki. I can’t say I can blame them entirely, for I don’t look like a shipwrecked mariner in the slightest.
The next day I drift into the shipping company’s office only to be asked by the manager with a fatuous smile whether I have come for my money; not one single word of congratulations at having got clear of their mouldy old packet. Perhaps I’m speaking out of turn, yet I cannot help but thank Germany for putting her under. Money with a capital ‘M’ is all these people can think about, and very sensible of them it is too!
I believe this company lost their entire fleet during the war, doubtless at a good profit for their shareholders. We are told by the press that the men of the mercantile marine are doing wonderful work and showing great heroism. I am so glad to be a hero, but my hat still fits! The mercantile marine is doing what it has always done, albeit with a few extra difficulties and a lot of unpaid extra work thrown in. It is our duty to swell the dividends first and feed the country second – this is called ‘patriotism’. Our only real compensation is that the ordinary pre-war monotony of sea life is relieved just a little.
When we got ashore after that torpedoing business, the old chief officer told me that he was finished with the sea and that he would sooner sweep the streets than go through all that again. You can imagine my surprise therefore when I joined another of the company’s vessels as second mate a fortnight later to find the old chief officer on board. It’s a great pity the poor chap didn’t stick to his decision, for he lost his life on the following voyage. British seamen being in short supply, we take on a deck crew of Malays and some Arab firemen.
To save money, our manager tries taking advantage of the shortage of certified mercantile marine officers by sailing without a third officer. He’s hoping the chief officer and I will do double the work for the same meagre wages, all in the name of patriotism, but I tell him I would see him in Hell first. It would be impossible for us to maintain the vigilant lookout that is absolutely necessary in wartime on board a 5,000-ton ship with a Malay deck crew, and with the mate and me working 12-hour watches every day. The manager would have sacked me on the spot if he had dared, but as it was he found a third officer, a young fellow 73 years of age, who was as strange a character as you would ever wish to meet.
Arriving from New York, where he had had some job in the Customs, he tried to ‘join up’, but was too drunk at the recruiting office to be favourably received, although
