Lost without trace by Gareth George
The City of Lucknow at Port Said prior to navigating the Suez Canal at night!
The appearance of large bubbles on the oily surface between the ship and the quay was all that was left to mark the passage of the City of Lucknow's magnificent display board. One minute we were undoing the lashings and the next it seemed to develop a mind of its own and drop straight into the sea. Norman Leslie and I gazed incredulously over the companionway guard rail in the vain hope that if we looked hard enough it might miraculously reappear on the surface and prove this was all just a nightmarish dream. My fellow cadet, known to us all as Norrie, immediately made his position quite clear. His response to my questioning look was to lay the whole blame for the incident on to my shoulders. “You’re senior to me,” might seem to the uninitiated to be an unrelated remark but within the close-knit community of the cadet ship this short sentence sealed my fate and relieved him from all responsibility for the dreadful blunder.
To put this episode into some context it should be explained that I was at the time only 17 years old but having already served a year on the Ellerman Lines seagoing cadet ship, I outranked Norries 6 months experience and was indeed the responsible cadet! I had signed on for a four-year apprenticeship leading to deck officer qualifications and had been lucky enough to secure a berth on the company’s prestigious cadet ship, The City of Lucknow - the pride of the Ellerman line fleet. Early in the 1960s when Britain's mercantile marine could still boast to be one of the largest in the world, Ellerman Lines not only had the largest fleet but were regarded by those in the know as being one of the best equipped shipping companies for training young officers. The cadetship was seen as something of a flagship for the company and its young men expected to act as ambassadors throughout the world for their employer. Every major maritime port was familiar with the ‘City ships’ with their legendary black, white and buff livery. The ship’s huge mahogany signboard piped in white ropes and tassels was always proudly erected at the entry port at the top of the main shoreside gangway. The ship’s name together with the words ‘Cadet Ship of the Ellerman Line Fleet’ was displayed in solid brass letters. Throughout the ship’s long history as the company training vessel this board had been polished and displayed by generations of company cadets until the fateful day I was put in charge of Norrie to bring it inboard!
The ship was administered in a manner that the Royal Navy could be proud of and a strict military style hierarchy was maintained. Each rank was accustomed to only addressing one rank lower and so on. You can imagine therefore that Petty Officer Brightley’s response to my stuttered report about the fate of the ships sign, to immediately send me ‘upstairs’ to report my misdemeanour in person to the bridge was shockingly unusual. Petty Officer Brightly, a World War II veteran of the Atlantic convoys had positively blanched at the news of the fate of the ships sign. No doubt he was reflecting how he could explain his own position to the Chief Petty Officer or perhaps to the Chief Officer himself.
A large ship leaving port is always alive with activity, tugs, Pilot Officer and all the ship’s company at action stations. The cadetship, being over manned, always looked very impressive as ship’s personnel attended their stations and helped manoeuvre the huge ship away from the dock. As I climbed the many companionways internal and external to reach the bridge I kept rehearsing my script. What was I going to tell the Officer of the watch? “Well you see Sir, I was untying my end and well Norrie was untying his, when suddenly the sign just seemed to slip from our grasp and plunge into the sea.” It all sounded so pathetic that the thought to just leap over the side in an attempt to drown myself fruitlessly trying to recover the board began to feel like quite an attractive option.
The bridge was alive with on duty Cadets, Quartermasters, Pilot, Officer of the Watch and there on the wing of the bridge resplendent in his white uniform was Captain Waterley RNR - God himself. Second Officer Reynolds did not even attempt to hold back his reaction. I had tried to whisper a version of what I had been rehearsing on my way to the bridge conscious that my peers on duty would tease me unmercifully if they had heard my sad tale. “You’ve done what?” He said. “You pathetic streak of piss.” These were not the exact words he used, I have toned down his actual response for readers of a more delicate disposition but no doubt you get the drift. Relating the incident for the third time did not improve the message. “Jesus Christ, I’ll have to tell the Old Man, stand there.” I was relieved to note that my fellow cadets instead of exchanging the usual childish grins were staring at me in absolute wonderment. This was a crime so enormous that their glances verged on admiration. I suspect they were also thinking about the hours they had spent polishing the brass lettering and perhaps reflecting that at least this was one chore they wouldn't have to do again. I tried to adopt the sort of expression that one who drops the ship’s signs into the sea every day might adopt, but failed as I watched the Second Officer approach ‘God’ on the wing of the bridge. Unable to hear the conversation I can only say that Captain Waterley RNR was obviously made of stronger stuff than his officers. His expression didn't seem to alter at all. Instead he strode straight into the wheelhouse and in that clipped accent he always adopted, one we used to try and imitate behind his back, said “ Bring her back alongside Number 2, dismiss the Pilot - I want that bloody sign back!” This reaction was quite a bombshell. The ship’s company could not have anticipated this. It costs thousands of pounds a day to keep a ship in port and to go back alongside having paid for tugs and Pilot and received clearance from the port authorities to leave just further emphasised the enormity of what had happened.
I remained standing in the wheelhouse transfixed to the spot I had been ordered to occupy as the huge ship was manoeuvred back into its berth. Stevedores having just released the ship's ropes and springs found themselves making fast again. Tugs and Pilot were dismissed and the companionway linking the ship to the shore quickly reinstated. It was as though I didn't exist. My fellow cadets and quartermasters, just continued their duties never even glancing in my direction. It was as if they thought that contact with me, however remote, might in some way implicate them and they were not chancing that.
I have to say that until this incident the ship’s company had largely ignored me for a year. Apart from a close circle of friends I had enjoyed an almost anonymous existence. This event, however, quickly changed all that and projected my status into the stratosphere. Everyone wanted to know who Cadet George was. Was he the guy who had actually been responsible for dropping the ship’s sign over the side. Rumours began to circulate. Had this been a deliberate act of personal sabotage? Was I making some great and significant point? No one surely could have been so stupid as to fumble with the lashings and let such a precious piece of company property disappear by accident.
It seemed sensible for me to adopt a sort of nonchalant air about the whole incident, not quite a swagger but the confident air of a man totally in command of the situation. I was in other words beginning to enjoy my new notoriety. My position was further enhanced the next morning as a dozen divers, summoned by our Captain from the local diving school came flapping down the quay. They had been engaged to recover the sign. The gas cylinders, flippers and facemasks gave them the appearance of creatures from another planet. The whole episode, however, provided great entertainment for the ship’s company and a very welcome relief to the grinding monotony of normal shipboard life. A full day’s diving and the search proved fruitless. The depth of water adjacent to the quay meant that the silty bottom beneath the ship was enveloped in total darkness. The weight of the sign had already ensured that it had quickly disappeared into the mud. It soon became clear that the bill for the diving school would just have to be added to the escalating cost of my misdemeanour.
For the moment, I seemed to lead a charmed life. The ship got underway again and we left Las Palmas a day behind schedule and without our display board. It was becoming obvious that the ship’s authority was unsure about how to deal with me. My peers, however, had begun to adopt a healthy respect for first year Cadet George who had succeeded in making such a splash!
This interlude was not to last and I eventually received a summons from the Chief Officer to report to his quarters at 4 p.m. “ You had better wear your number one’s,” advised Nigel Payne my cabin senior Cadet. He was referring to my best uniform and it was in this full regalia that I presented myself to the Chief Officer later that afternoon. I had tried, but probably failed, to adopt the sort of expression I imagine Charles Darnley would have adopted in the tumbril on the way to the guillotine; a sort of confident fearlessness to mask my inner torment and acknowledge the calls of good luck from my fellow cadets.
I won’t bore the reader with the Chief Officer’s long tirade about the cost to the company, the delay to the ships schedule, the loss of such priceless piece of ships equipment except to say that it was becoming increasingly clear that he was struggling to think of a suitable punishment to fit the crime. Used to dealing with charges of ‘drunk on duty or ‘absent without leave’ did not seem to equip him to dream up a sentence for losing the ships display board over the side. In the end he ran out of words and dismissed me without mentioning my fate.
The whole ship’s company was agog to hear the news. I began to enjoy all the uncertainty and never one to miss such a chance of self-promotion demanded a considerable number of free beers before I could fully relate my story. After all, not many of them had even been addressed by the Chief Officer and I was able to suitably embellish every detail of my long dressing-down. My peers, unfortunately, were not as slow, however, as the Chief Officer in coming forward with suggested punishments. A number of them had spent a great deal of time working out the exact cost to the company of my transgression. The bill as you'd expect ran to many thousands of pounds and they had calculated how much of my life it would take on my salary of £13: 10s a month to reimburse my employer. Further speculation about suitable punishments ranged from dismissal from service following court proceedings to each of the quartermaster's being given the chance to thrash me within an inch of my life.
In the end the Chief Officer recovered his imagination and sentenced me to 36 hours overtime without pay. This in itself was considered quite lenient given the seriousness of my offence but it was what I had to do with my 36 hours that shocked the whole ships company. I had to spend the whole of this time painting Kasab's store, white. On an Ellerman Lines ship Kasab’s store was always located in the forecastle and it was where the ships paint was stored. Deck, bulkheads and the deck head are used to test different colours before they were used and were in consequence covered in a multitude of different shades. To paint the whole area brilliant white was not going to be easy. Added to which the forecastle located in the bow of the ship is subjected all the time to a much more violent motion in the sea than the rest of the ship. It did, after all, seem like a task worthy of the crime. The nauseating fumes of the paint added to the violent motion of the ship and the difficulty of maintaining a firm footing all added to the difficulty of the job. Every now and again the Chief Officer would appear to tell me that one of the areas I deemed to be complete was in his view not quite white enough. While I kept my response to myself I took great pleasure in recording it in white paint on the bulkhead.
On reflection the whole episode was not without its advantages. I had enjoyed being the central character in a drama that the whole ships company had thoroughly enjoyed. I was no longer an anonymous Cadet amongst many but had achieved such notoriety that the loss of the City of Lucknow’s display board had become common knowledge throughout the Ellerman lines fleet.
As Oscar Wilde once said:
‘Experience is simply the name we give our mistakes.’