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Chapter 1

NAVIGATION SCHOOL of OSTEND (Coastal) 1961-09-01→1963-07-31

Playing chess in the dining hall of the school. I was sitting on the left of the chess board with the cadet RIVET behind me smoking his pipe.

§ 01-01 The start of a maritime career

At the end of the 4th year of the middle school in Brussels, although I had a good chance to pass into the 5th

year after a few additional exams late in the summer, I was so fed up with Latin studies that I could convince my

parents to send me to the 'coastal' navigation school of Ostend. Earlier that year, the teacher had required us to read

and analyze a few books from French authors, and I was caught by the trilogy from the French writer 'Edouard

Peisson': "The salt of the sea". Although the events described in that book were quite tragic, the kind of challenges

that a captain had to face appeared strong enough to mobilize all the resources of the mind. That was quite appealing

for an adolescent of these early sixties who had to cope with the strongest urges of nature while in those days a strict

education ignored them totally, requiring instead to study things having no connections at all with what he was

experiencing daily. In that school the teacher of Latin had been asked to give a course on cosmography, a subject that

he totally ignored but in which I was quite interested, and in spite of my generally poor results at the exams I was the

only student who could warn him about his mistakes. This confusing experience marked all the rest of my life with a

touch of suspicion regarding all the formal appointments by large institutions. When I became myself teacher in a

navigation school for 15 months at 55, I rejected a request to teach a subject I was not familiar with. And during my

whole career at sea I considered essential for somebody in charge of important responsibilities, from the watch

officer to certainly the master, to assess for himself, as far he can, the competence of anybody who interfere with his

duties. That goes from pilots, superintendents, local authorities, surveyors, VTS and even the management/owner of

the ship when they appears to ignore some facts.

It was probably a similar story that drove those who wanted to join the navigation school with me that year,

some 80 young French and Flemish speaking Belgians, but only 20 were selected after the entry examination. The

candidates could try to join after the 3rd year of middle school, but very few did as most students were older than me,

having failed several times to reach that level in middle school. There was another navigation school for foreign trade

in Antwerp, but it could be only accessed to the students who had finished with success the full middle school. If

after two years studies in Ostend we succeeded to pass the final examinations for the coastal trade, we could also join

the school in Antwerp.

Later I found that this move was the good one, as I had much better results there than in college. Furthermore

our 'inferior' training institute in Ostend was in those days on some points better than the 'superior' school in

Antwerp. When I joined it in 1965 after having sailed two years, I skipped some courses in order not to forget some

sound notions we learned in Ostend.

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As theoretically we could be 14/15 years old when joining the school, our freedom was quite restricted to the

equivalent of a strict boarding-school. We were not allowed to walk freely in Ostend which is a resort town with

many bars. When we arrived from Brussels by train the Sunday evening, we had just enough time to walk quickly to

the school, about one kilometre from the railway station.

We were awaken around 6 am, and we started each day by cleaning alternatively some part of the school.

After the courses, we had two hours compulsory study, and finally little time to relax. Theoretically one week-end out

of two we sailed on a small training ship, but is was regularly cancelled. The other week end we could go home,

leaving Ostend the Saturday around noon, after having carried another thorough cleaning of the school.

§01-02 Small training trips in southern North sea

The pilot tender n°3 in foggy weather with its launch normally used to bring pilots to ships near SW Akkaert pilot station

From October until December 1961 we went only 2 times at sea on pilot boats n°3 (ORBC) et n°2 (ORBE).

During the first week-end trip, also my first day at sea (28-10-1963), there was some residual swell from the previous

gale. Quite a lot of cadets were seasick, among them a few hard necks, and I was quite comforted to find out that I

fared better that these tough guys who were humbled by the sea while they were vomiting the content of their

stomach. In 1962 until end of the school year in June again we did only 2 week-end trips on pilot boats n°1 & n°2

(ORBD, ORBE).

After the summer holidays we embarked on an old refurbished pilot boat, the "Commandant Fourcault"

(ORFC) on which we went out two more times that year. Quite often we just anchored off Middelkerke where the

ship was rolling badly. Finally I happened to be also once seasick, perhaps due to some empathy toward the other

cadets. During one of these trip, a Congolese student was so badly handicapped by seasickness that he must be

disembarked Ostend.

On 12th and 13th January 1963 during another sea trip on the "Commandant Fourcault", we went as 'far' as

the 'Galopper' light vessel which gave me the feeling that I finally crossed the North Sea up to UK.

Having never been at sea before the entrance test to this school, after the entrance examination at the start of

the summer holyday, I went hitchhiking with a friend to Saint Malo via Paris, hoping to make a small sea trip to the

Channel Islands. Unfortunately as we were too young (16&15), we needed a special authorization from our parents

to travel to UK, and we had to give up this project. We came back visiting almost all the ports on the coast of

Normandy, and when we arrived in Fecamp where I knew my mother would have sent mail to the post office, I

learned that I was accepted to join the navigation school.

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COMMANDANT FOURCAULT

GRT: 451 1930 Built in EMDEN 1930-1940 : Pilot 16 Belgian Mar.Adm. 1940-1941 : HMS BMP 16 – Royal Navy 1941-1946 : HMS KERNOT – Royal Navy 1946-1950 : Pilot 16 – Belgian Mar.Adm. 1950-1960 : Commandant Fourcault Training ship for Belgian Maritime Administration 1962 : Major conversion, tonnage increased to 497 brt 1962-1985 : Commandant Fourcault – Belgian Maritime Administration – Ostend training ship. 31 October 1985 : Sent to scrap yard in Brugge

During the week end of 26th & 27th January we made a very interesting trip on the "Commandant

Fourcault" because that winter the Southern North Sea was partly frozen, mainly covered with large fields of

pancakes. We tried to call at Zeebruges but we never succeeded to bring the ship closer than 2 meters from the berth

due to sea ice.

In February 1963 we went twice at sea on 09&10 and 16&17 February with the "Commandant Fourcault,

probably with stay at anchor off the Belgian coast, which increased the cases of seasickness due to awkward

movements of the ship.

We made a call in Zeebruges on the 27th & 28th April during which we had many visitors on board. When a

ship passed near our vessel, all these visitors went on the side opposite to the berth to watch it and we listed sensibly.

This was partly due to the small size of the "Commandant Fourcault", a mere 50 meters long. When the ship was

berthed at the school, at low tide 2 or 3 cadets could make it gently rolling by pushing/pulling the bulwark of the

bridge.

One of the cadets gave a peculiar personal explanation about the working the gyro compass, answering

an enquiry from a visitor who wondered about the forces necessary to find the North without any magnet. He

told them something like: "This compass finds the good direction thanks to its high rotating speed. When an

error falls on it, it is simply ejected from the fast revolving disk..."

The last trip with the "Commandant Fourcault" occurred on 18th & 19th May 1963. The skipper of that

school ship was always the same, a short well built man who apparently cared more about an easy job that training

the cadets. I heard that in his earlier career he was in charge of some boat on the Congo river, still in the period of

colonization. He could bring his family with him thanks to the long stays on the river. But once the fate struck, a

squall made his boat heeling excessively, perhaps capsized, and he lost his wife during the incident.

Nevertheless being in charge of a training ship was not always a sinecure with the responsibility of many

young cadets, among them quite a few Africans who had a far more rudimentary educational background in those

days. Once when the ship was lying at anchor off the Belgian coast, the cadets had to carry out small maintenance

jobs, sometimes out of sight of an officer. One cadet who must clean and polish all the bronze equipment on the

bridge, assumed it included the telegraph. Not being able to reach all its parts in the "stopped" position, he simply put

the telegraph on "full ahead". In those day the telegraph could evidently not start the engine, but down in the engine

room was an African cadet, without any engineer officer next to him, who assumed, rightly, that perhaps there was

an emergency and the engine needed to be started, something he was of course unable to do. Slightly panicking, he

had nevertheless the good idea to come to the bridge to enquire about the situation and no harm was done. Some

twelve years later a British Lloyd's Surveyor in Japan told me a similar story, but this time on a steam powered

container vessel lying alongside. On that ship the telegraph was effectively activating the automation, theoretically

the system was stopped in port, but on that ship is was kept alive because it was the only way to turn slowly the

turbines and keep them stand by for departure. Until one a day, a visitor put the telegraph on full ahead inadvertently,

the vessel broke its mooring ropes, hit the portainer cranes bringing down one or two of them, probably killing their

driver.

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The next week end of the 25 & 26 May 1963, I accompanied a school mate, Richard Culliford, and his father

who bought an old wooden small yacht in Terneuzen and wanted to bring it to Ostend after a stop in Breskens. At

first plenty water entered the hull through the dry planking. The boat had a new motor which failed when it was the

most needed: on entering a harbour with a strong current across entrance channel. After we spent the night in

Breskens, I gave all my things to the mother of Culliford who was going to Ostend by car. Not trusting this boat

which was listing heavily each time one of us moved sideways, I just kept a shirt and a swimming pant, seriously

fearing that the yacht will never make it to Ostend and that we would have to swim to the beach to save ourselves.

The sea was a little rough to pass the port of Zeebruges projecting about one mile off the beach, and our motor

definitely stopped just before entering Ostend, but we finally reached the yacht club safely. For a while I was

disgusted with sailing boats. A few weeks later this boat sank in the yacht club, after being caught under a dolphin it

missed the rising tide.

§01-03 Finishing studies in Ostend: four balls and a wooden leg.

On the 15th July 1963 some of us completed our studies in Ostend Navigation School. I was classed 2nd of

this promotion, and 1st of the French speaking section, but only with a mention, which says a lot about the results of

the others.

Among our teachers we had a few strong personalities. The one I liked the most was De Cock, an

enthusiast round man who was often telling us peculiar stories that succeeded to make a sea career attractive, at

least for those among us who could follow him because he taught us his knowledge so fast that it was not easy to

assimilate it. Another was an old guy who thought we were still the time of the sailing ships and who tried to

teach us, in vain, the compensation of the magnetic compass and the construction of wooden boats. He assumed

it was important to know the name of each plank of a sailing ship in three languages: English, French and

Flemish. This way we learned many historical terms showing the richness of the maritime traditions, but failed to

know what makes a ship strong enough to meet a storm.

The teacher who impressed us most was Henri Thonet, a small dry and tough man who was badly hurt

when the ship "ESCAUT", where he was chief officer, was torpedoed by Italian planes in the Suez Canal at Port

Tewfik (3 August 1941). Having lost one foot, he stayed several hours in the water before he could be

recuperated, but later his leg caught gangrene and had to be cut. After 27 months of hospitalization, he wanted to

resume sailing in 1943, but was declared unfit. One cadet nicknamed him "Four balls and a wooden leg", the

'balls' designating the 4 stripes of a captain in the merchant navy as their design was surmounted with a single

loop evocating the popular term 'ball'.

Thonet character had nothing to do with this vulgar meaning of the word 'ball', unless it can be

understood as sign of steadfastness in his principles. He was teaching the nautical calculation, being always calm

but severe, forcing us to compete with each other to finish the exercises as fast as possible. His exams were the

most feared as those who failed, even with only a slight negative margin, had to come back for another year

studies. The final examination in July 1963 started with such a written test of nautical calculation after which we

had a few days to prepare ourselves for next examinations while this first test was corrected. When we came

back there was first a meeting where the list of those who failed and could go home was announced. I could stay,

but the suspense was not finished as we were told that the results of two cadets had still to be discussed. We got

the questions of our next exam, and started to answer them while still under the threat it could be a futile

execercise. When after an hour or two the assessors team returned, two more cadets could effectively threw their

copies in the garbage bin and go back home to enjoy their vacation, and ponder about their future with the

merchant navy.

When later I had to follow similar courses in the "superior" navigation school of Antwerp, they were so

poorly explained that I by-passed most of them, going to another local where I could learn something more

interesting. It shows that the strictness of such character makes the value of any training.

During those two years training, there was finally little adventure and if we were sometimes slightly at

risk, it was due to our activities outside the teaching and training hours. Some cadets were quite violent and

during some nights of the boarding school we witnessed some extremely rare but bad fights. On the school

playground there were a lot of ropes, probably a remnant of the sailing days, and we found some extremely

dynamic way to hang and fly with them, dropping them at the last moment to avoid crushing on the concrete

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poles. The rowing exercises provided a good initiation to life boat practice, we liked when the sea was a little

rough if the quarter master allowed us to come out of the sheltered waters of the harbour.

It was during a train ride when we came back to school the Sunday evening that we were really close to

a bad accident for one of us. Most often we sat in the last wagon, one coming from Hamburg-Altona, which was

attached to the train when it reached Belgium. Once the train had to run at the maximum allowed speed to catch

up some delay (160km/), when we passed another train going in the opposite direction. Then an excessive air

pressure between the two convoys fixed that in our old wagon our window burst with a loud noise. Luckily it

did not break entirely, showing only a small hole on its centre with many star like cracks radiating in all

directions. The same happened in two other compartments, one of them empty, but we saw one passenger

completely white while coming out of a compartment in the first class section. There the window effectively

burst in pieces, and one large part of it buried itself deep into the seat. Luckily the passenger sat in front of that

seat, otherwise the sharp glass segment had found in belly a softer place to land.

At the end of that school I must decide between going to a training ship for 9 months, or sailing on my

own for two years (24 months effective at sea, holydays not included.) During the second year we got the visit of

the cadets from preceding year who had chosen the formal training. The sailing ship Mercator having been

decommissioned, they must wait to embark on a freighter with enough cabins for instructors and cadets that was

still in construction. Awaiting for it, this promotion was sent 3 months to the Naval Base of Lombardsijde where

our Ostend cadets learned nothing more than they had already practiced extensively. Thereafter they went sailing

six months on small bulk carrier that kept trading between a small ore port on the coast of Chile and a

discharging berth in Japan. During half a year they crossed the Pacific remained which was worth its name, with

no excitement at all except a tsunami alert that illustrated well the poor practical knowledge about this peculiar

wave in those days. Around the time the tsunami had to pass, all cadets where stand by wearing their live jacket,

probably other precautionary measures had been taken, and... nothing happened. A few sworn they had seen a

small wave, but it was likely wishful thinking, as the long waves of a tsunami cannot be seen or felt in the

middle of an ocean.

It was easy to conclude that it was not worth spending months to learn that tsunami are not dangerous on

the high seas if there is no raise of the bottom in the vicinity, and I choose for the longer individual training. But

first I made a hitch hiking two weeks trip to the French Alps where my last Latin teacher, a priest, had invited

me in the small village where he was officiating. Although it was at the start of a period of several years during

which I did not bother with religion any more, after the death of my father in 1962 he became my tutor, came

regularly to visit my mother and was in fact a close friend of the family. He was quite distressed that his student

had chosen a career at sea against the niceties of Latin, but it was not this bucolic stay that could change my

mind. In that village of less than forty old inhabitants, the only young guy was a student from Lyon who spend

his vacation there with his grandparents. Although the Mediterranean was a mere 400km away, he had never

seen the sea and at least I had a few clues about it. Luckily he was there, having nothing else to do in the

mountains, except walking and talking, more or less like the seafarers on ships of those years. It was anyway a

cheap way to spend time, made possible by friendship.

Rowing exercise in the port of Ostend. When there was almost no wind, the instructor brought us beyond the breakwaters, but we liked it so much that once we bypassed his orders to test the our rowing skills in the waves.

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Chapter 2 First trip on m/t GOOD GULF § 02-01 Discovering a vintage tanker

1963-08-23

→

1963-10-24

Rotterdam(NL)

Copenhagen(DK)

Aalborg(DK)

Rotterdam(NL)

Copenhagen(DK)

Esbjerg(DK)

Port Arthur

(USA Texas)

Copenhagen(DK)

Antwerp(BE)

Soon after this vacation I could embark on motor tanker 'GOOD GULF', an old tanker, built at

Howaldtswerke of Kiel (Germany) before WW2 (1938), it had only a deadweight of 11190 tons, but at least 10 cargo

derricks and 36 tanks. Its top speed was 11 knots, the sole radar worked a few hours before it must be serviced.

At the onset of WW2 the Good Gulf was in Port Arthur, Texas, where the 'Gulf Oil C°' transferred its flag to

Panama against the instructions of the Belgian Government which had required the captains of the 4 Belgian tankers

sailing for the Gulf to go to an allied port. But the ships were all in USA and different means of pressure fixed that

the owner got his ways and the crew could not do much about it, except the symbolic refusal to hoist the Panamanian

flag. American officers joined the ship, and the remaining Belgians were treated by them like their coolies.

Nevertheless the ship survived WW2, came back under Belgian flag, and kept sailing between Texas and Europe.

Some years later, after loading at Port Arthur, the engine failed to start but due to custom paper work it was

not possible to discharge the cargo for repair, and the ship was towed back to Europe, a six week trip.

When I saw this old ship for the first time, it was berthed at the refinery of Pernis in Rotterdam, quite rusty,

heeling and with a strong trim due to the cargo operations. It was not a brilliant sight, but it fitted what I was looking

for, a deep involvement with the maritime world.

Our first cargo of light refined products was for Copenhagen & Aalborg. During loading check of the ullage

occurred through small holes covered by a fire screen to prevent the extension of an eventual fire into the tank. The

discharging of the 3 or 4 products occurred through one of the two pumps rooms, where the many valves had to be

carefully aligned to prevent a mixing of different products. Once this was done, the valves that were not going to be

handled were secured by a piece of rope. The valve and piping system was so intricate that a new chief officer not

familiar with the ship had to make a full trip with the one he was going to replace, before he could organize himself a

loading/discharging operation.

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We went back to Rotterdam to take a second cargo for Copenhagen & Esbjerg. While walking in the port of

Esbjerg, I saw a group of men looking down at something apparently interesting in the dock. Of course I looked also

to see some of our officers bailing the water in our life boat. They had made an exercise and shipped some rough

seas.

From Esbjerg we proceeded to Port Arthur were a cargo of a dozen lubricating oils was waiting for us. This

trip lasted about 3 weeks, passing between the Azores which we saw one morning and still could watch them in the

evening.

Thereafter we headed for the Providence channel in the Bahamas and I was quite impressed to discover the

Sargasso sea. During this crossing, we were cleaning and venting the tanks with some kind of wind catching devices

made of canvas. They were conspicuous enough to warn the other ships that we were busy with gas freeing

operations. On approaching the Island Abaco on the North side of the Providence channel, in spite of the rain

showers, we did not start our radar, fearing it would later fail when it was even more needed, and Abaco light house

appeared during a brief spell of clear weather.

Map of the voyage. The arrows indicates the direction and force of the wind. One short dash standing for 1 increment of the wind force as per the Beaufort scale, a long dash for 2, making 6 long dashes standing for force 12, the maximum.

§02-02 An adventurous master

Our master, captain De Bièvre, owned a sailing boat with which he loved to live more sea adventures during

his holiday. But his active temperament was not pleasing everybody on board. He could not stay idle at sea and often

went down alone in some tanks to carry out some welding repairs, the engineers fearing that one day he will do it in a

pocket of gas and burst the ship. But he was clever enough to execute a perfect job, and this never happened. The

only small problem I witnessed was when he wanted to paint in his cabin a small metallic piece with silver paint. The

paint can fell, giving his nice seats a metallic look, which as cadet I had to restore in their original state.

He liked also to test this old rusty ship, and choose to go back to Copenhagen through via the Great Circle,

where we met a bad hurricane, passed in sight of Rockall islet and went through the Pentland firth where some

currents were nearly as fast as the vessel. Then I heard also a lot of negative comments from engineers in the mess

room.

Later in his career he sailed on the new roro's sailing between Belgium and UK, and I was told that he was

quite enthusiastic when a strong wind would give him the opportunity to test once more his manoeuvring skills.

He was anyway a real seaman, probably not conform to some classic standards, but well appreciated by

somebody like me who was looking for a figure which dared to live on the edges. During one call in Rotterdam, I

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saw him on his deck with a nice Asiatic woman standing nearby. Never knew who she was, but at least she provided

a glimpse of some attractive aspect of a career at sea. I could not guess then than interfering with a woman, was

another sure way to stay on the edge.

At the end of the trip I had a nice proof of his honesty after the received a cable from the company telling

him that they were going to enlist two cadets coming from the higher (foreign going) navigation school of Antwerp.

The company wanted them to replace me as I had only a certificate for coastal navigation from Ostend. He found that

unfair, and gave the choice either to stay on board as able body, promising he would care that I shall still receive

cadet's jobs, or to support my application with the large Belgian company CMB where he knew some people. At least

he could provide some recommendation as in those days when it was extremely difficult to find a sea employment.

As during the trip I had long conversations with another cadet who had sailed for the CMB, and had told me that on

cargo ships they were a lot more unexpected events than on a tanker, I choose for a change.

During this ballast trip, I must often work in the cargo tank to carry out some valve maintenance, standing in

about a foot of water mixed with gasoline, which made us a little drunk. Later I had the opportunity to have a close

look at the corrosion in the cargo tanks. The ballast water was so distributed that one filled tank was often next to an

empty one, which make it easy to detect a leak from one tank to another. Such a leak had been found, and we had to

prepare a cement box to stop it, other we risked a mixing of the products after the next loading. While doing so, one

of the chief officer aiming at a plank of the cement box, missed and hit a frame instead. If the hammer had reached

the bulkhead, for sure we had a big new hole but a frame being something around 10cm high, the damage was not so

severe. Nevertheless the corrosion was so bad, that the vibrations of this blow were enough to provoke a new tiny

hole in the bulkhead plate, requiring another cement box. The "GOOD GULF" had been strongly built, in 1963 it

was 'only' 25 years old, but the alternate use of the cargo tanks to carry clean refined products and thereafter sea

water was a good recipe to drastically increase the corrosion rate. Some 40 years later the same effect lead to the

sinking and huge pollution by the "ERIKA" and "PRESTIGE".

§02-03 Close encounter with hurricane "FLORA"

View from the midship castle. Most crew ads their cabin aft and must cross the flying bridge when coming on watch. It was frequently submerged by large seas.

Leaving Port Arthur for Copenhagen, that day a hurricane which had been quickly upgraded to category 3 hit

the island of Tobago, far away in the South-east. Doing only 240 miles each day, it was only the 4th October that we

came out of the Florida strait, North of Miami. By the hurricane, named Flora, had crossed the Caribbean sea and

was in the Windward passage between Haiti and Cuba. At this stage, it was not clear if the hurricane was going to

cross Cuba, and keep going into the Gulf of Mexico or turn back into the Atlantic and follow our track eventually

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catching us. But for 4 days it stayed on Cuba, becoming with 8000 casualties one of the deadliest hurricane in

history.

Track of the loop of hurricane Flora when it passed over the eastern part of Cuba, form the 4th to 8th October 1963. These positions of the hurricane are given for noon GMT, or +/- 6 pm local).

The 8th October Flora left Cuba to head NE into the Atlantic, and by that time we were North of Bermudas,

nearly assuming we were safe from the worst winds. But that was not the right picture as the 9th Flora left the

Bahamas and started to speed up while increasing its strength again to reach category 3 on the 10th, 200 miles South

of the Bermudas. The 12th its latitude was near the southern tip of the Great Bank of Newfoundland, and although it

had been downgraded to category 1, it was going to catch us in its dangerous sector, the one where the winds are

building up the seas because they have the same direction at the general displacement of the depression.

Awaiting to be caught in the storm during the following night while close to the bank called "Flemish cap",

while I was at first quite enthusiast to meet my first serious experience of bad weather, I was slightly cooled by the

conversations on board which went exclusively on previous experiences with hurricanes on such small tankers.

Some were concerned that our old ship was perhaps too weak, too corroded, to meet the storm safely. As the

vessel was for sure going to roll and pitch heavily, the engineers who sailed during WW2 left their door half open, on

a special hook fitted for the purpose of preventing the door to be blocked in case the ship was badly damaged, mainly

by torpedoes in that time. Others deck officers spoke about a terrible experience with an older tanker of the company,

the BELGIAN PRIDE or BELGIAN GULF. During another hurricane in the Caribbean sea, a wave broke all the

windows of bridge, but in those days that was not enough to disable the ship as the steering power was transmitted to

the steering gear by high pressure hydraulic pipes, the magnetic compass was not affected and the telegraph was

working on chains. Nowadays if the same happens, all the electronic will be dead and the ship totally uncontrollable.

The second mate came with another peculiar story on this ship. A wave coming from the stern broke the door

on the first deck where he had his cabin. The seas rushed inside the alleyways which formed a T, bringing all the

water in the cabins. He woke up feeling this water near his bed, and was thinking at first the ship was sinking.

But that night, although there was some water in the alleyways, the damages were rather limited. During the

evening watch (4-8pm), each time the ship was rolling against the wind, due to the pressure on the cable of the

whistle running from the bridge to the funnel, we blew a long signal, thus we had to cut the steam on this device.

Then, when I was doing the look-out outside, a large isolation of the radio antenna was torn and fell just near where I

was standing. I could then remain inside.

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The most frightening aspect was the noise made by wind. When you hear that you know that nature means

business. During the night I heard the seas hitting the doors and portholes on my deck, but they all held. When I

came back on watch at 4am, looking around in the dark night I saw many white spots slightly above me and I

assumed were seagulls. But by day light I had to ascertain that they were the crest of the waves.

There was also an AB who was stuck, terrified, behind the main mast aft of the midship castle. He had to

come from the stern and it was only when he was halfway on the flying bridge that he realized how bad was the sea,

and when he reached the relative safety of that position, did not dare to move further. Only the deck officers were

sleeping in the midship castle, but they had to go aft of get their meal. Many of them skipped one or more meals that

day, but I was young enough to run between two green seas. Nevertheless once or twice I was immerged to the belt,

without any harm as by day break to captain had taken a Northerly course, keeping all the boarding seas coming from

aft, thus without much rushing power.

§02-04 Quietly back to Antwerp via Pentland Firth and Copenhagen

Isolated islet of Rockall some 200 nautical miles west of Hebrides (Scotland)

By the 13th evening Flora had been downgraded to a tropical storm and was far away from us to the North.

When we passed Rockall by day light the weather and visibility were good, and a few days later we arrived at the

Pentland Firth late in the afternoon. The captain chooses to pass south of Stroma, probably to avoid the worse tidal

stream with our slow ship.

During this passage, I must regularly take the temperature of our lubricating oil cargo, this with old copper

thermometers simply lowered into the tanks through the observation cover. One day one thermometer was broken

due to the movement of the oil on a rolling ship. After getting a new thermometer from the chief officer who seemed

to consider them made of gold, for another tank I put it carefully next to this observation hole, and started to open its

cover. I could not guess that due a malfunctioning of the pressure relief valve above deck, there was some

compressed air in that tank, which blew the thermometer away when I the cover was half open. The chief officer was

quite upset when I came to ask another new thermometer, but he had better taken better care of the pressure relief

valve. Some tankers had bad accidents due to a similar problem, the most famous having been the HAVEN which

exploded and sank while lying at anchor near Genoa.

Otherwise the work on a tanker is quite logic, with most equipment being supposed to work properly or it

had to be fixed. A few months later I discovered that on freighter there were a lot more grey zones, probably because

we had to work with many more people, mostly longshoremen who cannot be handled like a piece of equipment. The

freighters are also carrying at times hundreds of different items whose properties are not always properly described.

On the GOOD GULF during this trip, although we had a good variety of products they were only 13 in total, and

normally the ship carried only 2 or 3 different kind of oils.

Once in the North Sea the visibility deteriorated and we had to make an extensive use of the radar. If I

remember well it failed before our arrival in Copenhagen. From Denmark we went directly to Antwerp, and for my

first arrival in the main Belgian port we berthed just near the Steen, in the centre of the city, because our quay further

up river was occupied. I considered it an auspicious sign regarding the future of my career, and two months after

leaving Rotterdam, the 24th October 1963, I could simply walk to the railway station.

Pg.11

Captain De Bièvre came with me to the CMB as he promised, and thanks to his recommendation they agreed

to employ me as soon as possible, but it took more than six week before they could embark me on one of their vessel.

At one stage, I was so tired to remain idle ashore that I considered working as longshoreman to at least set a foot on a

ship.

Although at the navigation school of Ostend, we did not learn anything about the use of a sextant and to

calculate the position with the stars sights, on the GOOD GULF the mate left the whole job to me, luckily using

some tables to facilitate the calculations. It gave me already a good practice of stellar position, but I did not know that

I had to wait another 4 years before getting the opportunity to use this skill. This because on the next ship from the

CMB, I would discover a complete new work organization, a lot more closer to the mindset of the civil servants.

Pg.12

Chapter 3 Voyage to Congo on the mv MOKAMBO

§3-01 Calls in North Africa & Canary islands

Antwerp (BEL)

Departure 1963-12-12

Casablanca (MAR)

1963-12-18→1963-12-24

Agadir (MAR)

1963-12-25 → 1963-12-27

Santa Cruz de Tenerife (ESP)

Canary islands

1963-12-27 → 1963-12-27

Las Palmas (ESP)

Canary islands

1963-12-28 → 1963-12-28

Finally I could join the cargo 'MOKAMBO' for a trip going from Belgium to central Africa (Zaïre=Congo

Kinshasa, Angola and Congo Brazzaville). Brought into service in 1959, it was one of the series of 10 vessels called

the "Mo-boats", ships with a deadweight of 12300 mt, which appeared to have been built to replace the Liberty ships

of WW2. With 5 cargo holds, two heavy derricks able to lift respectively 60 and 110 tons, they had also 4 cargo

tanks to carry Palm oil, and almost on top of them 4 reefers rooms. Compared to the older vessels they seemed

weaker, likely used a lot more of the new high tensile steel which allows thinner plates and frames. Some tween-

decks were already slightly bent because they had been overloaded.

At the time when I joined, all the mo-boats were sailing to Africa, and there was a rumour that they were

unfit to cross the North Atlantic. Later they did it several times without problems, but they had effectively some

weaknesses as in 1974 one of them experienced a severe structural failure during which three frames broke in the

largest hold while the ship was loaded to its deepest load line mark (Plimsoll). Luckily the hull plates did not fail,

otherwise we had sunk like a stone, but when after discharging they tried to repair the frames, alongside but afloat,

water quickly entered the hold and the ship was directly sent to dry dock.

The first port of call was Casablanca where I set foot for the first time in Africa. The next port was Agadir,

further South on the Moroccan coast, and there I could already watch some of the peculiar situations that make the

work on freighters sometimes very interesting, and funny also.

Agadir had been badly damaged by an earthquake some 3 years earlier, and we brought some heavy

equipment to rebuild the city. It was a rather small port, and we were in fact the biggest ship which ever attempted to

enter the harbour. The pilot was a little concerned it could safely be done, and he made the mistake to tell to the

captain. I was at the wheel then, could thus easily follow their conversations, and the result was that for a good while

the poor old captain walked on the bridge to make up his mind about entering the port or not. I remember him saying

something like "I shall not risk an 5 million dollar ship for a few tons of freight", hoping he could discharge the cargo

in another Moroccan harbour. After exchanging some more arguments, it was decided to squeeze the ship inside

Agadir which was accomplished without problems, but then the real fun started.

We stayed in the middle of small dock, with barges alongside to receive the cargo, but we did not discharge

with our own gear, probably able to lift easily all the pieces. Instead a floating crane came alongside and tried to

handle everything. The biggest piece that must be discharged was a large crane, with all its gear attached, except the

jib.

Pg.13

The first problem came when the hook of the floating crane was lowered down to the bottom of the hold to

attach the slings. When the hook was down, the wire of the hoisting tackle had reached its bitter end on the drum

where it had not been fastened. The result was the building on the tank top of a spaghetti like mountain of strong

steel wires. The tackle, some 20 meters long from the top of the jib of the floating crane, had at least 4four, or more

sheaves, which gave this spaghetti of thick steel wire, a length of about 100 meters. It took the stevedore all the night

to clear this mess.

When the crane was ready with the wire slings properly fixed, the stevedore made fast the slings to some

strong points fore and aft under the crane cabin, and started to lift this cabin, with the heavy wheel system on a

caterpillar track, the counter weight... and no jib. Of course it happened then what must happen when nobody take

the laws of gravity into account, the whole crane toppled and the cabin was badly crushed.

Being by then only 2 weeks on board a cargo ship, with no responsibilities I enjoyed the funny side of this

incident of the situation while learning some important lessons about handling heavy lifts. Although the stevedore

was in charge of the operation in this particular case, he must be constantly checked by the ship's officers, even if it is

not their duties. This because any accident with heavy lifts have the potential to damage the ship and to harm people.

If a simple advice can avoid a bad casualty, nobody will say anything because nothing happens. But any bad casualty

will be thoroughly investigated by local authorities, lawyers and many other peoples who have sometimes an interest

to blame the ship, but not always the necessary expertise to assess the events properly.

Some ten years later while discharging 12cm thick steel plates, for a nuclear power station in Florida, after

the first lift went ashore I went down the hold to check the slings used by the stevedore because I was somewhat

concerned he did not use anything to protect them where they touched the sharp corners of the plates. There I found

that already some wire strands were broken, when the stevedore was advised he replaced the slings immediately and

started to protect them on these corners. Not sure these plates weighing at least 10 tons would have fallen, but if they

did from the deck level, 15 meters above the tank top, they would have easily pierced the double bottoms tanks and

the ship was going to stay a long time in Tampa, without speaking about the consequences of eventual human

casualties.

After leaving Agadir we still called two ports in the Canary Islands, and with a few days delay we finally

proceeded to the entrance of the Congo river.

§3-02 Traumatised personality of the Master

Sister ship MONTHOUET after collision with ARABELLA on 31 July 1962.

Here something must be said about the personality of the 'old man', completely opposed to the one of the

master of the GOOD GULF. Although they sailed together on the sailing school ship MERCATOR, our captain

remembered his colleague of the Gulf as a "little creasy", but the officers ofthe MOKAMBO believed that their

Pg.14

captain had a more neurotics personality as he was exaggeratedly cautious. This was certainly a sequel of a tragic

experience with his ship MONTHOUET which had a collision in thick fog with the Liberian cargo ARABELLA.

Although it was with the pilot of Dunkirk in charge of the navigation, a consequence of the collision was that

inflammable chemicals stowed on the aft deck caught fire and 3 or 4 Congolese crew living under the poop were

trapped in their cabin due to deformed steel and were burned alive. In 1968 when in charge of the hospital on the

MAURICE MPOLO, I had to give some care to a steward who had many scares on his chest. When I asked him

when he got them, he told me that he was in one of these cabin when the collision occurred, but he managed to

escape through a port hole, well hurting his body in the process. After he fell in the foggy waters of the Dover strait

he was picked up by a passing fishing boat.

Possibly our master heard the cries of the burning Congolese's anyway afterwards he was totally obsessed

with the risk of collision. During that trip to Congo we had to stay one mile away from any approaching vessel, and

during the next trip, with a perfect visibility, a blue sky and a calm sea he gave an hard over manoeuvre for a ship on

the horizon! He slept also on the bridge all the way from East Africa to Hamburg. When a master suffers from such a

bad traumatism after a tragedy, he should be allowed to get a job ashore but perhaps the company never became

aware of his distress.

The cadets were almost never working with the able bodies sailor, we remained mostly in charge of the

maintenance of the lifeboats, among some other duties. When we rigged the sail of the lifeboat, this captain liked to

come nearby to explain how it was on the sailing ships. Never knew if he was then an instructor, that would also

explain many things about him.

This captain liked to come on the bridge during the watch, even at night. Of course like anybody coming

from a well lighted area, he could not see much at first in the darkness of the wheelhouse and when he rushed to the

corner where I was standing it was often too late for me to avoid being hit by his corpulent body, which of course

resulted in some irritated remarks about my location. Of course after a few of these bumps, as soon as I heard

somebody coming I quickly evacuated his corner of the wheelhouse. Because of this I could have been permanently

on a high level of alertness due to the frequent openings of the chart room door by the radio officer or some other

people coming on the bridge. Luckily the old man was using a lot of perfume probably to cancel the odours of

emanating from his corpulent body in the tropics, and actually I could SMELL him as soon as he opened the door

thanks to the strong air draft provoked by the air conditioning pressure.

Pg.15

§3-03 NAVIGATION: Changing course off Bijouga (Bissagos)

Details of BA Chart 594 (depths in fathoms) published in 1885 with New edition in 1932 and large corrections up to 1966, inland features and names have never been updated, except navigational aids, and have only a historical value.

Most of the CMB masters had obviously a lot of experience with the trip to Congo, and there was something

like a competition among them to pass as close as possible of the coast of Portuguese Guinea after passing

CapeVerde near Dakar. Partly to take advantage of the Equatorial counter current running east and starting

somewhere between Bijouga and Cape St.Ann. More than three decades before the first satellite positioning system,

we had to rely on the sextant if the sun made it through the clouds and on the echo sounder. Radar targets were not

available before passing Cape St.Ann where anyway all the dangers were behind us. The most delicate change of

course was off the Archipelago of Bijouga (Bissagos) where the decision must be taken to turn left after the long

stretch south from Cape Verde. The easy way was to remain slightly close to the 100 fathom line (red dashes track

B), and change course when the sounder indicated that we passed it . But most masters remained about 20 miles

closer to the shore, just enough to be safe of the shoals near the 10 fathom line (track C), and used echo sounder to

prepare a line of soundings with 15 or 30 minutes intervals. Some masters had even their own charts of the area

where they put the extra soundings they found when they were sure of their position. It was good enough for a safe

passage, as no CMB ship ever ran aground. In 1967, when the Suez canal was closed and many vessels had to pass

off Guinea on their way to the Persian Gulf around Good Hope, they stayed tens of miles to West, remaining well

outside the 100 fathom line (track A).

It shows that navigators can do a lot without the help of state of the art instruments if they have enough

practice. The history books say that the dead reckonings of Christopher Columbus were quite accurate, as those of

the experienced navigators on sailing vessels. Of course nowadays the GPS offers a great help, a sextant is not even

compulsory on a merchant ship, few officers would be able to use it efficiently anyway, but some groundings already

occurred due to a defect or a wrong use of the GPS or of the linked automation systems, among other the

Pg.16

Panamanian Passenger ship ROYAL MAJETSY near Nantucket in 1995. If one day a large magnetic storm coming

out of the sun, like the one of 1859, disrupt the whole GPS system most commercial vessels will be at loss to know

where they are.

Once the area of the doldrums was passed, the Gulf of Guinea offers one of the easiest navigation on all

Oceans (spoiled by piracy near the coast since then), a calm sea with a gentle breeze, but mostly cloudy which is

a serious handicap for stellar navigation. In the North the Equatorial counter-current pushes the ship to the East,

then the Equatorial current push it back to the West. Some captains tried to use these currents by adjusting the

drift in order to stay as long as possible in the following current, but others just followed the rhumb line to the

mouth of the Congo river. They never adjusted the drift either, assuming that when a current set them one day to

the left, the other it will set them to the right. Heard that one of them sailed like that all the way from the

Bahamas and arrived just in front of the mouth of the river 2 weeks later. This remarkable as the Benguela

current off Congo has still some strength, and some ships had problems to find the river entrance. There was a

story that a CMB ship coming from Lobito met the Belgian troop transporter KAMINA sailing in the opposite

direction. When the navy ship signalled it was going to the Congo river, the freighter answered it was going

there also and suggested to follow.

§3-04 Port of calls: Central Africa & back to Antwerp Boma (COD Congo Leopoldville)

1964-01-08 - > 1964-01-09

Matadi (COD Congo Leopoldville))

1964-01-09→ 1964-01-15

Boma (COD Congo Leopoldville)

1964-01-16 - > 1964-01-17

Lobito (AGO Angola)

1964-01-19 → 1964-01-23

Pointe Noire (COG Congo Brazaville)

1964-01-25 → 1964-01-31

Las Palmas (ESP)

1964-02-09 → 1964-02-09

Hamburg (DEU)

1964-02-16 → 1964-02-19

Brake (DEU)

1964-02-20 → 1964-02-20

Bremen (DEU)

1964-02-21 → 1964-02-22

Antwerp (BEL)

1964-02-24 Arrival

MATADI Center 1964

The Congo river was the first land we could see after sailing from the arid North West Africa, and

everything what I saw was a wonder. Few people know that the Congo is after the Amazon the second river of

the world regarding the quantity of water if brings to the sea, on average 40000 cubic meter of water each

second. While the Amazon has more than twice this amount (100000), its banks relatively flat all the way down

from the Peruvian border. On the Congo for first fifteen miles upriver dense tropical forests can be seen, while

on the next section of about thirty miles to Boma there is a savannah dotted with rocky hills where the river

widens up to 18km and where the channels are constantly changing. For the last 25 miles to the port of Matadi

the river rushes between high hills before making the final turn in the Devil's cauldron, a sharp bent under a

vertical cliff 240m high. Just before reaching Matadi, once out of the cauldron, a ship has to pass a narrow

passage of 'only' one kilometre wide where the current can reach 11 knots. Some slow vessels never succeeded to

fight this current, even with the help of a local tug.

Pg.17

Extract from BA chart 604 published in 1959 showing the Congo River from Mouth to Boma & Matadi

The depths are in fathoms and the elevation in feet.

Congo river "Devil's caldron" with 300 m high cliffs

Ship berthed in Matadi with city in background

Otherwise thanks to this current no tug boat was used to berth and un-berth the sea ships starboard

alongside. There was well an old tug moored in the port, never heard it ever was used and not sure it was still

operational, except perhaps to move some barges. In Matadi the masters of all the Belgian ships in the port used

to meet daily in what was called "The conference of the apple." Theoretically it was to discuss the advancement

of the cargo operations, but more than 3 years after the end of the colonial rule, it was more a pretext for a

friendly meeting.

Pg.18

When a ship leaves Matadi it must quickly make a strong port turn as below the narrows the river is

making a right angle to flow south and reach Angola at Noqui where it goes again to the West. Normally the

river is wide and deep enough and this sharp turn gives no problem, but it requires a good speed and with the

current at time it can reach about 20 knots. If when doing this the ship is light and has a poor stability, it can heel

dangerously and a few years later I experienced such a huge list in the Devil's caldron, drastically increased by

an imprudent rudder manoeuvre as it was nicely exposed to us in the navigation school of Ostend.

§3-04-01 Sailing down the Devil's caldron and heeling Forces producing heel when turning: G= center of gravity where the heeling forces are applied in a steady turn. Fh=lateral resistance under

floating line applied in E. Fr= force applied by the rudder as soon as it is actived to swing the vessel. H= acting location of Fr. K= Keel also bottom

The theory of these forces, together with the above drawing, is nicely described in the Volume 2 of the

"BASIC SHIP THEORY" by K.J.Rawson & E.C.Turper published by Longman in 1982. I shall not quote the

few simples formulas just the essential text:

" For most ships, E, the center of lateral resistance, and H are very close and this expression is given

approximately by: Moment causing heel = (Fh-Fr) x GE. This moment causes the ship to heel outwards during

the steady turn.When the rudder is initially put over, however, Fr acts before Fh has built up to any significant

value and during this transient phase the ship may heel inwards. It should be noted that the effect of Fr during

the steady turn is to reduce the angle of heel, so that if the rudder angle is suddenly taken off, the ship will heel

to even larger angles. If the rudder angle were to be suddenly reversed even more serious angle of heel would

occur." As this book was written for war ships, the euphemism of this last sentence could not be noticed. But

for a merchant vessel with little cargo in holds but a lot more on deck, as it was the case with the ship I was on,

the lever GE is a lot bigger while the stability moment is quite low and the "more serious angle of heel" could

simply mean capsizing. That was anyway what our Ostend teacher Decocq said it happened on a few unfortunate

vessels. Obviously it did not happen to us, but likely well to a sister ship of the Japanese built vessel I sailed on

in 1976. It had quite a poor stability and capsized when leaving Douala. Such a spontaneous change of the

rudder direction to reduce the list when turning

All this illustrate quite well the differences of approach by the theoricians on one side, here the naval

architects, whose correct theories with a nice mathematical demonstration must be found in one of the 800 pages

of the book, compared to the approach of the lecturers in a navigation school who must teach young men how to

react when facing such a dangerous situation. The naval architects can eventually ignore the theory until the day

they will be eventually called to participate in a inquiry and then they will have plenty time to dig it out to

attribute the responsibilities while the young officers certainly needs to remember it quickly when their ship

starts heeling dangerously or it has a good chance to capsize. The person in charge of the watch must know that

the only sound reaction is to ease slowly the rudder toward midship in order to reduce the force acting in 'G'

without increasing the one accentuating the list in 'Fr'. This could have been the cause of the capsize of the ferry

SEWOL off Korea in April 2014. The captain was not on the bridge, the cargo was top heavy however it is

unclear why the Sewol made the sharp turn to starboard, a small change of course to port was only needed to

reach Jeju island. A rudder malfunctioning had been evoked and it could have provoked the strong list to port

that finally brought the vessel off balance. The other possibility is that the mate had used the rudder to come

Pg.19

quickly back to port after a sharp collision avoidance manoeuvre to starboard, then the result would have been

equally catastrophic. We can only wait for the final report to clarify the facts as both her and the helmsman

survived.

§3-05 Stay in Matadi

Papa Alphonse by whom I spend a few evenings

On the MOKAMBO the captain could not refrain from warning me about the dangers of going ashore,

and even more about risking to enter the area where the locals lived (called 'la Cité'), but I was just laughing in

myself at his fears. In the Ostend navigation school, I became a good friend of the few Congolese cadets, the first

ones ever to study in Belgium, and I could visit their relatives in Matadi if they were not themselves there. Each

time the ship called Matadi, I spent many evenings the Nzanza area of the Cité, if not speaking with them,

simply listening to their conversation in their local bantu dialect, even if I understood only the few French words

they used.

Many of these relatives were themselves old seafarers who sailed on Belgian ships, mostly of the CMB,

and quite a few died on these ships during WW2. Thanks to them the Belgian maritime dialect became a mixture

of French, Flemish, English and Kikongo. Once discussing about nautical terms with a French cadet, he asked

how we said "Serrez la garde montante (Tighten the spring line)" on Belgium ships. The answer was easy, it was

"Kanga spring".

Another language peculiarity of Matadi, was that the stevedore worker that must direct the shore crane,

did not use the words starboard, port, fore and aft, but referred those directions to local features. If I remember

well starboard was 'Matadi', port was 'Territoire' designating the wild area on the other side of the river (or was

it in Boma speaking about starboard where Angola was on the other bank of the river?), fore was 'Songololo' for

the name of a main railway station to the East on the track to Kinshasa, and aft was obviously 'Boma'. Probably

the stevedore in some other ports use a similar system.

The most spectacular view I saw from Matadi was once after sunset when the savannah on the high hills

on the right bank had been set on fire, a normal practice there. We looked at the fire front which drew a nice

Pg.20

curved line near the top of these hills, when we heard a song coming from the direction of the Devil's cauldron.

The choir of singers were soldiers who came back from a tour of duty down river on a towed barge.

This first call in the largest port of Congo lasted one week. Thereafter we made the classical calls of the

Congo trade: Boma down river, Lobito in Angola and Point Noire in Congo-Brazaville, a former French colony.

In those two countries I noticed quite a difference between the ways the colonial power organised the country

and trained its population. Angola was still a colony until 1975, the Portuguese area was like a garden with nice

villas near the beach, but the local population was living in small mud houses and was treated rather roughly by

their colonial rulers. Pointe Noire was an extensively spread city, with large zone of bush between few built up

areas. I could not see much of it, and almost nothing of the home of the native people, but my impression was

roughly the same as the one regarding the French society itself: some highly educated brilliant elites

disconnected from a majority of ordinary people who appears to have lost all hopes to raise on the social scale.

The recent African history somewhat support this view. French colonies produced a few famous

indigenous politicians and authors like Leopold Sedar Senghor in Senegal, Félix Houphouët-Boigny in Ivory

Coast, but their impact on their folk could not survive them. For sure in Ivory Coast where a civil war raged until

2011. The Belgian on the contrary did not bother to push for such elites, possibly assuming they were going to

be in charge for many more years, but tried to educate all the population at once. This could be seen also in their

numerous school buildings which are still standing. Of course this lack of skilled civil servants was a great

handicap when their Congo (Léopoldville/Kinshasa) was rushed to independence in 1960, and it paved the way

for Colonel Mobutu to became its dictator. However the positive side of an acceptable level of education for the

whole population of this huge country, which include a certain respect for the moral teachings of the

missionaries, is that this folk often succeeded to cope with all its miseries. In spite of horrible crimes in remote

areas, there is for sure a dedication to solve most conflicts first with a dialogue. It is perhaps how the Democratic

Republic of Congo is the second country in the world for the number of people who can speak French.

We discharged our cargo first in Hamburg, then we went on the Weser river where we stopped in the

small town of Brake to discharge the palm oil, and we left the rest of the German cargo in Bremen before

proceeding to Antwerp where we arrived the 24th February 1964.

Pg.21

Chapter 4 Voyage to East Africa on the mv MOKAMBO

§4-01 First calls in Europe and Suez canal

Antwerp (BEL)

Departure 1964-03-01

Hamburg (DEU)

1964-03-02 → 1964-03-05

Bremen (DEU)

1964-03-06 → 1964-03-07

Rotterdam(NED)

1964-03-08→1964-03-10

Antwerp (BEL)

1964-03-11→1964-03-13

Zeebruges (BEL)

1964-03-14 → 1964-03-15

Suez Canal (EGY)

1964-03-24 → 1964-03-25

The next voyage to East Africa started more or less like the previous one ended: we sailed back to Hamburg,

Bremen and Rotterdam and finished the loading in Antwerp with a supplementary call in Zeebruges to load

explosives in hold 1. They were few changes in the crew, we had the same master who was doing his last trip. After

an uneventful passage in the Mediterranean the 25 March we passed the Suez Canal where we still saw a lot of

camels in El Kantara. Before the war of 1967, the canal was more or less like when it was built, not so wide, with

some turning bridges and a lot of advertising panels that disappeared after the war of 1967.

§4-02 Navigation : steering skills

But what was peculiar for us, the two cadets, was that our old captain required to have one of us at the wheel

for the whole transit, he did not trust the sailors to steer the ship in confined water. Somehow it makes sense, but for

us it meant several hours at the wheel without any break, while one hour was the norm in pilotage waters. But in

1964 the automatic pilot had not yet been installed, and we must steer anyway 2 hours in each watch. At sea it was a

lot more boring than steering on a river where frequent course changes were necessary and where something could be

seen by day light. Anyway it gave us a full practice of handling the wheel, something often missing in later years and

this a skill which is not addressed by the training of able bodies. When I sailed as master, the steering abilities of an

unknown sailor must be carefully checked, and sometimes I had very bad surprises. In difficult confined waters some

AB must be selected to handle the ship properly.

A few examples of problem with wheelmen:

- when steering 003 and required to steer 358, start a full turn by going to starboard, for

such a change an AB must be given the direction of the wheel needed.

- approaching Long Beach with a fully loaded Panamax and some swell, giving too much helm to

correct the yawing of the ship, had to call another man at the wheel.

- coming out of La Corruna without gyro, having to steer on magnetic compass while rolling, one

officer had to take over the wheel.

- approaching Melbourne docks at night on the Yarra river after having been requested to stay steady,

the wheelman steadied on the stern light of the vessel ahead of us, and kept doing it when that vessel

entered a bent of the channel.

On the contrary, a good wheelman is an important safety factor in some cases. In some pilotage waters a pilot

must take over the wheel. I saw it on the Manchester canal, and had to do it myself on the Sea canal to Brussels. On

Pg.22

the Scheldt river professional wheelmen are available if the master or the company feel they are needed. I used to

order them on our Panamax bulkcarriers after I saw that the pilots were a lot more confident when they had them at

the wheel. Luckily because once we had a critical situation just after having passed Flushing. We were already full

speed going up river, when on our starboard a roro without pilot had been ordered by the VTS to came as fast as

possible back to the channel after it had gone by mistake in an area where diving operations were carried out. While

trying to comply it came with sensible speed right across our path on a collision course, trying to stop at the last

moment but it was not going to succeed. At that moment, the professional wheelman calmly suggested the pilot to

steer a little further to port adding he believed there was still enough water in this direction. The pilot confirmed and

agreed, and we passed a few meters ahead of the bow of the roro. Afterwards the 'funny' side was that the

management tried to cancel some kind of normal bonus because I had ordered this wheelman in time of budget

restrictions, while none was ever ordered by other ships. When I pointed out that the 'other' ships were smaller

conbulks, and explained what this wheelman had one, I got the bonus.

§4-03 Red sea, Gulf of Aden and Somali coast down to Mombasa

Mombasa (KEN)

1964-04-03 → 1964-04-17

Tanga ( Tanganyika)

1964-04-18 →1964-04-20

Dar Es Salaam (Tang.)

1964-04-22→1964-04-27

Tanga ( Tanganyika)

1964-04-28 →1964-05-01

Beira (Mozambique)

1964-05-04→1964-05-09

If the passage up to Guadafui (Ras Asir, where the ship leaves the Gulf of Aden to enter the Indian Ocean)

was an interesting discovery for me, it was rather uneventful on board except that we could proceed quite close to the

coast up to Ras Hafun (a peninsula about 90 miles south of Ras Asir and also the easternmost point of Africa), while

nowadays this pirate infested area must be avoided at all costs. But further south the trip was boring, quite far from

the coast of Somalia and the heat was intense.

On arrival in the ancient port of Mombasa, we had first to discharge the dynamite at anchor in Port Reitz, a

quiet bay west of Mombasa island. That gave us the opportunity to discover this historical city, with its perfectly

conserved 'Fort Jesus' built by the Portuguese's 4 centuries earlier. Having never been told at school about the history

of this part of the world, I was quite surprised by this imposing structure erected in 1592 so far away from Lisbon,

and it was the start of new interest to know more about the visited countries. In Mombasa they were good English

bookshops which provided the necessary documentation. Once alongside, it took us less time to reach the city, but

our hours on duty were more numerous. The stevedore worked round the clock in three shifts of 8 hours, and most

often the two cadets must do the same but in two shifts of 12 hours. During the discharging, this duty consisted

mostly in checking that the local teams on board did not steal the cargo, quite a boring job that sometimes kept us

hours in the holds where the most valuable stuff was. As our presence was generally enough to prevent pilferage,

after a few of these boring watches, I tried to use this time more efficiently by buying a small book with some notion

of Kiswahili, the language spoken in most East Africa.

Pg.23

From Mombasa we proceeded to Tanga in Tanzania where there was only an anchorage which must be

reached by zigzagging between some coral reefs, quite an ordeal for our concerned master. The small town best

buildings were still from the German period which ended with WW1. In the west the Usambara mountains could be

seen, with their actual Amani reserve and their former German botanical garden which is still one of the nicest of

Central Africa. Just in front of the town is an uninhabited island called Torten or Toten, with many old tombs and the

ruin of ancient buildings and mosque. Later we used to go this island with our lifeboat and swim in the mangrove.

There I found a fossilized clamshell that I still keep next to a real one.

Of course for the cargo operations we had to use our derricks rigged for the fast "union purchase system"

which was limited to lifts up to two tons. The local longshoremen handling the winches were quite efficient, and in

spite of their frequent heavier lifts or their wrong handling that brought one or the two runners almost horizontal,

with the excessive tension flattening the wire strands making a threatening noise, we never got an accident with a

broken wire while using this method.

The next port was Dar Es Salaam, the capital of Tanganyika which became Tanzania when we came back 4

weeks later. The bay was a lot smaller than the one of Mombasa, but its entrance was a lot nicer while it required

sharp turns to negotiate a kind of 'S' bent. Although all traffic was stopped when a large ship sailed through it, during

later calls we met small crafts which did not bother and sometimes a guy who could not wait for the ferry swam to

the other banks and in front of our bow. Once a kind a fishing catamaran collided gently with to the port side of our

hull and could not leave this uncomfortable position by rudder or sail power alone, then the sole skipper/crew

member jumped in the water holding a rope in his hand, and towed the craft away.

Tanganyika had gained independence from the Britain 3 years earlier (1961), and until then the Belgian had

some special rights to the few available berths. It was a remnant of WW1, a compensation for the participation of the

Belgian African troops from Congo (The Public Force) in the fight against the Germans defending their East African

colony of Tanganyika. The railway line from Kigoma to Dar Es Salaam was essential to carry goods to eastern Congo

and Burundi, at least until the Chinese built in the seventies a bigger railway reaching the Katanga rail system

through Zambia. However the gauge of this new link was slightly larger than the previous one (1067mm vs 1000mm)

and for years the former Belgian berths in Dar Es Salaam could accommodate trains from the two systems. This

certainly caused some logistic problems that the port did not need as it became in the course of the years a lot less

efficient than Mombasa. The mechanical equipment was poorly maintained and some receivers never came to take

away their goods, among them hazardous chemicals whose labelling became unreadable after a few months.

For the seafarers however Dar Es Salaam was a pleasant call thanks to "The Mission to Seafarers" of the

Flying Angel organisation located near the port gates, and the city centre which was at walking distance from the

ship.

§4-04 Port of Call : Beira

After another call in Tanga, a three day trip south was then needed to reach the port of Beira in the

Portuguese colony of Mozambique. There we discharged our last cargo mainly for the Congolese province of

Katanga which was then connected with the only direct railway line through Zambia and Rhodesia, while goods for

the same destination discharged in Dar Es Salaam needed to be transhipped on a boat at Kigoma to cross the lake

Tanganyika. The cargo loaded at Beira was quite convenient for the stability of the ship as it consisted of heavy

minerals, mostly copper slabs from Katanga. During the return trip north, it was overloaded with lighter stuff such as

sisal and coffee.

The setting of the port was a lot less welcoming than those of the previous places in East Africa. If coming

from the North the navigation was not too difficult as the depth allowed to remain at a radar distance from the coast,

allowing an easy position fix, approaching from the South was another matter due to the shallow Sofala bank

extending up to 60 miles from the coast. When no position could be obtained with the sextant, we had to rely on

soundings lines as explained previously, but without the conspicuous depth changes that makes them easier of a good

position.

Beira lies close inside the estuary of the muddy Rio Pungue which is 3 miles wide. It was good then that the

pilot boarded several miles off the Ponta Macuti that marked the eastern side of the entrance because depths were

Pg.24

affected by wind, strong currents up to 5 knots provoked oblique sets in channels that had to be regularly changed

due to silting.

Once berthed the ship was far from secure due to the Pungue river tidal ranges up to 5 meters with a spring

ingoing current of 3 knots for 5 hours, and an outgoing current of 5 knots for about 8 hours. Mooring lines had to

often checked and attended. If these lines were too slack the ship could be pushed away from the berth and present

an edge to the flowing tidal water that could set him adrift after the parting of the ropes. If they were too tight with

rising water, the ship could be caught under a protruding piece of berth timber and start heeling until the piece, or the

ship bulwark, broke. It happened to us once, but luckily we could free the bulwark by slacking prudently some ropes.

The longshoremen hanged nets on the outer side of the ship to use this current to catch a lot of river life:

mostly shrimps and small fishes, but also a lot of jelly fishes that they threw back in the river their bare hands.

Going ashore was not so funny either. First we had to make a long walk without any shade as they were no

trees in the port area, after that we came in a small city lying alongside of a muddy creek with several abandoned

wrecks of wooden crafts. The streets were well cared as always in the Portuguese town, and outside the centre they

were some nice residential neighbourhoods with at least some trees.

During another call in the 70s we experienced of locust invasion during the cargo operations in Beira. We

had no so many inside the vessel, but outside we were sure to hit a few every minutes. The insect tended to

accumulate on the greasy wires of the winches, and each time a runner winch was activated it caused a locust

massacre. The locals seemed to appreciate them as food, as they filled their pockets with these locusts after tearing

off their wings and legs. It lasted several days, and after the first night we learned to bring the outside lighting to the

strict minimum to keep at least some of them away. When a new ship berthed unaware of the insects and of this

precaution, putting all its lights 'on' helped us a lot!

§4-05 Loading while going back to Suez Canal

Dar Es Salaam (TZA)

1964-05-12 → 1964-05-14

Zanzibar (TZA)

1964-05-28 →1964-05-14

Mombasa (KEN)

1964-05-15 → 1964-05-19

Aden (Fed. of S.Arabia)

1964-05-23 → 1964-05-24

Port Sudan (SDN)

1964-05-26 → 1964-05-28

Suez canal (EGY)

1964-06-01→1964-06-02

Road of Zanzibar

The trip back north we called first back in Dar es Salaam, and the next call was Zanzibar where we stayed at

anchor. Since our previous stay the island had united with Tanganyika and the new country was called Tanzania. We

had two flags and did not know which one to hoist, if we used the wrong one it could have been a serious offence in

a young African country. We had a look at the boats in the road, but several of them were carrying different flags

also! Finally a flag was chosen and we had no problem. Four months earlier the African inhabitants of the island

raised against the former Arab rulers and massacred several thousands of them. We heard about this first genocide

after WW2 during our previous trip to Congo. It took place from the 18th until the 20th January 1964 and marked

the start of a very dark period for Africa as several more killings were to come. As we stayed only a few hours there

was no chance to go ashore, and nobody wanted it either. But one year later I could tour the island with some other

crew, we saw no apparent traces of the previous tragedy.

Pg.25

After loading in Mombasa, our next call was Aden for bunkering and to take a little cargo. The Federation of

Southern Arabia was still occupied by the British troops who were controlling the city behind sand bags, a sure sign

they were not going to stay much longer. There again we had a flag problem as this Federation was only half a year

old, however the company had taken care of providing a nice new flag of the young state marked with the right. We

proudly hoisted it before arrival, but to our big disappointment the British pilot did not recognize it, and required to

remove it. We could not go ashore but could buy some stuff from the merchants who came alongside with boats full

of goods from the Far East. With the other aspirant, we acquired each a pair of large binoculars of size 12x50, which

triggered a lot critics from the old man who sworn that the second size number must the close to the square of the

first, thus making his 7x50 much better!

Since we left Mombasa he became more and more nervous, probably because he feared some disaster during

his last trip. This was a typical attitude of many former seafarers who were so superstitious that they refrained for

counting the years up to their retirement and finally remained at sea some extra years. But in this case the fear

became a real risk itself and certainly provoked a serious mistake at the end of the voyage. During all the return trip,

this master slept on the bridge, while there were almost no ships to be seen between Kenya and the Gulf of Aden. A

few hours after passing Ras Asir (Guaradafui), in the afternoon with the 3rd officer I enjoyed a dart game on the after

side of the midship castle, under a blue sky with a perfectly calm sea, when suddenly we saw on the wake of the

vessel that it was turning hard to starboard. We went to the side to discover the reason of this drastic manoeuvre, but

could not see anything, then we climbed on the bridge and found there a quite tense master pointing at a vessel which

was crossing our course but at least 6 miles away! It was the only ship that could be observed over all the horizon,

and a gentle change of course of a few degrees would have been sufficient. The incomprehensible overreaction of the

old man just testified that something was going wrong in his mind.

Peculiar call Port Sudan

Anyway we arrived safely in our last loading call, Port Sudan, where we discovered a town from the

previous century. Downtown we saw more camels than cars, they were no shops with windows, only curtains if they

were open or planks if they were closed. On the way to the 'city' centre I wanted to take some pictures of a camel

standing near to a tree, but after the first some young people threw stones, probably thinking the pictures were going

to hurt the beast. But the most typical scenes could be found on board as all the longshoremen were Hadendoa

Bedouins called 'Fuzzy Wuzzy' by the British. These tall dark men took special care of their hair which must be seen

raising on their head. To achieve this, some said that they were using goat faces, but other sources spoke of a kind of

butter. They had a fierce reputation as warrior when they fought the Mahdist revolt against the British in the 19th

century and were famous for having been one of the few fighters able to "break the square" of British soldiers.

Among the cargo they had to handle were heavy square "bags" filled with some metal, possibly steel scrap, and

encouraged themselves by singing loudly when lifting these bags. I saw one of them who proudly carried on his back

such a bag of 200kg all across the tweendeck. I was quite impressed also, and at one stage I had the peculiar idea to

record their song with the small portable tape recorder that I brought with me. In 1964 this type of tape recorder was

relatively rare, and it was working anyway on batteries as on board only direct current was available. After discretely

recording their song, I make the mistake to play it back, and the work stopped for a good while... The Fuzzy Wuzzy

had never heard such a record and they were all around me to hear their own songs, making loud comments on this

marvel of technology they just discovered.

Navigation Abu el Kizan & El akawein

On the last passage to Suez Canal like all ships we passed at night nearby the light houses of Abu El Kizan

(Daedalus reef) and 83 miles further El Akawein (The Brothers). The MOKAMBO had well a better radar than the

GOOD GULF, but it was the only one and it was not used when not necessary, and this was the case in this area with

a good visibility and a calm sea with no risk of rain. After we passed El Akawein we kept observing it in order to

have a good position check when it disappeared by using its last bearing which did not change much as we sailed

away from it and the "Extreme Range" table. This method proved to be at least as accurate as a radar bearing and

distance fix, often better. Taking into account that the height of our wheelhouse was about 18 meters, and the light

houses were some 30 meters above sea level, their extreme range was at most 21 miles, thus after El Akawein

disappeared behind the horizon, we had to sail 41 miles before Abu el Kizan could appear, or 3 hours of navigation.

All had to happen as I was on watch with the 3rd officer, and of course the old man sleeping on its seat. Wanting to

Pg.26

be involved, after we got El Akawein behind us, he required to be advised when we could see Abu el Kizan and

enjoyed a sleep that he hoped would last a few hours. But after only one hour an extremely bright flash appeared

which had to be Abu el Kizan and it could be so identified with its characteristics. I took a bearing and went to chart

room to plot a position, but when looking aft I saw El Akawein again, even brighter that when it disappeared. We

could also see twice the lights of ship a few miles away, a first time normally and a second time on top and upside

down! It was obviously a nice case of abnormal refraction, and the sailing direction (Pilot books) a 1918 case of

abnormal refraction of 40 miles for the lights was mentioned, and there we could see one of at least 42 miles.

Anyway we had to follow the orders of our master, and we wake him up two hours earlier than foreseen which raised

a lot of comments of incredulity. Apparently he had not read or paid attention to these warnings in the sailing

directions. Theoretically nowadays this kind information ought to be included in the passage plan, but the clerical

load on the ships officers is such that they seldom notice those details. Although the Pilot books now and then still

contain some mistake (in 1997, due to an error in the name of longitude found that a ship must go inland to embark

the Humber pilot), generally they remain a precious source of information and a master should read them carefully if

he has to sail to an area he is not familiar with.

Human factor: wrong priorities Squabble when coming out of Suez canal 1964-06-02

If the old man was near retirement, the chief officer was also not far from it. Anyway the two were not the

best friends, it was obviously not difficult for an experienced seafarer to see all the flaws in the behaviour of our

traumatized captain. As usual the pilot had disembarked as soon as he got his carton(s) of Marlboro and the ship was

still in the buoyed channel starting to gather speed when on the bridge when, for some derrick problem, an heated

discussion took place between the captain and the chief mate. I could follow it easily as I was steering the ship and

had to pay attention to an eventual steering order. But the two men became so eager to prove their point, that finally

the master somewhat neglected to care for the navigation and gave the needed rudder command much too late, when

we were quite close from a buoy. For the Soviet ship of the convoy behind us, our zigzags must have looked as if a

drunken man was in charge. Its skipper apparently fed up or fearing that we could block the channel, started to

overtake us as soon as it could. This manoeuver in a constrained channel frightened and calmed our captain who

finally realized that the derricks were not at all a priority compared to safe navigation. For me it was a good lesson

that I remembered all the rest of my career: to never tolerate the building up of such a tough discussion on the bridge.

If anybody tries to have words with the person in charge of the navigation, he must be stopped immediately by all

available means. Practically when I was master it was enough to use a strong voice to convince the disrupting

individual that he was a dangerous nuisance and had to leave the bridge.

When handling the ship the wheelhouse is the same as a sacred place where only verbal exchanges related to

navigation should occur. Of course quick exchanges about some other issues can be tolerated, together with a few

pleasant or funny remarks about something peculiar, but as soon as the man in charge pays attention to his navigating

duties all other communications must stop at once.

Being too friendly is also not an option. Some pilots like to chat, and some captains are happy to have a

friendly conversation with this kind of peer after weeks of relative solitude at sea, but is too easy to be distracted this

way. Many years later a master who was known for chatting with the pilots did not notice that the ship came to close

from a buoy, he and the pilot felt they touched the buoy or its chain, two propeller blades were damaged and

thereafter the local hydrographical service was never able to locate the buoy at the surface or on the bottom.

In the Time magazine of 24th July 1989, the article "Joe's Bad Trip" suggested that such a friendly relation

between the mate and the wheelman of the Exxon Valdez was probably a main cause of the catastrophic grounding

of the tanker.

Log book entries Clerical mistake at end of career 1964-06-14

After the Suez Canal we came back to our home port Antwerp first via the usual calls in Germany and the

Netherlands: Hamburg, Bremen, Rotterdam. We already received the news that the next trip would be quite peculiar

for this vessel which was wrongly assumed not able to cope with the North Atlantic as it was scheduled to go to the

Gulf of Mexico after a short scheduled dry dock in Antwerp. However a very dry month of June in Germany was

going to change this prospect. There was less water in the Elbe river as usual, also due to low tide and an Easterly

wind , we were berthed at the Petersenkai in the Baakenhafen which lies upstream from the city therefore we passed

in front of it when coming out. It was around 1700 and we could enjoy the sight on the touristic area of the port near

Pg.27

the "Landungsbrücke" jetty when the vessel started to shake badly and took a slight list. While some officers who

were inside first suspected a collision, in fact we had just hit a wreck but thereafter the ship kept sailing normally and

the master must have assumed that the damage was very slight. I do remember if he required to take soundings to

check if there was some damage to the hull, but before the arrival in Antwerp the daily soundings of the double

bottom were certainly carried out and nothing abnormal was found.

However when later I was advised that the trip to the US gulf had been cancelled, I was told that it was

because during the dry dock more than a dozen bottom plates were found so badly damaged that they must be

replaced, adding that the company knew nothing of the Hamburg incident which was not even mentioned in the log

book!

If this story is true, it was indeed a sorrowful mistake for the old man on the eve of his retirement.

Nevertheless it did not affect much his reputation as a few years later I met him again at the navigation school of

Antwerp while he was interrogating us for the examination in ... ship handling! Further we shall see that it was not

the last time this training institute employed a teacher thanks to his firsthand experience with severe navigation

incidents.

Hamburg (DEU)

1964-06-13→ 1964-06-15

Bremen (DEU)

1964-06-16 → 1964-06-16

Rotterdam(NED)

1964-06-18→1964-06-19

Antwerp (BEL)

1964-06-20

HAMBURG 1969 Kuhverder hafen

Pg.28

Chapter 5 Triangle on the SS LINDI

§5-01 A trip on a peculiar ship from WW2 Antwerp (BEL)

Departure 1964-07-12

New York (USA NY)

1964-07-21 → 1964-07-23

Jacksonville (USA Florida)

1964-07-26 → 1964-07-30

Port Canaveral (USA Fa)

1964-07-318→1964-08-01

New Orleans (USA Lousiaina)

1964-08-03→1964-08-05

Houston (USA Texas)

1964-08-07 → 1964-08-14

New Orleans (USA Lousiana)

1964-08-16→1964-08-20

Newport News (USA Virginia)

1964-08-24→1964-08-25

Paulsboro (USA New Jersey)

1964-08-26→1964-08-29

New York (USA NY)

1964-08-30 → 1964-09-03

The "EL SALVADOR VICTORY" was a VC2-S-AP3 Victory ship built in 1945 at Portland, Oregon sold to the Compagnie Maritime Congolaise in 1947 (Compagnie Africaine de Navigation from 1961) and renamed "LINDI" to commemorate the battle of the "Lindi" river of 1897 during the Batetela revolt in north east Congo.

IMO#5208956, GRT=7200, DWT=10600, Length=139m, Breath Width=19m Engine 8500 HP (6340 kw) .

The trade that was called "triangle" by the crew of the CMB ships was originally a trip from Belgium to

USA, then to Congo/Angola and finally back to Belgium. The double triangle was a return to USA before going back

to Belgium, what we did on the LINDI. These longer trips that included a crossing of the North Atlantic were not

popular among most CMB crew more used to the nice weather along the western coast of Africa. The short voyages

on the semi passenger ships ('ville-boats') were most in favor as they implied every 6 weeks a long stay in Antwerp.

These trips were effectively reserved for what the CMB thought were their best staffs, while the "triangle" was

almost a punitive appointment for the less manageable crewmembers, including the senior officers. These in return

were somehow proud of being on this tougher trade, and some triangle masters felt so ashamed to be required to sail

on the 'ville-boats' that they did not mention those trips in their personal records.

Anyway on the LINDI we had quite a few specimen of unruly sailors among the 20 Belgian on board, the 17

Congolese being finally a quiet team. The most typical figure was an able body who probably worked in a circus

seeing how he jumped on the masts, hanging sometimes with only one hand, and who had the body and the mind of

a buccaneer. The captain disembarked for disciplinary reasons five Belgian crew members during the 4 months trip,

quite a record for the time. However I must say that this 'old man' kept his distances from the crew, and looked at

times so absent minded that we thought he kept his distances from ship and its handling the also. He could not

tolerate alcoholism on board, but many officers liked a few beers, as most Belgian do. Anyway his general attitude

without any social contacts was not a encouragement to achieve sobriety.

Nonetheless this vintage ship was strong enough to cope with an absent minded master and a weird crew.

Six months earlier when the MOKAMBO was in Matadi, the LINDI arrived there also and we learned that it went

aground twice while under pilotage it called in Porto Grande, in the Cabo Verde island. When it came back to

Belgium, its bow had been damaged in a collision on the Scheldt. The superstructures were a lot more corroded than

Pg.29

on the 7 years older Good Gulf, but the first time I had a look inside the cargo holds I was impressed to find the

tweendecks lot more straight than on the 15 years younger MOKAMBO where they were slightly bent likely after

being slightly overloaded, or not! Now I understand that it was because the LINDI had been built before the

extensive use of high tensile steel. A marvel for the naval architects who try to save weight on their design, a

dangerous feature for the seafarers as it killed hundreds of them on bulk carriers of the nineties, and almost sank one

of the mo-boats on which I made a later trip. On the LINDI the tweendeck hatch to lower hold was not closed by

weak steel pontoons as on the Mo-boats, but by staunch thick wooden boards resting on strong beams. During the

trip their good resistance was tested when a lift of 30 tons fell from a height of about 5 meters on them. Only a few

boards were destroyed and one beam was bent. I believe that if the same had happened on a Mo-boat the lift would

have gone right through the tweendeck down to inside the double bottom.

The war minded accommodation was obviously miserable compared to the one of GOOD GULF and of the

MOKAMBO, the accommodation was all of steel with no wood on deck to cut the heat, we were two cadets in one

cabin which became an oven when the sun shined on it. Going to the toilet on the starboard side meant losing a lot of

sweat when it was warm. But previous crews had built a well ventilated additional meeting place on our deck, where

we could enjoy having a drink in a relatively fresh atmosphere. And of course we were enough on board to enjoy a

minimum of social life.

Another good points of the LINDI were its engine and its rudder. The steam engine of 8500hp for a

relatively small ship, would allow the ship to run, if I remember well, 15 knots on economical speed, and 17 on

normal sea speed. But the engineers told that on top of these, there was a large reserve of power by opening more

'nozzles'. Tried to find on the net some confirmation without success, however we could observe it once when

coming out of New York and were overtaken by a new company ship, one of the 'painter' series: Breughel, Jordaens,

Rubens and Teniers. This reserve of power could not used without the authorization of company, but the master or

the engineers did not bother with it when they had to defend what remained of their pride on this old vessel. They

opened more nozzles, reached perhaps more than 19 knots and overtook easily the 'painter". The engineers evoked

also about an ultimate reserve of power that was intended to use for a short time only to escape some attack during

the war. And of course a steam engine was a lot quieter, with no strong vibration from a well balanced large propeller

that was turning at less than 100rpm.

The rudder probably contributed to this quietness by being of the 'bayonet' type, thus with its upper trailing

end being slightly distorted in one direction and the lower one in the other direction in order to offer less resistance to

the flows of water coming from the propeller. It made the vessel quite easy to steer, even perhaps too easy as it sailed

at times so well that if became subject to resonance with the swell, or parametric rolling as I explained in the

introducing chapter 'The salt of the sea'.

Lower Manhattan as seen from the ship berthed at pier 13 on the Hudson river, possibly where the uranium for the first nuclear bombs was discharged during WW2.

Pg.30

Crew list of Belgians before departure with wages in Belgian francs

Shore pass

Pg.31

Crew list of Congolese crew on departure next trip whih the same as on arrival since the crew change always occurred in Matadi.

§5-02 Atlantic crossing to New York

All this power combined with a bow without flare, was very nice to cut the waves but made the vessel prone

to plunge in them also. We could witness it as soon as we came out of the Channel and met directly a gale during our

first night in the Atlantic ocean. Green seas were running on deck, ignoring the electrician had forgotten to switch off

the power on the cargo winches. When huge sparks, almost reaching the height of the wheelhouse, started to

illuminate the fore deck, as cadet I was sent to wake up the electrician to finish his job of making the ship ready for

the sea passage. As he could not be raised from his heavy ethylic sleep, luckily I was more successful with his

assistant. On the way back to the bridge I met the captain who came out, quite moved by the kind of fire work he saw

in front his portholes, but could confirm it was going to end soon.

On our way to New York the same gale slightly damaged one of the two luxury coaches we had on deck.

Although they were protected by a strong canvas tarpaulin, one window was broken and some sea water stained the

seats. We as cadets must try to clean them as much as possible, probably to reduce the amount of the claim, but we

shall see that finally this work was a waste of time.

In New York the company had its steady berth on the Hudson river, almost exactly where the WTC twin

towers were built later. They were old wooden piers, easily damaged when the ship made a wrong maneuver which

occurred frequently with the current going perpendicular to the narrow space between the piers 13 and 14. As the

CMB ships used these berths since a long time, after 2001 I wondered if it was there that Belgian vessels discharged

the Congolese uranium used for the nuclear bombs dropped on Japan in 1945.

For many years I dreamed of having the opportunity one day to see that city, and as soon as I had some free

time I rushed ashore. There Manhattan is not so wide, I could not lose my way and was walking rather fast. That is

probably why, before I finished my first 500 meters ashore, somebody already asked me the direction of the city

centre, apparently believing I was very familiar with the huge town. The same evening I discovered China Town with

some shipmate, and the next day I could reach the top of the Empire State building.

Our next port was Jacksonville in Florida where I went ashore with one of our Congolese able body, and was

quite surprised to hear some disobliging remarks from people who wondered at seeing us together. A lot of things

Pg.32

changed since! Then in Port Canaveral, near the Kennedy space center, we discharged some equipment between the

submarines moored in the channel, and before sailing I could have a refreshing swim with the rocket launching

towers in the back ground.

§5-03 Loading in the Gulf of Mexico

While sailing along the Florida keys, we could easily catch the local radio stations which seemed to

broadcast only the music of the Beatles. In New Orleans we had to discharge the two luxury coaches on a barge. It

went well with the first one, but when the second one came nearly on top of a position where it could be stowed, one

of the support of the wheel broke, the coach toppled, fell 10 meters and landed partly on the first coach! The

equipment and the floating crane were from the stevedore, thus no problems for us. So much for our previous efforts

to clean the previous damages. There we used the berth of Deppe line at Andrew street, not so far from the "Vieux

Carré" and I could go ashore with the 3rd mate. While had a drink in a bar called "Marina", we saw one of the

customer rushing upstairs when a policeman came in. Then everything was quiet, but when we came out a man or a

body was being taken away on a stretcher. We had no reason to be disturbed by this probable violent incident, and in

those days New Orleans was quite safe, nobody of the crew hesitated to go ashore alone, even at night. Twenty years

later the security in suburbs was a lot worse. One of the Congolese was a little loss when he tried to walk back on

board. He went in the direction of the Mississippi river and when he reached it, he had only to choose between right

or left along the river to find the ship. Luckily he directly opted for the right direction.

Before we could proceed to our next port, Houston, we had to wait one day and a half at anchor off

Galveston where a tornado passed over the ship. The recorded gust ashore reached 100 knots, enough for the ship to

list sensibly, but it was only when the calm was restored that our real trouble started. The high wind swept all the

mosquitoes from the marshes to the sea, and many of them landed on the ship. Without air conditioning, some

window must be kept open and we could not do much to fight this plague.

The afternoon after this bad night, we sailed up the Houston ship channel and we made first a quick stop at a

grain silo before proceeding nearly to the end of the navigable channel. They were so many chemicals industries on

both sides, that anybody coming to the bridge at night wonders if there is still some water around the ship. The

general cargo berths appeared ridiculously small compared to those of Antwerp. I was quite eager to discover this

Texan large city after my short stay in the small Port Arthur one year earlier and went ashore as often as possible. But

a single visit to the center was enough to observe that there was not much to do there, and during the next 6 days we

spend there, we went mostly in the area near the ship called Gallena park, where we even found a swimming pool.

But it was on the south bank of the Channel, while we were on the North bank, and after reaching it a few times by

bus or taxi, we decided to walk making a short cut on a railway bridge near the ship. However the only way to cross

that bridge was to walk between the rails, of course after checking that one of the few trains using was not coming.

Quite easy by day time, but one evening when we came back, a long train nearly caught us in the middle. We could

just reach the ground part of the railway on time, but they were some guards on each sides at the back of the train and

certainly one of them had seen something suspect, us, fixed that the train stopped and started to inspect the convoy

and its surrounding. We could hide in the darkness, the train started again, but at this stage we knew that the gates of

the dock area were closed, and we climbed the fence topped with barbed wire to reach the ship. One of us three was

already inside, I was still on the railway side and the third one was blocked on top of the fence his pants being caught

in the barbed wire, when a car patrolling inside the port area came in our direction. It was another tense moment, but

luckily they did not saw us. Although we were not considering making a serious offence, but there was always the

risk that one of these Texan could be trigger happy.

During one of these evening we spoke with two Latinos who served in Vietnam and told us awful stories

about the fights they experienced, they were obviously traumatized. Another time we were approached by Afro-

American business ladies who proposed to relieve our excess of hormones between two railway wagons, but by then

the romance of the US rail system had lost its attractiveness.

In the suburbs of Jacksonville we had already a glimpse of the ravages inflicted by age combined with

cigarettes and alcohol to the women we saw in some bars. Discovering a country from its dock area gives certainly

not the best picture of it, but we had no choice and it was too easy to extend this first opinion of the US fairer sex to

all the gender in that country. Therefore we concluded that all the attractive women were certainly grabbed by

Hollywood and that there was for us nothing of the kind to meet ashore.

Pg.33

After leaving Houston we went back to New Orleans where we stayed first two days anchored on the

Mississippi river. Some of our creasy sailors went swimming in the river in spite of the strong current. Then we

berthed for 3 days to load some grain, and it was another opportunity to go ashore. One evening when I came back I

saw two rats climbing the gangway just ahead of me. These animals are very clever and did not use the mooring

ropes to come on board as they are supposed to do. Quite logical as these ropes were fitted with rat-guards, making it

even more difficult for the beasts to board the ships that way, therefore they simply used the accommodation ladder

as the humans.

The next calls were on the US east coast again: Newport news, Paulsboro on the Delaware river where we

loaded oil in drums. We berthed back in New York a Sunday morning at 7am, and the same day I could visit the

World Fair in Flushing Meadows, Queens, which was just 55 minutes from the ship by subway. Do not remember

much of it, except the big stegosaurus which was still on display in some dinosaur's park more than 40 years later.

§5-05 End of loading again on US East coast

New York World's fair

The next day we had some action on board with the taking of a heavy lift of some 30 tons with our own gear,

the berths having absolutely nothing to discharge the ship. The heavy derrick was quite good, but it had no automatic

system to guide the thick wire of the runner on the winches drums, this to avoid a piling up of wire on the same area

of the drum, instead of nice flat positioning on all its width. Two sailors tried to achieve this by guiding the wire

manually with small rope tackles, but it was not really efficient. The result was that the wire sometimes glided

suddenly from its pile, producing a sudden slacking of the runner tackle. Its wire could take it without problems, but

when the lift reached the level of the hatch coaming, this shock was too much for the slings of the lift which broke all

at once sending the 30 tons piece of steel some 5 meters down on the beams of the tweendeck.

I was observing the operation from the main deck just behind the facing, and due to the stress release some

wires, probably of the broken steam-guys, and started to fly in all directions. I saw the longshoremen plunging flat on

deck just as if threatened by the burst of a machine gun. The heavy lifting hook now free from the slings, flew

upwards more than 5 meters to stop against a 5t derrick and bend it. It was a wonder that nobody was hurt but it was

a nice demonstration of the risk associated with heavy lift operations. It tested also of the strength of the ship as the

Pg.34

tweendeck held remarkably well. Only two steel beams were slightly damaged, but they prevented the lift to go

further down into the lower down, and some thick wooden panels were destroyed.

In New York we took some cargo for our next bunkering call of Porte Grande on Sao Vincente in the Cape

Verde Islands, then still a Portuguese colony . Inevitably among the packages for this destination, they were quite a

few which really needed to go to St Vincent island in the Caribbean because the people who marked them used the

English translation of Sao Vicente. We had also a few passengers, people from that remote island who preferred to

make the direct sea trip of one week, instead of flying from New York to Portugal then to Sao Tiago, the main island

of the archipelago, and then by ship or plane to Sao Vincente. They could also take with them a lot more luggage

than by plane.

§5-07 Discharging in central Africa

Porto Grande (Sao Vincente CVI)

1964-09-112 → 1964-09-12

Matadi (COD Congo Leopoldville)

1964-09-19 → 1964-09-28

Boma (COD Congo Leopoldville)

1964-09-29 → 1964-09-29

Lobito (Angola)

1964-09-30 → 1964-10-06

Luanda (Angola)

1964-10-06→1964-10-07

Porto Grande (Sao Vincente CVI)

1964-10-16 → 1964-10-16

New York (USA NY)

1964-10-22 → 1964-10-28

Baltimore (USA Maryland)

1964-10-29 → 1964-10-30

Newport News (USA Virginia)

1964-10-31 →1964-10-31

Philadelphia (USA Pennsylvania)

1964-11-01→ 1964-11-01

Camden (USA New Jersey)

1964-11-01→ 1964-11-02

New York (USA NY)

1964-11-02 → 1964-11-07

Rotterdam(NED)

1964-11-16 → 1964-06-17

Antwerp (BEL)

1964-11-18

Sao Vincente island & main town Ciudad de Mindelo with the harbour: Porto Grande.

On the right side the western tip of the island Santo Antao can be

seen.

Pg.35

LINDI at Matadi berth

The only peculiar event I noted on our trip from Sao Vincente to Congo was that shortly before the arrival at

night, I had to pick up the speed log. It was a small copper screw weighing perhaps only 1kg, but it was attached to a

braided rope of less than 1cm diameter but longer than the ship and the aft winch must be used to get it back on

board while we ran 17 knots. Twelve years later I used this experience of strong friction forces to dump safely old

thick cable wires in deep water at sea.

Technically nothing remarkable happened during our stays in Congo and Angola, but on the way back to

New York, while through the Cabo Verde Islands, when sailing a few miles from the coast of Sao Tiago the third

mate reported a huge drift of about 30 degrees due to the current. It seemed incredible near a rocky coast where it is

impossible to encounter a transversal current, but I had no reason to have any doubt about his observation. Anyway it

was the start of my own "rule of thumb" about the frequency of taking position when sailing off a coast: this

frequency should never be less in minutes of time than the distance of the closest shoal in mile multiplied by 5, this

for a ship running between 15 and 20 knots. Thus to pass a danger at 1 mile, positions must be taken at least every 5

minutes, at 2 miles every 10 minutes and so on. But of course this should be complemented by parallel indexing if

some radar target is available, or when the ship must pass at closer distance than one mile.

§5-08 Returning to East Coast and sailing back to Antwerp

When we came back to New York we could enjoy a nice weekend with only some cargo operation the

Saturday morning. With the 3rd mate we visited the amusement area of Coney island, and later we heard that some

sailors enjoyed their way this idle time alongside. On these old piers of the Hudson river there was no surveillance at

night and they started to use the forklifts to race for short distances in the shed. At least until one of them, perhaps for

during its first race, shouted that it did not know how to stop his vehicle while he was going straight to the end of the

pier. As he started to panic, another shouted to him to jump off the forklift which ended in the river. It showed the

problems which can occur when the restless crews of these days had nothing to do alongside. Perhaps the chief

officer assumed that on this old Victory not much maintenance was needed, and then he took care of his own thirst

which required strong doses of whisky. On the next ship, the chief officer had always some jobs to do for all the crew

and especially the "cadets".

In Baltimore I was quite impressed by the loading installation of coal. Railway trucks were pulled inside a

huge cylinder which tipped them over, allowing all the coal to fall on shore loading equipment. Thereafter we went

again to Newport News, back to Philadelphia and when left this port our absent minded captain asked the pilot how

many days sailing were needed to reach Camden. It was just on the other side of the Delaware river... Such a poor

knowledge of the trip seems impossible three decades later with the "Passage planning" requirements, but often they

remain just a clerical exercise, mostly done by the navigating officer.

Any way a few weeks later, after a short call in Rotterdam we arrived safely in Antwerp exactly after 4

months 7 days as foreseen by the initial schedule and in spite of some delays during the trip.

Pg.36

Chapter 6 South America West Coast with mv LUKALA

§6-01 Antwerp (BEL)

Departure 1964-11-24

Hamburg (DEU)

1964-11-26→ 1964-11-27

Brake (DEU)

1964-11-28 → 1964-11-28

Rotterdam(NED)

1964-11-30 →1964-12-01

Antwerp (BEL)

1964-12-02 → 1964-12-04

Santa Cruz de Tenerife (ESP)

Canary islands

1964-12-08 → 1964-12-08

Santos (BRA)

1964-12-19 → 1964-12-22

Montevideo (URY)

1964-12-25 → 1964-12-27

Buenos Aires (ARG)

1964-12-28 → 1965-01-14

Santos (BRA)

1965-01-18 → 1965-01-21

Rio de Janeiro (BRA)

1965-01-22 → 1965-01-22

Santa Cruz de Tenerife (ESP)

Canary islands

1965-02-01 → 1965-02-01

Antwerp (BEL)

Arrival 1965-02-07

IMO #5214412, GRT=6522, DWT open shelterdeck= 9489t, closed shelterdeck=10490t Length Overall=146.9m, LPP=136.0m Beam=18.7 Engine=6300HP/4698KW Built by Cockerill yard Hoboken Belgium in 1955 Sold in 1968 and rena med HONK KONG SURETY Grounded on Angelica shoal in Flores sea on 19 February 1977, while sailing from Singapore to Port Moresby, declared a "Constructive Total Loss" and abandoned on 10 March 1977.

Picture of sister ship LUKUGA

The Lukala was partly riveted, quite strong but less stable than the Mo-Boats. It had a double acting diesel engine which means that there was a lot of movement on top of each cylinder. With a luxury accommodation for 12 passengers, it had however no evaporator to produce its own fresh water at sea.

Five days afteer having disembarked from the LINDI, I joined the LUKALA for a trip to the East Coast of

South America. It was the most popular voyage for the crews of the CMB, and everybody believe that the regular

teams of this trade tried to stick to it until had to retire. The young because of the local girls, the older because it was

quite an easy voyage, with plenty sun and often long stays in port.

However for us, the cadets, is was at first not such a sinecure, the chief mate VRANCKX had previously

sailed for the DEPPE line between West Europe and the Gulf of Mexico, one of the toughest trade for Belgian ships

in those days due to the many short calls, and he maintained the same pressure on this easy voyage, ensuring that the

LUKALA, then 9 years old, was maintained like a yacht.

After he usual small trip to Germany, the ship called at Tenerife to handle some cargo. But during this

operation some piece of steel torn the triple layer of tarpaulins that was used to close the hatches watertight at sea.

This of course had to be repaired and we, as cadets, had our job for the next trip. The tarpaulins were made of very

strong canvas that must be repaired with a special sewing hand palm to push the thick needles and the yarn through

the tissue. Nearly an impossible task when it was wet and, as we must use a fishbone pattern stitching, we had to

Pg.37

push the needle through the canvas many times. By dry weather it was already a tough job, but we had first to cross

the doldrums and its frequent showers.

Of course this came on top of our other watch duties, and during this crossing to South America we had an

another peculiar one, the additional sounding in the evening of the fresh water tanks. Normally the sounding of the

tanks with a special sounding stick and line occurred every morning, but during the previous trip a passenger had

forgotten to close a large cock of his bathtub and dozens cubic meter of water were lost. As the ship was not yet

fitted with an evaporator to make his own fresh water at sea, it was a serious matter possibly requiring a deviation to

the closest port to refill the fresh water tanks.

It was my first passage from the Western coast of Africa to Brazil but it was so dull that I was never

enthusiast to do it. After the rainy inter tropical convergence zone (ITCZ), there were no depressions to watch, no

storm to be ready for. The sole interesting coasts we could observe were one of the Cape Verde island, and the

peculiar rocks of Fernando de Noronha and adjacent islets. But the air was hot and humid, a lot more oppressive than

in East Africa. Luckily I made this passage only a few times.

The call in Santos was under the remembrance of a robbery that occurred the previous trip. During a calm

night without any cargo work, the cadet who was on duty heard some noise fore. He went there and saw some men

stealing cartons of whisky from hold one. Before he could go back to seek some help, he got a gun in his back, an

had to wait until the thieves had enough cartons to fill their boat. In those days piracy was unknown, pilferage and

theft occurred lot but never with weapons. During the same call, an AB was also attacked ashore and has to be

hospitalized. But in our trip, no such incidents happened.

Then we were lucky to go to Montevideo, Uruguay, to bring back a few hundred tons of palm oil coming

initially from that country, but rejected the inspection services in Rotterdam. The port had perhaps a nice installation

to load palm oil, but none to discharge it. They found some pump which slowly could discharge the oil in large

square containers that were be installed on ordinary trucks. This operation took two full days, allowing us to have a

look at this city famous since the scuttling of German battle ship GRAF SPEE a good twenty years earlier.

The warlike spirit of the time had certainly vanished because when we walked alongside the navy ships

moored near the city, we saw chicken on the fore castle and a dog at the gangway! But in town we got the feeling that

many of the GRAF SPEE sailors never left the country after the war, and opened a bar just to enjoy the quiet life and

the climate of Uruguay, and more... Anyway this call was a nice place to spend the Christmas days, and the 27th in

the morning we left for Buenos Aires to reach it the next day early and stayed there until the 14 January of the next

year!

The ship stayed 16 days in the capital of Argentine, more than enough to discover it, and even to spend a full

day outside the city where a tour package allowed us to have a nice and try to learn horse riding. After a few lessons,

we could even ride alone nearby. On the way back, I tried to have the horse going a little faster it worked fine until

the horse had to cross a small pool of water. Know knowing if he could do it, I thought that he must know it better

than me and did not try to change his direction. But the horse fell on his knees, I passed over his head however

without harm for us two. We were not far any more from the hacienda, I just walked next the beast for the last

hundreds meters, and never rode back on a horse again.

With the easy work going on, we could do a lot of maintenance. The chief officer coming slowly short of

ideas about the work to done, asked to paint the beams of the deck and two tweendeck levels of hold one in different

pastel colours, assorted to the colour of the coamings. The last days were more busy as we had to tally the meat being

shipped to Europe.

The next call in Santos lasted only 3 days, a long longer than the one of Rio de Janeiro where we stayed only

6 hours, all spent at counting bags of coffee. It was cloudy, but I could see the statue of the Christ on the Corcovado

for a few minutes. That was the whole of my sightseeing of this famous city.

Except for a strong gale in Biscay, an uneventful voyage brought us back to Antwerp after the usual call in

Tenerife where we disembarked two months and three weeks after our departure.

Pg.38

Chapter 7 Back to East Africa with the MOANDA

§7-01 Discharging trip Antwerp (BEL)

Departure 1965-02-20

Suez Canal (EGY)

1965-03-02 → 1965-03-03

Mombasa (KEN)

1965-03-12 → 1965-03-25

Tanga ( Tanzania)

1965-03-26 →1965-03-26

Zanzibar (TZA)

1965-03-26 →1965-03-27

Dar Es Salaam (TZA)

1965-03-27→1965-04-03

Nacala (Mozambique)

1965-04-05 →1965-04-05

Beira (Mozambique)

1965-04-07→1965-04-13

Dar Es Salaam (TZA)

1965-04-16 → 1965-04-24

Tanga ( TZA)

1965-04-24 →1965-04-27

Mombasa (KEN)

1965-04-28 → 1965-05-07

Aden (Fed. of S.Arabia)

1965-05-12 → 1965-05-13

Port Sudan (SDN)

1965-05-15 → 1965-05-19

Suez canal (EGY)

1965-06-01→1965-06-02

Hamburg (DEU)

1965-06-06→ 1965-06-08

Bremen (DEU)

1965-06-10 → 1965-06-12

Rotterdam(NED)

1965-06-13→1965-06-14

Antwerp (BEL)

1965-06-15

Crew on departure Antwerp and no change as far as I remember until we

returned to Belgium

Less than two weeks after coming with the LUKALA, I left Antwerp again for East Africa with the

MOANDA. It was the oldest MO-boat of type A, built in 1957 at the Cockerill shipyard in Hoboken near Antwerp.

Pg.39

As it can be seen on the crew list, we had 41 crew and the master was 55 years old. It means he sailed

through the war, and that helped the company to show some indulgence with him as he was really acting like a very

old man, communicated very little with us, to the point that I remember almost nothing about him. This was largely

compensated by a much younger and dynamic chief officer who practically ran the ship. I was happy to meet back ,

as the other aspirant, a strong square man who was with me at the navigation school of Ostend. The second officer

was a little of the militarist type, while the 3rd Officer was a nice Flemish fellow with a big mouth but a good heart.

The 4th Officer looked like an ascetic type, with a moustache and pointed beard, acted sometimes like an

idealist who does not tolerate mistakes and finally we had some arguments, but a few years later I sailed again with

him we get along very well, perhaps thanks to his charming wife who was like an angel on board.

However at the start of this trip I was in bad mood because I just before the departure I got a letter from

Argentina advising me that what I thought was a nice romantic love had been early terminated. It triggered not a

depression, but the strong, and illusory, resolution not to fall in the same trap again.

To compensate I started to read many history books which were easy to buy in East Africa. They were of

course written in English, and it was the beginning of a strong interest in non-fiction works. For all my sailing career

I would keep buying such books (together with other subjects but nearly always non-fiction) where I could: USA,

Japan, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand and finally Singapore where I stayed 4 months after the bankruptcy of

my last company.

During this trip the interest for history has been raised by a visit of Fort Jesus in Mombasa. All what I

learned at school did not prepare me to understand how the people of tiny Portugal could build such a large fort five

centuries ago in this distant location from their home country. Not only in Mombasa but also further at Mascate near

the entrance of the Persian/Arab Gulf and Bahrain deep inside it. These forts were several times besieged, lost and

retaken, but the epic stories, often with a tragic ending, of the men and women who fought there against all odds are

largely ignored by the fiction literature and the movie makers.

However this stay in Mombasa had an unhappy start. During a visit to the port dispensary the doctor injected

some medicines for a small infection, but after a few minutes I got a short but awful psycho-emotional reaction (fear

to lose the ability to control the mind) that years later assumed it has been provoked by some hallucinogenic drug. I

felt the urge to leave the dispensary and walked to a nearby restaurant to forget this extremely unpleasant experience.

A little later I could go back on board and resume work without problems, but I was deeply disturbed by what had

happened and I could not explain it to anybody on board, for sure not to the doctor who probably injected the wrong

product or used a contaminated syringe. Although it triggered some anxiety crisis's for a few years, the positive

aspect was that it increased my awareness of the unreliability of many things I took for granted before, of the

vulnerability of the human mind and of the necessity to thoroughly check again all the motivations that would

influence my actions in the future. As a few days earlier it was my twentieth birthday and this call in Mombasa

provided a busy program for the next few decades.

The next day I went with the other cadet to a movie theatre in town, and when we came out somebody in the

crowd stole my wallet. I felt it directly and my colleague could see the thief jumping in a taxi and note its plate

number. We went to the police office to lodge a complaint, also because I must justify the loss of my documents, but

a few hours later we felt sorry for it. The police could not catch the thief, but well the taxi driver and likely assumed

he was a partner and started to question him the most brutal way. We did not saw or heard how the police exactly

handled him, but later we had a glimpse of the taxi driver full of blood.

A good experience during that call was the start of the acquaintance with Davis, a typical British man and

former merchant navy officer that I met while walking near the old Nyali floating bridge in Mombasa. Wanting to

give a lift, he asked where I was going and I answered that I was just looking around to see nice things. His answer

was to invite me in his villa which was on the other side of the bridge. When I noticed that he did not stop to pay the

fee for crossing the bridge, he told me that he did not need to because it was "his" bridge. He was in fact responsible

for the road infrastructure north of the town. At home he presented his nice daughter of my age who was a little

depressive, perhaps due to a lack of acceptable boyfriends in the area. Meeting her could have been the pretext of the

invitation of Davis, but after the last sentimental disappointments I was not yet in the mood to start again. What was

the most interesting were the stories of Davis about his experiences in Kenya of the country. At the onset of WW2 he

Pg.40

asked the local authorities to be in charge of a dhow with his brother, arm it and attack the Italian in Somaliland. This

was refused, he returned to his plantation in the high lands and a few years later faced the Mau Mau rebellion.

The next short call was Tanga, and then Zanzibar where with three we could hire a taxi to tour the island

after visiting the old town. Besides the ruins of the old sultan palace, there was not much interesting to see. For a few

shilling a local demonstrated how fast he could climb a tree to cut a few coconuts and we had a glimpse at the only

modern residential building built by East Germany, but we were not shown where the cloves were cultivated, the

most famous production of the Zanzibar and Pemba islands.

After the routine call in Dar Es Salaam, finally we went to a new port in Mozambique located in a well

protected but easily accessible splendid bay of Nacala. A green savannah on small hills surrounded the bay, while at

a certain distance we could see quite a few sugar loaf hills like those of Rio de Janeiro in Brazil or Yangshuo in

China. The water in the bay was so clear that we could see the bottom of the dock with the whole hull of the ship

floating in it, an unique experience for all my sailing years. The small town was very rustic with no continuous built

up areas, a few scattered buildings and many small rural houses.

§7-02 Beira and loading on the back to Mombasa

It was a quiet call compared to our next call in Beira where we again loaded a lot of copper slabs. The main

job of the 2 cadets in port was trying to follow the number of slabs loaded from railway trucks. For this purpose we

noted of the number of each truck, hoping all its content would go in a single hold, but quite often the trucks were

moved on the berth and thereafter discharged into another hold, making it nearly impossible to keep track of the

whereabouts of their content. The Portuguese's had a team of 18 tallymen to do the same job carried out night and

day, nevertheless at the end of the loading their estimation was not much better than ours.

Another duty of the deck team was to care for the many wounds the longshoremen suffered while handling

the 160kg copper slabs with 4 bare footed men lifting them with wires. These slabs, contrary to better finished

copper bars, had very rough edges which regularly made cuts in the toes. In those day, Mozambique was still a

colony, and the local longshoremen received little care ashore, perhaps only when they lost a toe.

On the way back north, after the inevitable call in Dar Es Salaam, a stay of more than two days in Tanga

allowed a few of us to hire a taxi and go to Amani in the Usambara mountains where we could visit the botanical

station set up by the Germans before WWI. To reach it we had first to cross a tropical forest, the first I ever entered,

on a sinuous earth road, and on the summit we could see that the tree planted some years earlier had now reached

their full maturity. The station was then a study centre for malaria, but it was well maintained and looked like a nice

garden. This nice excursion a few weeks after I had this painful experience in Mombasa, made me consider to start

another career away from shipping once back home. For a while I contemplated starting botanical studies to come

back in Africa as some kind of agronomist. I could go to the university in September, but when I told my mother

about this plan she answered that she was now too old to pay for another long studies, and I just went to the higher

navigation school for two more years in order to get a Foreign Going certificate.

Tanga bay with Usambara range in back ground

Pg.41

A few days later in Mombasa again we could reach a few hundred kilometres inland with a one day safari in

the Tsavo park. The pristine landscape was really impressive, together with the earth roads that ran for tens of

kilometres without any crossing, and it again convinced me that there was lot more to discover on land than on the

sea. However it was the time when I began to understand that they are also many more things to discover than by just

looking around. The thorough practice of a profession is another way to discover in depth how to handle properly

technical problems, and the recent finding of the vulnerability of the mind opened infinite perspectives in the

spiritual world.

Dhow off Dar Es Salaam

§7-03 Aden, Towartit anchorage & Port Sudan then back to Europe

After a short call in Aden during which we had the opportunity to go ashore to the part of the city called

"The crater", upon arrival in Port Sudan we had to stay for a while at the anchorage of Towartit reef. When going

down for the afternoon coffee time, I noticed an animated gathering of a few AB's on the poop deck. They were quite

busy with something below and I sat down on the bulwark to watch the cause of their excitation until somebody told

me that they tried to catch a shark. When I asked if there was any chance to see one of these beast, the answer was to

look in the water. They were effectively quite a few sharks circling under me, and prudently I stood up near bulwark

instead of sitting on it. The sailors where using some thick rope line on which a butcher hook with some meat was

attached. It did not last long for one shark to bite in the meat and the hook, but the first attempt to hoist it failed as

part of his jaw was torn and it felt back in the water. Nevertheless the appetite of the animal was such that it came

back, caught the meat and the hook again, and was finally hoisted up on board. As it was nearly 3 meters long, it was

not easy to bring over the bulwark, but one AB succeeded by catching its tail. Then the shark was cut in pieces, just

keeping its fins and its jaw, throwing back in the sea all the parts which were directly eaten by the other sharks. I was

somewhat impressed by this butchery and also by the stupidity of the fish totally conditioned by its appetite to meet

its doom, wondering if the same could not happen to us if we listen to the animal inside our mind.

In Port Sudan we embarked as passenger a young Belgian who was returning from an expedition in North

Africa. If I remember well, he had travelled with one or more friends by car from Belgium down to Gibraltar and all

along the Mediterranean coast to Egypt. Their trip had been financed by Museum of Tervueren and their goal was to

study the people of Sudan, including naturally the Fuzzy Wuzzy. But something went wrong in the Nubian desert,

they had to rescued by the Egyptian army, probably his friend used this opportunity to go back to civilisation while

somehow he reached Port Sudan without his car. As he had promised the Museum to bring back some genuine

Pg.42

artefacts but had not chances to collect them, before departure he bought some of the things the Fuzzy Wuzzy were

selling to the seafarers!

We arrived quite early in the day in the inner road of Suez, and with a full day before joining the convoy, one

Egyptian tour operator proposed to take us quickly to Cairo and see the pyramids, but he needed a certain number

persons to paying for the trip, let say 8 crew members. It was rather easy to find 7 enthusiasts to participate in this

unique chance to visit the last standing marvel of the world, but it was not possible to add to add one more person.

We begged the radio officer to come with us, but he refused ... and some 50 years later I still have not seen the

pyramids. The same guy did not participate in the safari to the Tsavo game park in Kenya, but in Hamburg he rushed

to the zoo where he could see the encaged elephants, giraffe, lions in their unnatural habitat.

As the rest of the voyage back to Belgium was uneventful, but also in Hamburg I had a strange experience.

Going ashore with our passenger, we went to a dancing where he tried to captivate the attention of a local girl.

Perhaps not wanting to boast about its failed expedition in Africa, he wanted to present himself as a sailor on a ship

in port, but not ours, and asked me to find quickly a name for a French vessel. Without much thinking, I told him to

say he was from the "Saint Emillon", adding that the ship was a "pinardier" or wine tanker, to be more convincing. I

knew this kind of ship existed but had never seen one up to then. His story did not work with the targeted lady, and

we came back board quickly forgetting the events. However the next day when sailing down the Elbe river I was at

the wheel when we had to overtake a small tanker also sailing away from Hamburg. I had a distracted look at his

name, it was a French pinardier and its name was "SAINT EMILLON"!?!?!?

Pg.43

Chapter 8 Boring trip on ELISABETHVILLE

§8-01 Antwerp (BEL)

Departure 1965-09-09

Santa Cruz de Tenerife (ESP)

Canary islands

1965-09-14 → 1965-09-14

Boma (COD Congo Kinshasa)

1965-09-24 → 1965-09-24

Matadi(COD Congo Kinshasa)

1965-09-25 → 1965-10-01

Boma (COD Congo Kinshasa)

1965-10-02 → 1965-10-02

Lobito (Angola)

1965-10-03 → 1965-10-05

Santa Cruz de Tenerife (ESP)

Canary islands

1965-10-15 → 1965-10-10

Antwerp (BEL)

1965-10-20

The ELISABETHVILLE was built in 1949 for the line Antwerp-Congo with 3 other similar ships called

"Ville-boats". It could take 9622 tons of cargo and 208 passengers and had a speed of 16kn. In order to gather sea

time, I joined that ship in September 1965, knowing well that I would be two weeks late to start at the Foreign going

navigation school in Antwerp. With what I learned in Coastal navigation school of Ostend plus almost two years

practice at sea, I knew it was not going to be a problem.

The master was a certain Collart, a typical ville-boat captain who liked routine on this easy trade. Bad

weather could only be expected in Biscay, the calls were scheduled as for a railway system, the trip lasted only six

weeks while the stay in Antwerp between two trips afforded one good week home for the crew, a shoregang (relieve

crew) coming on board during the stay of ship in Belgium. Many CMB officers and crew were eager to spend all

their career on these ships just to be home more often, but they did not realize that after years of sailing on the same

vessels making the same trips, they nearly became unable to perform properly on another type vessel doing another

trade. Two years later I was going to sail with such a captain and it proved to be the most unfortunate trip of my

career. Their main navigation skill was to pass quite close from the West African coast of Guinea as explained above.

Two other cadets were sharing a large cabin with 4 bunks, fixing that we had nearly a better accommodation

that some passengers who stayed with 6 in some cabins. There was however a strict separation between the crew and

the passengers, as cadets we were not allowed to mix or speak with them, and of course not going to their reserved

area except when we had some specific duties there like the tour of fire stations with a special registering clock to

prove all the stations had been visited. The senior staff of course had contact with the passengers as it must eat with

them, and on this ship it gave them a strong feeling of segregation, a cadet could not even address the master directly,

all verbal exchanges had to occur vie the officer of the watch.

I was in the 04-08 watch, and one of my task was to fill the small swimming pool each morning after it had

been cleaned by one of the Congolese crew member. By day time it could only be used by the passengers, but after

8pm we could enjoy it also.

When the ship was in Matadi for a week, the various CMB masters met daily on board one of their vessel

and this reunion was called the "Conference de la pomme" (Meeting of the apple), I do not know why. Anyway the

Pg.44

cadets did not even saw the master during that stay, but they could enjoy many hours ashore. It was during this trip

that with a shipmate, after a short experience in a dug-out canoe we could have a nice walk in the M'Pozo river valley

near the place where it joins the Congo. The builders of railway line used this valley to bring the train to the plateau

some 300 meters above the port level.

M'pozo river valley Boating on the M'pozo

Encouraged by this nice opportunity to visit an area outside the port, the next day I took the ferry across the

Congo river and made another walk to see the "House of Stanley", an old wooden building with a proud guardian

extremely happy to have a visitor and play some music on an old gramophone.

M'pozo river, first rapids

House of Stanley on the right bank of Congo river.

Pg.45

Chapter 9 Summer holiday on ALBERTVILLE

§9-01 §9-02 Antwerp (BEL)

Departure 1966-06-30

Santa Cruz de Tenerife (ESP)

Canary islands

1966-07-05 → 1966-05-07

Lobito (Angola)

1966-07-16 → 1966-07-16

Boma (COD Congo Kinshasa)

1966-07-17 → 1966-07-18

Matadi(COD Congo Kinshasa)

1966-07-18 → 1966-07-26

Boma (COD Congo Kinshasa)

1966-07-27 → 1966-07-27

Lobito (Angola)

1966-07-29 → 1966-07-31

Santa Cruz de Tenerife (ESP)

Canary islands

1966-08-12 → 1966-08-12

Antwerp (BEL)

Arrival 1966-08-17

Antwerp (BEL)

Departure 1966-08-25

Santa Cruz de Tenerife (ESP)

Canary islands

1966-08-30 → 1966-08-30

Lobito (Angola)

1966-09-08 → 1966-09-10

Boma (COD Congo Kinshasa)

1966-09-11 → 1966-09-12

Matadi(COD Congo Kinshasa)

1966-09-12 → 1966-09-216

Boma (COD Congo Kinshasa)

1966-09-22 → 1966-09-22

Lobito (Angola)

1966-09-25 → 1966-09-26

Santa Cruz de Tenerife (ESP)

Canary islands

1966-10-06 → 1966-10-06

Antwerp (BEL)

Arrival 1966-10-12

The atmosphere on "ALBERTVILLE" was quite better. The captain LEMAIRE was a jovial man who

was going to retire at the end of the summer, his chief mate was rather corpulent and his nickname was "La

Grande Marie" (The Big Mary) who could enjoy some fun, even a little, too much each time he had to entertain

the passengers. That was perhaps the reason he insisted to have me in his watch as I was already the cadet with

the most experience with more than 20 months sailing time on various ships against the 9 months the 3 others

cadets did on the same training ship. The same cadet cabin with four bunks was fully occupied now, one of them

was the son of a wealthy Belgian family who had good relations with president Mobutu. Ten years later he was

going to become master of the "PRESIDENT KASA VUBU". Another good point on this vessel was a well

functioning automatic steering, therefore we did not need to steer the ship during our watch.

During our first call in Lobito, I had a chance to leave the city for the first time and we went to the small

town of Catumbela only 5 km away. In the bus that brought us there, the children were singing, something

unknown in Europe when the passenger does not know each other. Later in Congo, both in Boma and Matadi I

could meet Congolese cadets who were with me at school. In Matadi with another cadet we could take a taxi to

Pala Bala, a village near the Yelala rapids of the Congo river, but to reach them we had still to walk a few

kilometres, mostly in the savannah, and for a few hundred meters through a small but dense forest and we

wished we had a kind of machete to dig our way through the vegetation.

Pg.46

The Congo or Zaïre river with an average flow of 40000m³ per second is the most powerful river in the wolrd after the Amazon. While, in this hilly area the river is most often about 1km wide and 4km when it reaches the coastal plain, here at the Yelala rapids its narrowest part between high hills is only 300 meters wide.

A typical figure was the second mate coming from the Belgian nobility VAN MALCOTE DE KESSEL,

who had been skipper of a passenger boat on the Congo river, this explains the fact he was only second mate in

his fifties. I sailed with him first on the "LUKALA", and I had a certain sympathy for this personality often out

of touch with his younger colleagues and generally with most other people who did not get an aristocratic

education. Perhaps to compensate for it, he was never shy to handle the most humble and dirty tasks while

forgetting to appoint a more appropriate person to them like one of the cadets or any of the many shore gangers

available in Matadi. This lead to situations where he was cleaning the bottom of a cargo hold while a few idle

cadets watched him from the hatch coaming.

On the way back to the sea we stopped again in Boma, but nobody was allowed to go ashore due to

some trouble in Kisangani, on the other side of the country. Some engineers started to circulate a petition to the

CMB management stating they intended to refuse any future voyage to Congo because of this restriction. For me

it was obviously inacceptable as I had several Congolese friends, and for a while those who signed were a little

intimidating but I did not care and any hostility quickly disappeared.

The second trip on the "ALBERTVILLE" started on week after our arrival in Antwerp. If I had the same

watch with the same captain and chief officer, a new set of cadets did occupy the 4 bunks cabin with me, among

them DEBATY who many years later became also captain with SEA LANES.

During the return trip we had to share our cabin with a parrot bought by one the cadet in Matadi. It was a

grey one, normally the kind that is the more apt to speak, but it was the only thing that it never did. For the rest it

made our life miserable by always succeeding to come out of the carton where its owner tried to confine it by placing

a plank on top with some books to add some weight. However the beast was so enthusiast to walk around in the

cabin that it did not take a long time to widen the opening with its bill and look for something it could easily destroy.

When we risked to have no more decent shoes, the parrot was put in a locker devoid of any soft material.

On these cargo/passenger ships a typical duty during the watch was the tour of fire stations with a special

recoding clock to prove we visited all of them. In each there was a small box with a key, and when we inserted it the

number of the station with the time was recorded on paper. After the tour, we removed the roll of paper and pasted it

in a special book. This system was probably as efficient as the later automatic fire detectors because a human is the

best multipurpose sensor: he can smell, feel the heat, see anything abnormal, and detect any suspect condition before

they become dangerous. Detectors have the main advantage of keeping a permanent check, but later as master, after

having three undetected fuel leaks in the unmanned engine room at night, luckily found when engineers came down

Pg.47

and before they could trigger a fire, I required that the AB of the night watches to have a quick look in the engine for

such leaks.

We got some very poor visibility the Channel and on the Scheldt, and the captain required double watch

hoping to improve the navigation safety. But finally there were so many people on the bridge that it became difficult

to be sure who was responsible of what, and I remember one moment when the 2nd officer simply forgot something

important that he should have done or checked. It was anyway a good experience and for the rest of my career, and

certainly as captain, I cared that no superfluous person was on the bridge and risked to interfere with navigation. It

was certainly one of the most valuable lessons at the end this extensive training period as cadet. This was a lesson

that the Italian master Francesco SCHETTINO probably missed when he became commander of the COSTA

CONCORDIA some 35 years later. On the Scheldt we had to anchor several times due to the fog, a few passengers

became nervous about the delay. I did not calm them down by telling them that once it took at least 2 days to reach

the locks from Flushing. Although I was already 2 weeks late to rejoin the navigation school, I could only enjoy a

few more days on the ship.

It was anyway my last trip on a semi-passenger vessel and, although later as master I enjoyed to have a few

passengers, I never regretted these the monotony of these "ville-boats" where everything was so well regulated and

where initiatives were not needed, even discouraged (See LINDI). The catering department was quite powerful and

the hairdresser claimed he earned more than the master thanks to his business with the passengers. I could easily

believe him as it was not so easy to fix a hair cut in his saloon, we were probably lucky that he felt morally compelled

to take care of our hairs also.

Pg.48

Chapter 10

NAVIGATION SCHOOL of ANTWERP

(Foreign Going/World trade) 1965-10-20 → 1966-06-30 & 1966-10-01 → 1967-07-24

Antwerp "Hogere Zeevaartschool" at the "Noordkasteel" near the Roeyers lock.

When I joined, three weeks late, the 'highest' navigation school of Antwerp in October 1965 I had

accumulated 21 months sailing time and plenty opportunities to put into practice what I learned during two years in

Ostend. For a while during those previous years, I considered a career shift by studying agronomy as I had been

impressed by the agricultural landscapes in East Africa. However my mother was almost 60 years old and her sole

income was from her grocery shop in Brussels. She seriously doubted she could support me for another four years at

the university therefore I resigned myself to go on with two years nautical studies in Antwerp, but now with a lot less

enthusiasm than 4 years earlier. I had not yet fully recovered from the traumatic experience of March in Mombasa

and was still looking for another attitude of mind in my life. That was the start of an ever increasing interest in

behavioural sciences: psychology, philosophy, spirituality… about which I bought many books and the nautical

studies were almost an accessory activity. Most of the teachers in this new school appeared less brilliant than those of

Ostend, save for a few like the one of mathematic who tried hard to share his knowledge but was constantly

discouraged by the poor performances of many students who compelled him to lower his expectations.

While in Ostend it was a pleasure to follow the courses about ship handling and other techniques such as

cargo care, in Antwerp the corresponding teacher was during two years dictating us his course without adding any

comments. In Ostend THONET used the Admiralty names and symbols to teach us the nautical calculations, while in

Antwerp we had to learn the same stuff by using peculiar names of an obscure origin, probably French if I remember

well. Moreover the same teacher regularly made mistakes in his exercises, especially with great circle calculations

that bought us to cross 'theoretically' some land masses with our virtual ship. The apex of his blunders came when he

started an execercise by giving the latitude of one point as '93°.. N". When one student quickly told him that it was

not possible he corrected it adding: "I meant 93 Fahrenheit…" I was never really sure he was joking when he told us

that.

It was also a period when many old teachers had to be replaced, among them the one that taught us some

notion of naval architecture. He provided us a voluminous stencilled course with a detailed description of different

parts of ships built between the two world wars, it was already a little better than in Ostend where we had to learn the

same details about wooden sailing ships. For some years I kept the stencilled course before discarding it for paper

recycling, but it had perhaps some historical value. However this teacher retired after only a few months, and

someone hardly knowing this discipline replaced him for a while. After this second teacher, we finally got a young

naval architect who simply tried to teach us what he himself had learned at the university, with all the algebraic

formulas that had absolutely no meaning for us. The result was that after four years in nautical schools I had no

notion of metallurgy, corrosion prevention, metal fatigue … but I was going to learn a lot more about them by myself

Pg.49

when about 10 years later the sound frames of a freighter where I was chief mate started to crack simply under the

influence of heavy rolling.

A course that was definitely better taught than in Ostend was called "magnetism". During one year we had to

learn in detail all the theory for the compensation of the magnetic compass including the formulae's of Poisson.

Although the course did not include some practical methods, it helped to understand the logic of very large compass

deviations when we started sailing around Good Hope after the closing of Suez canal in 1967. Off South Africa the

horizontal force the earth magnetism is quite weak, and when the ship endures severe vibrations all its vertical steel

with a partial retentivity is magnetized by the vertical component of earth magnetism producing deviations up to 30

degrees as the Flinders bar cannot cope with a temporary change in harder vertical steel. After one year this course

about nautical instruments was given by another new young teacher whose enthusiasm went over a similar detailed

study of the errors of the chronometer. It nearly cost me a final failure as I addressed once this teacher a little too

brutally and I badly failed to assimilate his meticulosity to discover each tenth of a second change in the running of

the 'time keeper'. I knew that all the ships were able to receive everywhere in the world a radio signal giving the

correct time and no one had a chance to come into the same situation as Bligh about 200 years earlier when he had to

give up his attempts to pass the Horn because he was not so sure of the longitude.

One problem of the training institutes in those days in Belgium, and perhaps even worldwide now, is that

they are very few teachers who have an extensive experience as master, thus with many years in command of a

merchant vessel. They are the only one who can properly assess the value of each course, the necessity to know some

of them thoroughly and retain this knowledge until they retire, while others courses can be just be remembered to

assist in further research when the need arises.

However all the teaching team agreed that the course that must be thoroughly know before leaving the

schools was the one about collision prevention rules, strangely named Collision Regulations or COLREG. During the

final examinations, a single wrong answer to a main question could mean another year at school. It was for instance

the case when the candidate chose the wrong side of a cardinal buoy signalling a wreck. Obviously such an error in

practice also means an accident with serious consequences, especially in those days when no satellite positioning

existed.

Quite an efficient training was given by a young member of the school staff who once a week had a practical

exercise of visual Morse signalling, the visual Morse is slower than the audible one, and some proficiency requires a

longer training. However in those days it was still used extensively in communication between ships, and during

ocean crossing we often called meeting ships to get their name and some info about their trip. Of course at night we

could not see what kind of ship approached, but we discovered quickly if it was navy ships by the speed of the signal.

Then we had problems to keep the pace. On the contrary we could start an exchange with a poorly skilled ship's

officer or apprentice, and sometimes we discovered quickly a poor knowledge of the code by some repetitive mistake

like switching the code for X and P when the other vessel started with the classical first question "WHAT SHIX",

happily answering our inquiry about his trip "FROM CAXE TOWN TO LAS XALMAS".

In both schools the medical training was rudimentary, with no practice at all. The teachers did not even

mention the marvellous concise 'Medical Guide' that could be found on all ships worldwide. On a few hundred pages

it was good enough to care for the most common injuries and rare sickness occurring on the high seas. The worse

case I had to cope with in a 37 years career was an internal bleeding of the stomach. It is very impressive in the

beginning as the man loses a lot of blood and in the middle of the Indian Ocean we started to fear for the live of the

man and required medical assistance from an US warship stationed a few hundred miles from us. But it took quite a

long time to make the contact, or for the ship to obtain the authorization to leave its station, however the book

correctly stated that the internal bleeding would slow down when the blood pressure somewhat fell. When we finally

met some 16 hours after the start of the bleeding, we disembarked the Chinese sailor just to be sure, but the bleeding

had already stopped. It was only on the semi-passenger '"Ville boats" that I was on a ship with a doctor, but those

choosing for an easy job with a maximum 130 passengers were probably not the most skilled of their profession. In

spite of the limited numbers of patients they had to handle, their record keeping was also very poor. During one trip

on these vessels I had to visit such a doctor twice for a benign affection. During my second visit his medical log was

open on the table and, wondering about his diagnosis for my first ailment I could read, stunned: "pregnancy".

Chemistry and physic were another lacuna in our training. Of course the merchant marine was still focused

on the old cargo ships carrying mostly simple stuff in bags, cases, and drums but again the teachers had no idea about

Pg.50

what we must effectively know to be safe to care properly for the cargoes. That his perhaps why I had to wait until,

some decades later, when I became myself teacher in a navigation school, to learn that carbon dioxide is about twice

as heavy as air. Something anybody working on board a ship should know when he has to work in a deep confined

space with little or no ventilation. This lack of awareness probably killed, on a dredging vessel, Richard

CULLIFORD with whom I made the coastal trip mentioned earlier (his godfather was Pierre CULLIFORD, or

PEYO, who created the Smurfs). He went too fast to the rescue of a man who had collapsed in some low space on

board, not thinking that the cause could be an accumulation of suffocating gases and that a respiratory equipment

absolutely was needed before any attempt to help the first victim. A good year before this accident we met for the

first time after 30 years in Singapore. He was captain of the dredging vessel, the "PEARL RIVER", and I was master

of the "ANTWERPEN" which was detained after the bankruptcy of our company.

Pierre Culliford in 1962 at the navigation school of Ostend near the bridge of the berthed "Commandant Fourcault".

After the final examination in July 1967, to clean my brain I walked 3 days in the turf moors of the "High

Fens" and in its surrounding forests.