J W Stanworth - Memoirs part 2

These are the second part of my Grandfathers, J W Stanworth, memoirs.

Shortly after, I was Chief Cook on the “Harbury” on my way to the River Plate, with a cargo of 10,000 tons of coal. Most of those tramp ships were built for a speed of 10 knots because this was an economical speed and to average 12 to 13 knots it takes about double the horsepower and, subsequently, double the fuel.

They were really happy ships, I remember one ship having 12 different nationalities amongst the crew, Maltese, Poles, a Canadian, a South African, Latvian, Estonian, English, Irish, Scots and Welsh. One coloured chap born in Cardiff said he was always nick-named Snowball in school and said that he was a smoked Welshman from the Valleys.

If ever I wished to paint the galley, all I had to do was ask the boatswain for some paint and 2 or 3 brushes. I would start somewhere easy and someone passing the galley would see me, ten minutes later the stand-by sailor would be along saying “Go and turn in Doc, we’ll do it for you during the night” and the next morning, sure enough, it would be finished and very smart again. By the way, all cooks on tramp ships were known as “Doc”, I don’t know why, maybe it was because they had to doctor the food up in the days before refrigerators.

We clubbed together and bought an ice cream machine. I put two buckets of water in the fridge every night and gradually built up a stock of ice, so when we sailed into tropical weather, we had ice cream every evening. The crew were overjoyed; they had never had ice cream on ships before. What could be better than an ice cream with half a peach on top? Most tramp ships have a standing menu: Irish stew, Hot Pot, Shepherds Pie, Sausage & Mash, Plum Pudding Thursday and Sunday, regardless of being at the North Pole of on the Equator.

You didn’t need a calendar you could tell the day by the menu, so the Steward, an ex-Eagle Oil man changed all that. For dinner on Sunday they might have a Mixed Grill consisting of a fillet steak, a piece of kidney, a lamb chop, a pork sausage, half a tomato and a piece of grilled ham garnished with garden peas and Garfield potatoes (chips cut into cubes and sprinkled with diced ham and chopped parsley). It didn’t cost us any more really; in fact it was about half the weight of the meat we would have used had we given them Roast Beef or Roast Lamb. Meat in those days in Argentina was about 2d. per pound.

Whenever I took a sirloin from the fridge, I removed the fillet and kept it until we had enough to go around the 38 crew. A bit more trouble but it makes a happy ship and makes the voyage to more quickly.

The first officer on this ship was for ever telling everybody that he could speak fluent Spanish. He would come into the galley and say something in Spanish hoping I would ask him what that meant. He would then be in his glory and a lecture in Spanish would follow. He was noted by everybody for this. While discharging our coal in Villa Constitution, he was airing his Spanish to the cargo men, he then brought one to the galley and asked me if he paid this chap to bring 10 live chickens aboard, would I keep them in one of the potato lockers and I could kill two each Sunday for the Officers, as fresh chicken tastes far nicer than frozen. Then followed the inevitable harangue in Spanish, making the arrangements and on the last day the man turned up with a sack on his shoulder. “Here are your chickens Doc, open your potato locker and he will put them in for you”. There were about six or eight of the crew standing about and just imagine the laugh when the man tipped the bag gently up and out came a pig squealing like mad. The mate was taunted for days after and never aired his Spanish again. “Of course, I speak pure Castilian Spanish and this Argentine dialect is quite different than mine” was his excuse.

We made several voyages to the River plate area with cargoes of coal for the Argentine State Railways and after thoroughly hosing and scrubbing the holds and making sure everywhere was dry we usually steamed to Rosario, well up the River Plate to load grain, usually maize or linseed for either the continent or Britain, always finishing up at a Bristol Channel port to load coal again.

On the way down on the River Plate from Rosario the river widens out almost like a lake and there is a natural bar stretching across the lake formed by silt and mud washed down the river after heavy rains. This is called the “Martin Garcia Bar” and there is a signal station on the bank of the river giving details of the depth of water across the bar. Should your ship be drawing say 24 feet of water and the depth of water across the bar is anything less, obviously you cannot cross, so the ship must anchor. I personally have seen up to 30 ships waiting and the only way the water will rise is when the wind changes and blows up the river holding the water to such an extent that the water across the bar rises to possibly 30 feet. The signal station is continuously giving the present level and as soon as it is deep enough you can imagine the mass exodus to cross in case the wind changes and there is another wait.

I was rather intrigued to see the cargo men having their meals, they would have a kind of brazier and use their coal shovels as a frying pan to cook huge slices of steak. The shovels were gleaming with shovelling coal so after wiping them I suppose they were quite clean.

Rosario was a terrible place for mosquitoes in the summer months and there were millions of black flying beetles at night. They were attracted by any light and flew into lights and dropped, but once they dropped they seemed unable to fly again. One particular night we walked up to the town and these beetles completely covered the pavements, it was impossible to walk anywhere without treading on them.

On one very interesting voyage we loaded seed maize for San Pedro, near Los Angeles, California, but instead of going from the River Plate via the Panama Canal, we had orders to go South and through the Straits of Magellan and up through Smyths Channel, calling at Lota in Chile for bunkers. We picked up a pilot at Punta Arenas at the entrance to the Magellan Straits. There are only certain places where a ship can anchor in the Straits as the water is too deep. If you reach one of these anchorage areas and cannot make the next one before darkness falls, you must anchor even though it is only 2pm or so.

At one such anchorage there is a small plateau reachable by anchor but surrounded by very deep water. There are markings painted black and white on the rocks on both sides of the Straits, the pilot then lines the ship up on these markings and drops anchor, hoping to find the plateau.

A crudely made boat, made out of a tree trunk, came out to us from the Terra Del Fuego side and they looked for all the world like savages. There were two men and one woman (I think) judging by their voices, as they all looked similar, long unkempt hair, heads covered in animal furs and sacks around their shoulders, probably given to them from previous ships. Our pilot, a Chilean navy man warned us not to allow any of them on board as they were noted as thieves. Our Captain had his wife and daughter on board for the round voyage and they sorted out some various old clothes they wished to discard. A bundle of clothing was dropped into the boat and you can imagine the laughs we had when the woman was trying to put a pair of knickers (the long legged type) over her head, using the legs as sleeves. Our ladies disappeared with embarrassment!

Smyth’s Channel runs between the mainland of South America and hundreds of small islands like a chain on the Pacific side. The ship had to weave in and out of these islands like an obstacle race, or slalom, heading for an island then turning sharply to port past another island then over to starboard and so on. Very fascinating but highly dangerous, as in all that area blizzards can blow up very suddenly when least expected. In fact less than a year later one of the same company’s ships, the s.s. “Harmanteh” was driven onto the rocks in a blizzard and was a total loss. Fortunately I think all of the crew were saved by a salvage vessel from Punta Arenas. The Chief Officer and Chief Steward of the “Harmanteh” had been on my ship the “Hartington” the previous voyage. They came home as passengers on one of the P.S.N.C. Liners. The Chief Officer’s wife, Mrs MacNab, stayed for a couple of nights with my wife waiting for the P.S.N.C. ship to arrive in Liverpool. This time must have been during 1938, because Muriel and I were married in January 1938 and two days later I received a telegram to rejoin the “Hartington” immediately in Newport, Monmouthshire. On arrival on board we heard that Les Edwards, the Chief Steward, had been taken to hospital with pneumonia. He and Mr MacNab later joined the “Harmanteh” on the fateful voyage.

After discharging our maize in San Pedro, we proceeded to the Puget Sound area of Canada and loaded a full cargo of timber in Crofton, Victoria, New Westminster and Vancouver, for Australia, sailing through the Great Barrier Reef off the coast of Northern Queensland. A sight well worth seeing, but I think, not fully appreciated till later in life, being at the time connected with one’s livelihood. Imagine what it would cost to tour these fantastic places now and we were being paid to see them.

We next loaded grain for London at Adelaide. That passage taking 67 days, via the Cape of Good Hope. The coal from Australia was poor quality and the ship’s boilers needed attention badly. Steam pressure could not be maintained and some days our speed averaged only 6 knots per hour. More like a sailing ship speed than a steamer.

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