This Swedish port is situated in the north of the Gulf of Bothnia, and as we arrived in the middle of summer, there was very little difference between night and day. It had taken us about seven days to reach this remote area and it was very unusual to spend the midnight to four watches in daylight.

The pilot station was on a small island at the entrance to the river Skelleftea (Skelleftealven in Swedish) and the pilot came on board with a delightful young woman who we learned was his niece and soon, of course, she became the centre of attention. She had black hair, unusual in Sweden and particularly so in the capital. But, smiling sweetly, she told us that there was a plentiful supply of peroxide in Stockholm!

She said that in the summer, her family lived on the island, and had to use the pilot boat to travel the fifteen miles or so to Skelleftea itself for shopping. She was an English teacher on her long summer holiday and, obviously, her English was very good.

On this occasion we had two berths at which to discharge our cargo, one on the south side of the river and the other at a factory with very tall chimneys on the opposite side. Both were about ten miles from the town, so we assumed going ashore was out of the question.

In various ports around Scandinavia we would launch a lifeboat to practice our boatmanship and this seemed a very good place to do it. We mentioned this to our new friend, Eva, who told us we would be welcome to see her family on the island.

So, with the ship safely berthed, the boat was launched, the great, cumbersome sail was hoisted and off we went to be warmly welcomed by the family with whom we spent a very pleasant couple of hours before returning to the ship.

Later, the ship moved to the second berth where it was fascinating to watch the sun setting through the ‘night’ – a dark shadow slowly climbing up the chimneys but not quite reaching the top before falling back to the bottom when the sun rose above the horizon.

I was off watch at the new berth when suddenly I was summoned to the deck. Someone in a boat was shouting for me.

The pilot boat was alongside with Eva asking if I was free for a trip to town. Of course I was free and spent five or six hours with her as she shopped in the little town then gave me a guided tour afterwards. Then, back to the ship to climb the pilot ladder to raucous and ribald shouts from the crew.

All too soon the cargo was finished and we sailed from this delightful port and, as the pilot disembarked close to the island, Eva and her family were on the shoreline waving as we passed, outward bound for England again.

by Terry Took © 2016

Terry Took was born in Yorkshire but has lived in Tynemouth for over 50 years. He spent 45 years in the Merchant Navy which included 27 years as North Sea Pilot. He then spent five years as a lecturer at the Marine Department of South Tyneside College.

He is now an Elder Brother in Trinity House.

If you have any comments or would like to contact Terry then please e-mail him at pilotone@pilotone.plus.com.

 

‘British Workman’ lived up to her name – with an average of eleven ports per month, she was a 12,000 ton tanker that was permanently ‘on the coast’ meaning that she only traded between Great Britain, Northern Europe and Scandinavia. A story that went the rounds of the Company claimed she arrived in Swansea with ‘British Workhouse’ painted on one bow. The Company was not very impressed!

However, some years before, she had sailed twice through the Suez Canal bound for Haifa, in Israel. Consequently she was banned from the Canal to spend the rest of her long life ‘coasting’, carrying mainly diesel and heavy fuel oil for ships and a lighter fuel for central heating. She had been built in 1949 by Harland and Wolff at Govan and was broken up in 1967.

On 1st November 1960, I joined her at Grangemouth in Scotland as Third Officer and was promptly assigned to the 12-4 watch. It represented more responsibility as every one else was sleeping between midnight and four in the morning, though it was a lonely watch usually assigned to the Second Officer.

The Captain was a ‘coasting man’, having spent some years on that trade, and knew most of the ports that the vessel called at. He said that if you went past Lands End you would fall off the edge of the world!

I spent eleven months on this ship and enjoyed every moment of it, including the ‘graveyard’ watch and, of course, the many ports that we called at, such as Honningsvaag, (Honey Bay) on the northern tip of Norway where we spent most of the voyage under pilotage, sailing through the fabulous Norwegian fjords. Trondheim, Tromso, Aalsund, Stamsund and Harstad were also ports of call in Norway, whilst Helsingborg in Sweden was a regular stopover where we could take the ferry four miles across the sound to Elsinore in Denmark, where Hamlet’s castle stood proudly on the headland.

Other calling points in the Baltic Sea and the Gulf of Bothnia included the strangely named Lulea, Pitea, Skelleftea and Sundsvaal in northern Sweden. Further south were Gavle, Stockholm, Norrkoping, Karlshamn, Karlskrona, Trelleborg and Malmo. In Denmark we visited Copenhagen, Aalborg, and Aarhus plus, less often, Esbjerg and Fredericia.

The ship was well known at Skagen on the northern tip of Denmark where the pilot boat brought mail to the ship, as well as the pilot for the sea passage through the Kattegat minefields. Fifteen years after the war the residual mines were still considered dangerous and swept routes called NEMEDRI (North Eastern and Mediterranean Routeing Instructions) routes were buoyed for safe passage to all ships.

It was an interesting time, particularly for our old ship whose maximum speed was ten knots with a following sea and a radar we called a forty mile radar – when it was working we could see for forty miles, but mostly it only worked for forty miles so we learned to navigate without its benefits!

by Terry Took © 2016

Terry Took was born in Yorkshire but has lived in Tynemouth for over 50 years. He spent 45 years in the Merchant Navy which included 27 years as North Sea Pilot. He then spent five years as a lecturer at the Marine Department of South Tyneside College.

He is now an Elder Brother in Trinity House.

If you have any comments or would like to contact Terry then please e-mail him at pilotone@pilotone.plus.com.

 

I enrolled at South Shields Marine & Technical College at the end of September 1959 for a three month course which was, basically, a crash course to pass a Second Mate’s examination.

This included mathematics, navigation, seamanship, English, cargo work, chart work and signals, which I would, together with my classmates, be examined on by the Board of Trade at the end of the course. There was also an Orals examination on Rules of the Road for Preventing Collisions at Sea: basic seamanship and ship knowledge and everyone dreaded this. All this would be taken in the space of one week, a daunting task. The overall pass mark was 70%.

Signals was a separate examination which included Morse code, semaphore, and knowledge of the International Code of Signals, with a pass mark of 98%! The latter subject was a system of sending messages by flags, the first part involving single flag ‘hoists,’ each flag alphabetical and with a meaning. For example, ‘B’, which was a red burgee meant ‘I am carrying explosives’ and the ‘X’ flag,  a white flag with a blue St Andrew’s cross meant ‘Stop carrying out your intentions and watch for my signals’.

There was not a great deal of time for frivolities and from day one we were immersed in the various subjects, rapidly filling our notebooks with knowledge to study at home and revise nearer to the examination date.

I lodged with a wonderful family in Julian Avenue, South Shields, for £3-10s (£3.50) per week but, as the Company only paid for two months of the course, money was rather tight throughout – another good reason for not indulging in student pastimes!

Unfortunately, my savings were rapidly dwindling towards Christmas so I booked the examinations for the week beginning 21st December, with the Orals hanging over until the New Year; a costly mistake because I failed the lot!

I am forever in my landlady’s debt for she let me have free lodgings until I had obtained the Certificate, which I repaid when I returned after a five month voyage.

In January 1960, I became a qualified Second Officer but would sail as a Third Officer until I was promoted in July 1962.

My first ship as Third Officer was on ‘British Commander’, 12,000 tons deadweight, and ‘coasted’ from the United Kingdom to Scandinavia. I left that vessel in July 1960 to have some well-earned leave, but due to a seamen’s strike I was asked if I would join the ‘British Sailor’, 28,000 tons, on the Tyne, and sail it, along with another ten Third Mates, to the anchorage at the Nore in the River Thames. Essentially, although signed on as Third Mates, we were there as crew.

As the ship sailed down the Tyne we were called all kinds of nasty names and had potatoes thrown at us as various points but we managed to get past unscathed to return home some three days later.

by Terry Took © 2016

Terry Took was born in Yorkshire but has lived in Tynemouth for over 50 years. He spent 45 years in the Merchant Navy which included 27 years as North Sea Pilot. He then spent five years as a lecturer at the Marine Department of South Tyneside College.

He is now an Elder Brother in Trinity House.

If you have any comments or would like to contact Terry then please e-mail him at pilotone@pilotone.plus.com.

 

I had six months to wait before I could ‘take’ my Second Mate’s Certificate so it was too soon to enrol at South Shields Marine School, as it was a three month’s course and at that time I couldn’t sit the exam until I was twenty years old. I came home in July and my birthday was in November, so to make a little money to last me six months I worked on a farm.

As it was harvest time, my first job was assisting in the fields of barley, which then was always the first crop. After the corn was cut and made into sheaves we stacked them in ‘stooks,’ tent like, in straight rows across the field. This allowed them to dry in the air before transfer to the farmyard, where they were stacked until threshing time. Each stack represented one day’s threshing.

I hated barley. As the sheaves were lifted from the ground, one under each arm to be stooked, the barley awns broke off and lodged under our clothes where, needle like, they stuck into the skin in various parts of the body. Oats and wheat were not nearly so bad although occasionally someone would let out a huge yell as a wasp found its way to the skin!

After a couple of weeks we loaded the stooks on to a trailer to be transported to the farmyard.

In the field we had a huge shire horse to pull the trailer between the stooks, and having done this job many times it barely needed any orders to move between the stooks or even to stop at the correct place. When the trailer was full, the farmer drove a tractor with an empty trailer across the field at full tilt. We unhitched the horse and connected the full trailer to the tractor then the horse was re-hitched to the empty one for us to start all over again. The farmer, who didn’t seem to know how to drive the tractor slowly, careered across the field with mad abandon with our carefully stacked load swaying alarmingly. On one occasion, he caught the rope which held the load in place on the gate post and half the trailer load spilled back into the field to groans of anguish from us workers. It would have to be picked up again later in the day!

The best times of the day, beside ‘finishing-for-the-night-time’, was ‘looance’ which is a particularly Yorkshire way of saying ‘allowance.’  About ten o’clock in the morning and three o’clock in the afternoon the farmer, at his usual breakneck speed, would have a ‘load’ on the otherwise empty trailer. This was a huge urn of tea, complete with pint mugs, which was well shaken by the time it reached us, and a large home made apple pie with chunks of cheese.  We sat in the shade of a stook after giving the horse some well earned oats, ate the delicious fare and discussed the crop and other subjects. ‘Other subjects’ invariably turned to my chosen career at sea.

I enjoyed my days on the farm, all the while knowing, of course, that I would not be taking up farming as an occupation.

by Terry Took © 2016

Terry Took was born in Yorkshire but has lived in Tynemouth for over 50 years. He spent 45 years in the Merchant Navy which included 27 years as North Sea Pilot. He then spent five years as a lecturer at the Marine Department of South Tyneside College.

He is now an Elder Brother in Trinity House.

If you have any comments or would like to contact Terry then please e-mail him at pilotone@pilotone.plus.com.

 

An Apprentice in the 1950s was a lowly creature, used mostly as a low paid labourer on the ship.  My ‘salary’ on first going to sea was £8 8s per month, which rose to the dizzying £13 16s a month in my final year. It was slightly better than nothing but only just!

We had a one hour ‘study period’ every day when at sea, followed by seven hours working on deck. Exams took place every six months to keep us focused! Cargo watches generally took precedence in port.

The work was generally on deck with the bosun or, if there were more than two Apprentices on board, we worked under the Senior Apprentice. Looking back, it was very good training as, by the time we had finished our four years, we had done most things on board the ship – although for the first two years, we were not allowed to go down the tanks or climb the masts for maintenance. After two years, anything the crew could do, we could do, and did!

As there seemed to be an inordinate amount of rust on the ships then, a great deal of time was spent chipping the decks, especially when the ship had no cargo and was gas free.

As most vessels of the time had wooden decks round the accommodation, a lot of time was spent ‘holystoning’ them. Using a brick of sandstone in a bracket with a broom handle attached, we threw sand on the deck and pushed the ‘holystone’ back and forth until the deck shone white. This was normally carried out when the weather was wet and awful.

On the ballast passage back to the loading port, tanks had to be cleaned and gas freed. This involved heavy ‘Butterworth’ machines that were attached to high pressure rubber hoses, held in place by ropes. The hoses were lowered every hour or so to near the bottom of the tanks, to wash away any remaining residue. On very large vessels the hoses were lowered on a winch, as the length was too great to be manhandled.

Every Sunday morning we had cleaning duties with brass cleaning at the forefront; there was a lot of brass, particularly on the bridge. Captain’s inspection was carried out every Sunday and everything had to be gleaming for that event.

Sunday afternoons, weather permitting, found us practising Morse Code using the ship’s signalling lamps, one apprentice being under the forecastle and another on the bridge sending messages to each other. We became very proficient in signalling as we were often called to the bridge on the 0800 to 1200 watch to ‘talk’ to a passing ship.

After two years we commenced bridge watches, the senior apprentice doing 0500 until 0700 and 1800 until 2000, whilst the others did either midnight until 0300 or 2000 until 2300 on the night watches.

My apprenticeship was completed after three and a half years, as I had already spent three years at the sea school. Then it was time to start thinking of enrolling in a Nautical College to gain a Second Mate’s Certificate.

by Terry Took © 2016

Terry Took was born in Yorkshire but has lived in Tynemouth for over 50 years. He spent 45 years in the Merchant Navy which included 27 years as North Sea Pilot. He then spent five years as a lecturer at the Marine Department of South Tyneside College.

He is now an Elder Brother in Trinity House.

If you have any comments or would like to contact Terry then please e-mail him at pilotone@pilotone.plus.com.