By Any Means: His Brand New Adventure From Wicklow to Wollongong (17 page)

‘But you enjoy it though?’

‘Oh, yeah, I love it. Not as good as back in the day, but there you go.’

They weren’t just loading containers but sections of deck: you could only load so many containers on top of each other before another layer of decking had to be laid down. It all fitted together like a massive jigsaw. Everything was monitored by computer, the refrigerated containers plugged in and checked daily: they could be carrying anything from frozen food to medicine and even blood products - sometimes the value in one container alone could be astronomical. Walking the gangway on the starboard side I noticed the name of the company that made the sections of deck. ‘Macgregor,’ I said, pointing it out to Mungo. ‘See, Ewan’s never very far away.’

The main trunk of the ship was the cargo section. Behind this, towards the stern, the deckhouse rose up, seven storeys high. The bridge and the wheelhouse were at the top, and below that came the instrument room. The fifth floor housed the ship’s office and the senior officers’ cabins. We were sleeping on the fourth, and on the third level there was a recreation room and the laundry. The rest of the crew kipped on the second deck and below that were the mess rooms and galley.

On the lower level we were greeted by a poster depicting knife-wielding bad guys slipping over the side. ‘Be Vigilant in Pirate Areas’, it said.

Vigilance was right: at night everything was locked up and no one was allowed outside in case some pirate took a pot shot from a speed boat. The Horn at the Strait of Hormuz was a particularly dodgy spot, and tonight we’d be steaming right through it.

Still our departure was put back; another hour slipped by then finally we watched from the deck as the tugs came alongside. The organisation was extraordinary. How everyone knew what they were doing and when to do it, not just on the ship but the crane operators and truck drivers, just baffled me. It worked like clockwork: on board some people worked during the day and others at night and because of that there was a code of conduct; quietness in the corridors and no slamming doors. There was a hierarchy here but everyone knew their role and every role was respected.

It was getting dark now, the water black and the dock glowing with orange lights. Mungo and I walked more than a quarter of a kilometre through an open-sided corridor of steel arches to the bows, where we watched the crew make ready to bring in the bowline. The rope was as thick as my thigh and it took two guys to cast off before it was winched aboard. It had a breaking strain of 120 tonnes and cost $1200: the only way it might break was if a winch didn’t pay out correctly or jammed altogether and the full weight of the ship was suddenly on it: if one did snap, though, it would be bloody dangerous.

The tugs were ready at eight-fifteen. They were tiny compared to our great hulk of a ship, but were very powerful. Jebel Ali Harbour covers fifty-two square miles and over a hundred different companies operate out of it. There’s a thirteen-mile sea channel that has been dug especially for the big ships that need the draught and the pilots accompanied them until they were beyond it.

A pilot joined our ship from the harbour, instructing our guy at the helm. The captain oversaw everything: the ship was ultimately his responsibility and the pilot only instructed, he didn’t take the controls. Kevin told us that the only place where you hand over totally is the Panama Canal: there the pilots steer and if they mess up it’s their responsibility. He’d seen a pilot take a ship through closed lock gates, and another time crash the ship into the side walls. Kevin was mate on that ship: the captain was about to jump in and grab the wheel but Kevin physically dragged him away. Interfere with the pilot at all and as far as the insurance company were concerned, the accident would have been their responsibility.

There is no gearing on these big ships; once the engine fires up the propeller turns, so they don’t start the engines until the ship is out of the channel and the pilot is about to get off.

We stood on the bows watching the tugs tow the ship out towards the open sea. The lights of Jebel Ali were strung across the water and the dark of the night gathered about us now, though it was still thirty-five degrees. As the harbour slipped away, I was thinking - our next stop would be India, and Mumbai. The thrill of this trip still took my breath away sometimes.

On the bridge the pilot had done his job and he was heading below. We watched through the glass floor, the water churning as his boat rocked up alongside, pressing against the ship. The pilot climbed down a ladder and dropped onto the deck. The tug peeled off and we were under way: ahead of us the Strait of Hormuz, maybe pirates, terrorists even. I swaggered back to my cabin in coveralls and hard hat feeling like Bruce Willis in the little-known movie
Die Really Hard on a Boat
.

I now know how tennis shoes get from China to the shops, or how a small grower can get blueberries from South America. Container ships are fast and efficient and it’s not expensive for a bunch of small companies to get goods shipped. New markets were being opened up because of it. Most stuff is brought to us in the UK rather than us shipping it, mind you. All we really ship is stuff like scrap metal; India takes a lot of scrap metal apparently.

 

I woke up feeling a little bit down: this was great fun and I was really privileged to be here but I missed Olly and the kids: I’d spoken to them and they’d been doing stuff I’d normally do with them. Mungo and I were getting on really well, though, he’s great to hang out with and like me he’s not much for being by himself. Russ doesn’t mind, he’s pretty self-sufficient but I like company. It was a pity Russ wasn’t here; he would really have loved this - the engine and navigation, all the technical stuff.

Back in Dubai he and I had sat down and sorted out our route forward. We’d be on motorbikes again soon - Royal Enfields coming up in India - with bikes again in Cambodia and the last section in Australia. I can’t be away from bikes too long, any more than I can be away from my family . . .

It was fascinating talking to the crew, people like Dave and Jim and another guy called Chris who we’d been hanging out with. He and I formed a team on fire drill that morning. We mustered in the control room and the chief mate told us we had to put out an imaginary fire on deck. I followed Chris and grabbing the hose we hauled it to the ‘affected’ area between two massive banks of containers. We took up four corners, two guys on each one. I held the nozzle while Chris helped with the weight: the hose bucked and kicked in my grip but we blasted those crates with enough water to sink the ship. ‘Hey, Chris,’ I yelled. ‘This is the first time I’ve let off a fire hose when I wasn’t drunk.’

He told me that if a fire breaks out in any of the really delicate parts of the ship such as the engine room, the area can be sealed and then pumped full of CO
₂
, ensuring nothing gets damaged further by water or powder from extinguishers. We did another quick drill on the poop deck where I had to let off an extinguisher, then we all piled into the covered lifeboat which sits ready to launch, right over the stern. It carried thirty people, though a few more could hang off the sides. If it had to be launched they would also throw out the fold-away lifeboats and lash the whole thing together to make it more visible. There were rations on board and water, and enough fuel to steam for twenty-four hours at six knots. Dave told me more people had been killed by the boats than saved by them though, which wasn’t very comforting. On some ships they weren’t maintained as they should be, or the hooks were released too early or released themselves when the ‘shock load’ as he called it, was still on them. The boat would hit the water then from a great height and potentially break up. Fortunately, none of this crew had had to use a lifeboat for real and this one was maintained properly. I noticed they carried the same kind of distress beacons we’d taken on the bikes when I did the Dakar: if you were really buggered you’d set them off and someone would hopefully come and get you.

I followed Jim, the chief mate, touring the ship from end to end as he always did, seeing what needed maintenance. From the stern we made our way forward, down miles of cramped, narrow corridors with pipes lining the walls and ceiling like something from
Alien
. Jim told us we were walking on various fuel and water ballast tanks. He explained that tonight he’d fill the tanks with sea water then gradually let it drain. As the water drained it would drag in fresh air. In the morning we’d take oxygen meters down into the darkness and check it. If the ship lost containers or got out of balance these tanks could be partially filled with sea water to redress the change in load.

There was so much to learn. There were no engines or ventilation fans in the bows, and we stood there in the semi-quietness, just the noise of the sea echoing against the hull. Jim showed us what happens to the ship in rough weather, pointing to where the slapping waves had taken their toll - chipped paint and buckled surfaces. Another thing for Jim to keep an eye on.

Up on the bridge we sat down for a chat with the captain, Kevin, in the ‘Big Boss’ chair. Between us was a console with dials and switches, and in the middle a little knob to steer the boat. You didn’t need the wheel after all, you could steer sitting here with your feet up. We mentioned the minor damage we’d seen in the bows and Kevin told us how in really bad weather you could look the length of the ship and watch the superstructure twist and buckle. It was designed to be flexible, he said, and move with the water a little - the way tall buildings are often designed to move with the wind.

I asked him how long he’d been at sea.

‘Forty-one years, almost,’ he said. ‘I started on the fifth of November 1967.’

‘It must be a huge responsibility, this job.’

He nodded. ‘The crew first and foremost, of course. And then there’s the value of the cargo: it’s phenomenal. Never mind the cost of the ship itself.’

Last night he’d mentioned that he’d been in New York on 9/11. I asked him what happened.

‘We were five miles out at anchor,’ he said. ‘Back then you could see the twin towers from miles out at sea. We watched it all unfold, we knew what had happened with the first plane and we watched the second one hit and then the towers collapse. It all seemed to happen in slow motion. It didn’t seem real until the towers were gone: there one minute then just an enormous cloud of dust. That was when the realisation hit. We were there for days; they thought the next terrorist threat would be someone on a ship like ours determined to ram Manhattan.’

I asked him about life on board. Most trips took ten weeks, and I was curious to know how his wife coped. It was the sort of question I could have asked myself, and I could really identify with being away from home for so long. He told me he had been married for thirty-two years and had two grown-up children: he’d always done this job and his family were used to it.

‘My wife says I break up her routine when I come home,’ he said.

‘Oh yeah, I know how that feels. When I get home from a trip Olly says it’s like the third child arriving: everything runs like clockwork when I’m gone and then in I come and it’s chaos. Did you always want to be a captain?’

‘No,’ he joked. ‘I wanted to be an admiral.’

‘Would you recommend it as a profession?’

‘Being diplomatic - it’s not what it was. The ships used to be a quarter of the size with twice the number of people on board. You’d be on three- to four-month trips and you’d spend three or four days in port. You could go ashore and see the sights. Nowadays it’s all go-go-go. But for a young man the pay’s not bad and you get qualifications that you can take ashore. There’re plenty of jobs around in the shipping business after you get off a ship.’

I asked him about pirates.

‘We’re out of the area now. The worst places are the Malacca Straits, parts of China and off the coast of Somalia. A passenger ship went in a little close to Somalia and was boarded. Yemen can be bad too, and the Indonesian islands.’

My stomach dropped a little - we would be sailing that way later, from Singapore to Borneo and East Timor. I told him as much and he sucked his breath like a car mechanic about to tell you your engine’s fucked.

‘Tankers are a target,’ he said. ‘They’re slow-moving compared to us. A lot of tugs are taken in the Malacca Straits - the strip of water between the Malaysian Peninsula and Sumatra. It’s the main shipping channel linking the Indian and Pacific Oceans. The tugs push barges, Charley. You have to be careful there.’

‘Not quite Jack Sparrow, are they?’

He shook his head. ‘No, they’re more like armed robbers. That’s all piracy is, really: armed robbery.’

After dinner I went outside the bridge to the little gantry. We were 770 miles from Mumbai. The cross wind was blowing at 25 mph and I could see the waves rolling and crashing in the wake of the ship; the sky was pitch-black and cloudless, stars glittering high above. Through the windows the bridge was in darkness apart from the soft glow of computer lights, radar screens and dials. It was like something out of
Star Wars
. I half-expected to see Ewan at the helm, guiding some spaceship home.

 

In the morning we inspected the ballast tanks down below. With the manhole unscrewed you could see an oval hole descending into darkness. Jim checked the atmosphere for any oxygen/fuel mixture which was potentially explosive. When he was satisfied we climbed down the vertical ladder into the dank, very hot, pitch-black tank to make the inspection. We used high-powered torches to check the walls, floor and ceiling for corrosion or leakage. It was really close, tight and airless and if you suffered from even the slightest bit of claustrophobia you really wouldn’t want to be down there.

 

I’d really enjoyed my time at sea: it had been like a mini-adventure within a great big adventure. I took a walk to the front, my favourite part of the ship, and looked down at the bow cutting through the water. The containers are stacked so high that they block out almost all of the wind, and without the engine noise or fans here, it’s surprisingly peaceful. The views are fabulous, with the matt blue of the sea spreading in all directions. I decided I could do this job, for a while at least anyway; ten weeks on and ten off, so that when you’re home you really are at home. When you’re on the ship the hours are long but the food is good and there was good camaraderie among the crew, both British and Filipino. Yes, I could definitely do this as a job. After I’d spent some time as an Irish scallop diver and Iranian truck driver, that is. I was getting quite an imaginary CV together on this trip.