Wise words, but actually joining a ship these days isn’t smooth seas and takes skill just to get through the paperwork. The 1970’s were different: you’d casually sling your bag in the cabin, walk to the bridge and sign on followed by a visit to the crew bar to meet shipmates – no strangers, just friends you’ve never met. Or if there wasn’t a crew bar, instead you’d go to…
It was a special pleasure to be on land again.The place was the Greyhound bus station in downtown Los Angeles and I was going to Tijuana, Mexico – eventually further to the state of Baja California Sur.I’d just paid off a ship in Long Beach and rather than immediately return to the UK, I asked the ship’s agent to rearrange the flight home.You could…
Around the time when the United Kingdom had almost full-employment and a social contract to govern prices and wage restraint, we also had a thriving Merchant Navy. For this was in 1974 when not only were there over 1600 red-ensigned vessels compared to less than 300 today. That notwithstanding, the slump in vessels was already declining in that year owing to the oil-price…