Africa

Climbing up the gangway to my new berth felt a bit like going home, I felt I had more affinity to shipboard life than I had with that ashore. My new ship was an Elder Dempster Liner and we would be running to the West coast of Africa ,calling first at Las Palmas in the Canary Islands..
The Sulima was her name and she was a good looking vessel, she had a white deck crowd and African catering and engine room crew. Our accommodation was adequate,this was not the Ritz; we were two to a cabin and there was plenty of space for our gear. She had four hatches and was going to carry a lot of deck cargo . When we ,the deck crowd, were signed on all the stowing of deck cargo had been completed by Elders own shore gang. I can?t remember who the bosun was ,simply because he left us very early on the voyage,he was flown home ill from Las Palmas. The lads were regular West Coast men , most of their names are long gone from my memory but the things we did are still fresh in my mind.
As on every ship ,the first week or so is spent getting to know who your mates are., it was a three on a watch job so we had nine watchmen and there were a few daymen too. One in particular who have never forgotten was a guy called Monsie, He was a Bootle man and one of his forename was Mons,so called after the First World War Battle. He was a real character and had been on a few E.D boats. My cabinmate was a guy called Dave Cook, he was a Yorkshireman who had become a naturalised Scouser, things happened to Dave,more of which later,but he always saw the funny side of everything. One of the daymen was a big guy called Bobby, his mouth was so full of teeth that it looked like he had swallowed a piano. Good sailor though!
One of the ordinary seamen was always good for a giggle but ,alas ,his name has gone with time.
The outward journey was spent overhauling the running gear, it was still summer and the weather was quite clement so we were not too many days away before we got into our shorts. Once we were past the Bay of Biscay we started to wear less clothing,by the time we got to the Canaries it was shorts and flip flops plus a hat to keep the sun off your head. We never dreamed of such things as skin cancer back then, we?d have our shirts off at the first sign of sun.
Getting around the decks was quite a task ,we had a great big diesel loco on the port side of the after hatch and a couple off Scammell artics on the starboard side, .There were huge wooden crates just in frot of the midships accommodation so you had to be careful as you picked your way in the dark to go on lookout on the foc?sle head.
Las Palmas was not yet a tourist resort, it was visited by passengers off the cruise ships and was frequented by the crews off the many cargo boats that went there. There were lots of little bars along the dockside and in those little bars were lots of old *****s who would have been in the flower of their youth during the ?39 to ?45 war, now they were just faded old jades.
We went ashore en masse, when we were all together we had a tarpaulin muster ( we each put in a couple of pounds) and I was given the task of holding the kitty. We were drinking rum and cokes and the night took on a magical feeling,we were warm, well fed and just steaming along looking at the sights in the different bars and cafes. I was a pipe smoker back then and as we were strolling from one bar to the next, I realised I had left my meerschaum in one of the places we had just vacated. Without another thought I doubled back to see if my pipe was still there, lucky for me it was .I stood outside and filled it up and got a good head of steam on it and then started to make my way back to the lads. I had no need to look for them ,they were looking for me! There was a lynch party walking toward me, they thought I had done a runner with the kitty and were about to skin me alive. Lucky for me they saw the funny side of it ,but every time we left a bar they used to check if Daley had his pipe.
We left Las Palmas the following morning and set a course for The Gambia, where we would dock in Bathurst ; it was still a British colony then and everything was well painted ,neatly trimmed lawns and colourful gardens gave the place a cared for look, there were white people there ,so obviously British with their fulsome shorts,solar topees and lobster complexions.
The crew had to go to the town hospital for their yellow fever and anti malaria jabs. The hospital was a great tin roofed affair,well cared for but very old fashioned. We were taken to a huge ,circular waiting room ,around which there were screened cubicles. There would be about twenty of us ,including some midshipmen and engineers. I was the first one to be called for treatment; the doctor was a huge African with a deep bass voice. When he closed the curtain behind me ,he said ,in a loud ,clear voice ? Ah Mr, Daley, please drop your trousers? This led to a few ribald remarks being made by the lads in the waiting room. When I had dropped them, he then said ? Please bend over while I stick a small ***** in your bottom? The look on his face when he heard the screams of laughter erupting in the waiting room was a picture to behold.

We had a film show when we were in Bathurst,it was a black and white affair and the captain had invited the agent and his family to see it. It was a Hayley Mills film where she was playing a southern moppet. Any way.as the film got going our audience was swelled by crowds of Africans who were taking advantage of a free show. We noticed that a few of them had huge beetles twined in their hair, they were Stag and Goliath beetles; fearsome looking creatures but they seemed harmless the way the Africans were playing with them. Bobby got one in exchange for a couple of cigarettes. There was a mouthy junior engineer sitting in the row in front of us and Bobby gently placed the beetle on the back of this guys white shirt. He fidgeted a bit a first ,not knowing what was tickling him, he then reached his hand round and felt it. He let out the most blood curdling scream you ever heard and jumped to his feet, pushing his way through the audience,.chairs and people tumbling like ninepins .He ran off screaming down the deck trying to run away from his own back. The projectionist stopped the film ,the live entertainment was so much better . The night air was full of howls and imprecations as he tried to get rid of the beast. Bobby went to him and pulled it off ,not telling him it was he who put it on there. Bobby later tied the beetle to the handle of one of the officers cabin door. Every time the guy tried to get hold of the handle the beetle took off like a B29 bomber flew around trying to get away...
Next morning we left Bathurst and headed for Sierra Leone,where we would call at Freetown. From the little I had read of Freetown I had learned that it was founded by Anti Slavery people in the late 18th century. When slavery was finally abolished in the U.K the abolitionists had gathered together a host of the newly freed slaves and took them to Sierra Leone to found a colony along the lines of that other slave republic Liberia.
Most of the freed were men and the elders of the anti slavery society gathered hundreds of Scottish prostitutes and despatched them to the new colony to become wives of the new settlers. So Sierra Leone had a marked British stamp to its beginning. Sadly it never succeeded, petilence and didseae ravaged the colonists ,so much so that it became known as the whitemans grave. It was?nt a very prepossessing town. My memories of it are of a town in the grip of decay, the squalid corrugated roofed buildings were rust streaked and the walls looked as though they had?nt seen a lick of paint in decades. It rained for most of our stay there and the place ,and people ,had a tattered and bedraggled appearance.
We never ventured ashore, our next port of call would be in Ghana but first we had to pick our Kroo men. The Kroo tribe hailed from Monrovia and E.D's used to call in to the coast just off Monrovia and pick a crew up. These men would work the ship up and down the coast ,leaving the deck crew to do the maintenance and painting. It was a good arrangement and the Kroo men were more than happy to have the work. What was really amusing was the names these men had ; Ever Happy, Jack on the Wheel, More Steam on Deck, Mothers Fright, to name just a few. When I asked Mothers Fright how he got his name he replied ?Me Mammy go for look at me when I was borned and she go scream, dat?s when I got call Mothers Fright?
It was usual to make ?friends ? with these guys because when you when drinking in some of the creek ports they would see that you came to no harm.
There was a laundryman /tailor amongst the Kroo men , for a few shilling he would take care of your washing and make you a decent set of whites. I got myself two sets of whites and they lasted for years. When he did your laundry they were returned to you crisp and stiff with starch. He was about the busiest man on the ship
Ghana was our next stop, the surf port of Accra,Iwas much looking forward to this place.