I don’t remember too many trip “passages” in detail; all except one through the Biscay was ok as I recall. The one time i remember was on the carrier Hermes, and i was on the flight deck looking aft ( backwards ), and off the back end you just saw clear skies.
I did sail across the Manche in a 50 footer from Pompey to Weymouth, then across to Honfleur ( and back ) once. I was about 20 I think. It wasn’t too rough, but a fresh sea - on the actual crossing ( either way), and I was given the wheel early in the crossing. The dinghy sailing on the open sea had given me a feel for helming a boat smoothly through waves, which the skipper remarked on, so left me to it.
Some of the ports of call were a bit of rubbish, others nice. Brest, Valetta, Messina… or Amsterdam, Hamburg, Odense on the other side.
Yes that’s it Bill, El Ferrol, a lovely little town from what I recall - quite ‘rustique’ with the cobbled streets - it was a long time ago. I’m planning to go back next year for a grand tour of Spain.
Did the Kiel Canal a few times and was a regular visitor to Poland, Leningrad, Bremen, Hamburg and Bremerhaven - oh yes, Travemünde and Lubeck too. Lovely part of the world. Oh yes, Stockholm and Copenhagen too. loads of memories thereabouts. Used to have some great banter with the German people, not to mention some ‘heavy’ nights…
Then of course there were the Dutch, Belgian and french ports…
Visited a lot of places in Spain and Portugal Peter, I would like to make a leisurely trip, via Galicia, back to where I lived in S Portugal for a few years.
I enjoyed the trip to the WI Glenn on my boat, via Madiera and Teneriffe, that was two handed, I came back to Ireland singlehanded, that was an amazing 32 days, fabulous experience
Awesome ships Mark, passed them a few times in the Clyde, saw one surface off Aran Island once.
In fact, completely forgot, when in Rotary, a member organised a visit to, I think it was ‘HMS Conqueror’, at Faslane, I was, having been on the old diesel boats, amazed how spacious the Atomic boats are!
One of the strange places I visited, was the Rajang River, Sarawak, Borneo, a very wild, primitive place, we used to load huge teak logs, floated alongside in large rafts, took ages to load up!
Very sad, when considering now, we were part responsible for the demise of the Orangutans, used to load ‘palma oil’ there too, the one small double bottom tank of which, apparently paid for the whole 3month voyage, lot of dosh in palma oil
Didn’t HMS Conquerer sink the belgrano? An old work colleagues brother was the torpedo officer on it during the Falklands skirmish.
The new attack boats are much more spacious, no more hot berthing. Submariners motto: There are only two types of ship -one is a submarine and the others are targets.
I’m probably repeating myself but my great-granny lived in Kilcreggan, right on the beachfront and had an enormous telescope in her drawing room window with which I used to watch submarines coming round between Kilcreggan and Gourock going in and out of the Gare Loch. Marvellous.
Yes Bill, it’s amazing some of the places you end up.
One regular runner was about two days sailing up the the small rivers in the Bay of Bengal to the jungle in Bangladesh to places like Chalna whch is literally a village on stilts (very prone to flooding during the monsoon period) where we loaded jute to make sacks etc. Every bale was transported to the ship via small ‘bumboats’ or glorified rowing boats which could just about manage one bale at a time. This would mean spending ten days in the swamps with no shore leave as there was nowhere to go ! The jute was then taken to places like Mombasa and/or Dar es Salaam on the east african coast for processing.
The other strange one I recall was called the ‘copra run’ where raw coconut was picked up on the Qld coast (Oz) plus pacific islands and brought back to europe to be processed. There were two ways to get there and back. Either eastbound oe westbound, depending on the pacific islands involved. So, the ship might leave Euroe and head for Panama westbound to Oz or eastbound via Suez. Oh yes, that reminds me of the ‘sugar run’ which picked up raw sugar also from Qld and then taken to Singapore or Penang for discharge. The loading in Oz took a matter of days as it was fired into the holds by fans but the discharging would take a couple of weeks which was great for the crew !!
), and off the back end you just saw clear skies.
