Salad Days 09

Having finished discharging cargo in Chile we now set sail north and back to Peru. We knew by then the ports of call which would turn out to be quite fortunate for Alan and me. I didn't get on with the deck boy, or more likely he didn't get on with me. We had come to blows one night in the bar when I laughed at him for staying faithful to the 'good-time girl' in Panama. The others teased him more, he just felt he had a chance against me. 

He hit me but it felt as though he'd never hit anyone before. I just grabbed him by the throat, put my leg behind his and had him on the deck in a flash. I snarled a warning that next time I would hit him back. It was unnecessary, I could see the fear in his eyes, my grandmother always said I had a look that could curdle milk. It is a measure of the crew when I state it was the only 'scuffle' in the whole time I was on board. This was extremely rare. Long periods at sea brewed a sort of cabin fever and 'disputes' were commonplace. In fairness it was just as rare that these scuffles at sea were of a serious nature, ashore things were a little different.

Alan and I became inseparable and it took a lot of the heat off him. One able seaman in particular wouldn't desist so we both took a dump in his work-boots, a turd in each. We also unscrewed his air-conditioning vent and put a fish and some cheese in it. He threatened to kill us even though we denied it and the other seamen got on his case. Other than that, the atmosphere on the ship was the best I would ever experience. Despite leaving a trail of smoke in our wake, the crew knew what they were about. Everything on the ship was maintained scrupulously. The ship was even painted nicely, something unusual on a working ship.

The best thing about the ship was the layout but it was just one of many endearing qualities. Even as a junior I was allowed to use the cranes on deck, another thing that irked the deck boy. I learnt largely by trial and error...... and a lot of cussing out by the seamen. It would serve me well in the future, most ships had derricks and many seamen were unfamiliar with cranes. The housing was midships but the crew quarters were down aft. It gave us a seclusion that allowed for extremely loud music, music kept the ship floating and was in keeping with the special feel to South America. The most commonly played albums were from Santana, Frampton, Black Sabbath and Incantations which was traditional Peruvian Pan-pipe music. It was rather a bizarre mix but nobody thought so at the time.

If there was one drawback it was the cockroach infestation (aka Jaspers or Bombay Runners), and they were the biggest I would ever see. The crew joked about someone falling asleep on the deck of the bar and being carried off by them. Our bar was decked out with black-light posters and we had a sound to light unit on the stereo. With just the ultra-violet light on the posters came alive, so did the cockroaches, It was the only time you saw them apart from a split second when you turned a light on. We used to throw darts at them but apart from one fluke, we swear he was aiming at a different one, there were no fatalities.

On the supertanker the crew were mostly Welsh and a bunch of piss-heads, this crew was from all over and were potheads. I did like the tanker crew, the Welsh do indeed love to sing, but this ship was my ideal, I could have stayed on it forever. The second cook used to leave a dog off the porthole that was situated below deck level like our accommodation. Late at night we would lower ourselves over the side and in through the galley porthole, then we would cook ourselves steak sandwiches. Life couldn't get any better.

It took nearly a week to get to Pisco and it was to be the last port that could be termed a city.