大象传媒

We slept on the train that night as we found out that we had had another eighty miles to do by boar over to Vancouver Island the next day. Vancouver is a very modern up to date city and it was a sight for sour eyes for us, having been used to the blackout of England for so long. The Neon lights seemed especially brilliant.

It was ten o鈥檆lock the next morning when we set sail from Vancouver on the C. P. R liner 鈥淧rincess Charlotte鈥� and passed under the great suspension bridge that spans the harbour mouth.

The weather was glorious and it is a very picturesque trip, threading our way through a maze of islands until we rounded the end of Vancouver Island and sighted Victoria itself, where we were to stay until out ship 鈥淭he Mull of Kintyre鈥� was built, she was being built at Vancouver.

We were billeted in buildings in the dockyard at Esquimalt which is about five miles from Victoria, some of us lived on board an old Canadian cruiser named the Prince David. The stay here was uneventful, the town of Victoria is quite large and has some very fine buildings, and is a good shopping centre. The cost of living is very high in this country but so are the wages in proportion. Shopping for us was a very expensive business but one doesn鈥檛 have to bother about coupons.

Our stay lasted for two and a half months, during witch we had some very nice times, the weather was very mild with just skittering of snow in November. I spent most of my spare time in swimming, as there was a fine indoor bath in the R. C. N Barracks at Esquimalt, there was also a very good Cinema there, which I frequented regularly.

Also we had quite a nice little racket going and that was, 鈥淵arrows Ltd鈥� had a dockyard there, and in our spare time we used to go and work over there for 75cents (3/2d) an hour, which helped out very well to increase our weekly pay.

A skeleton crew went over to Vancouver in the middle of November to bring out ship over , and on the 28th November she steamed into Esquimalt. We went on board the following day and had one day out on trials and then on the 4th December at 10:34am we left Canada for good.

The weather was very wild with rain and a strong wind and by 4pm we were rolling very heavily and a gale warning had been issued. At seven o鈥檆lock we saw the lay of the land, the light-house that could be seen flashing gradually faded into the murk and we were out in the Pacific with the destination Sydney.

There was one terrific roll that night, everybody thought she was never going to right herself, she went right down to port and the whole ship trembled and shook as she hung there, and then with a lunge she righted herself and trolled back to a much more comfortable angle. The seas were very heavy on the next day (Wednesday the 5th) with a gale force of 62miles per hour, which abated slightly in the afternoon but increased again as darkness fell and another gale warning was issued.

Our speed was knocked down to 3knots by this terrible weather, I felt very sorry for poor Matelots on a night like that, I鈥檓 gald I鈥檓 only a civy in uniform. During the night a tug passed going the opposite direction and signalled that she had lost a man overboard. They wont see me up top any more than I can help in this weather.

All clocks were retarded 25minutes we鈥檙e now 8hours 25minuites behind Greenwich.

Thursday dawned a much better day with the clouds breaking up and bright periods occasionally, the sea was still very rough though. At 2:30pm we changed course as our destination was altered to Toyko. No incidents during the rest of the day.

Friday the seventh saw a big improvement in the weather, mores the pity as there aren鈥檛 any fairies (Fairies are bloke who are seasick and can鈥檛 eat their meals, so the rest of the blokes eat them for them) in the mess now. The weather was quite nice up top, we are still heading for Tokyo. On Saturday it was raining again but the sea was moderate the ship just had a gradual roll, in the afternoon another gale sprang up and we started to roll again very badly, the estimated time of arrival at Toyko was the 22nd if the weather improved. Only doing half speed while its like this.

It remained very rough in the night and all hatches were battened down, but the following day (Sunday) it cleared up again and we had blue sky and sunshine with the sea abating. The destination was again changed, now we were going to Hawaii expected time of arrival the 17th. Definitely have Christmas at sea now 鈥渄arn it鈥� as we shall be away from there again before then. Maybe one of these days they鈥檒l make up their minds where we are going to.

Today was the best day we鈥檝e had so far but a gale warning was issued at nightfall, the wind was beginning to whistle though the rigging again, when the storm did blow up it was only one of those quick storms so notorious in the Pacific which spring up and are gone just as quickly.

Monday saw us in glorious weather with every prospect of having left the storms behind, of course it was about time the weather improved as we are heading south towards good weather.

The sea has calmed down now and there is brilliant sunshine not a cloud in the sky, doing a steady 11:5 knots, but that night as darkness fell we ran into trouble again, dirty water on the horizon and a strong breeze sprang up which increased during the night and on Tuesday morning we were rolling heavily once more, with very dull weather and every prospect of rain.

By Wednesday we were in terrific weather in the morning the sky ahead was a murky, dirty tallow colour and there was a holing gale blowing, this pacific is certainly the place to go at this time of year if you want to attain your sea legs, we found out later that we had just missed a hurricane, it veered off to port just in time, just before it reached us, as it was we had a fringe of it which was quite sufficient for my linking.

The seas were terrific towering high over the ship and then coming down with a resounding crash on the decks that seemed to be trying to knock the ship right under the rollers (what we could see of them for the spray which was flying past in great clouds obscuring everything.) were capped with angry white foam and to go on the upper was like being plastered with iron filing as the sprat was being driven long with such terrific force by the wind, it seemed as if one鈥檚 face was being cut up in small pieces and sting cruelly. It was bitterly cold. The massive waves took one鈥檚 breath away and one began to wonder if the next one was going to break with such force on the decks as to sweep everything away before it.

One of the life floats was washed away from its fittings and the boom, which is made of wood a foot square was snapped in half as if it was a match stick.

The storm blew itself out in the night and the following day the weather picked up smashing and by afternoon it was boiling hot again and we stood on the upper and saw the first flying fish leaping across the bows and alongside its amazing how fat they come out of the water that one was found one morning on the deck it had flown right inboard. It was during this spell of weather that I saw a shark the first I鈥檇 even seen in its own environment.

On the seventeenth we were on the lookout for Hawaiian Islands but we were disappointed as the horizon got pretty hazy at nightfall when we expected to sight them, but the next morning when we woke they were in plain view on our starboard side, we steamed along the coast about five miles out passing the town of Honolulu and it world famous Wakakiki Beach and then turned into inlet entrance of Pearl Harbour. It was about one and a half hours run up this inlet and then we were in Pearl Harbour itself, we tied up to concrete poles about 150 yards off-shore, just forward of us was the remains of the American battleship Arizona sunk at the notorious exploit of the sons of Nippon.

The shore line looked very picturesque with waving palm trees dotted about, naturally the place was overrun with Yanks and it was expected there would be stacks of trouble ashore with them as we were only the British shop in there, but everything went off smoothly. The actual time of arrival there was 10am on the 18th December.

In the afternoon we got paid and then went ashore at 3pm. On arrival at the jetty my mate and I hired a taxi to take us to Honolulu which is about twenty minutes run away, this is a fairly large town and abounds with shops, but prices are very high as is always the case where there is Americans owing to their high rate of pay.

The weather was glorious, boiling hot just like I鈥檇 always been led to believe it was this Pacific island millionaires holiday retreat.

I would like to have stayed longer but as we were only there for 48hours, half the ship company were allowed ashore one day and the other half the next. Our leave expired at 11pm so at 10:30pm we had to say goodbye to Honolulu and catch the bus back to the dockyard and so back on board. To stay any length of time in that place though one would certainly need a considerable income, a months pay of a rating would last a day and he wouldn鈥檛 have to go on the local booze to get rid of it.

The time of our stay went all to quickly and at 10am on the twentieth we said goodbye to Hawaii and its awing palm trees for good and slipped down the inlet on out way another 4,000 miles to Toyko, but as soon as we had got to sea we were again informed that our course had been altered and now the destination was Hong-Kong.

The weather reminded perfect, the sea like a mill-pond. We crossed the Date Line on Christmas Day so actually there was no 25th December on our Calendar but we held it just the same, nothing to shout about though just extra food and Plum pudding and an issue form the canteen of one tin of American canned beer per man.

A choir was organized amongst the ships company and they sang Carols over the loud speakers to make it sound a bit Christmassy and there was an impromptu concert held in the recreation space. Of course as it was so hot we were all pretty near in our birthday suits, quite a change from an English Christmas.

Nothing outstanding happened from then on, the weather was perfect until we entered the China Seas and then it started to blow up again and one night in particular we hit it really hard, I was sleeping on the upper and was wakened up about on o鈥檆lock in the morning by a terrific toll of the ship during which all the lights on board went out (panic stations) the reason being as far as I could make out, due to the angle to which she rolled.

A very queer thing I noticed was that the water was being picked up off the sea and going up to the clouds, in other words raining upwards, it looked very queer when I first noticed it as I was half asleep and thought I was seeing things.

About 36 hours out from Hong-Kong we sighted Formosa passing it on the sea-ward side, there was plenty of Chinese Junks about by this time.

The weather picked up again shortly before we steamed through the narrow entry into Hong-Kong harbour on the 12th January 1946, it was lovely and warm once more.

It was 2pm when we dropped anchor in the harbour proper, surrounded by swarms of Sampans with Chinese jabbering for Cigarettes and Chocolate in them. The Sampans were loaded with souvenirs of all kinds and all day and very day saw them there bartering with their goods.

Our stay here lasted for 14days during which time I went ashore several times and purchased a few souvenirs after much arguing over the prices, they always ask about double what they want for the goods and one has to stay and argue until they drop down to a reasonable price, sometimes the argument lasts for an hour or more but in the end they generally drop to ones terms as they do not like to lose customers, one has only to turn around and pretend to walk away and immediately the price is knocked down a few Dollars. A Hong-Kong Dollar is worth 1s and 3d in English.

Hong-Kong looking at it from the Harbour gives one the impression of a large and prosperous city, as the buildings along the water front are all large and modern, but one has to only walk fifty yards or so to the back of these buildings and the scene changes completely and one enters the squalor and filth that the Chinese working class exist amongst.

The streets are narrow and filthy and the smell in them is overpowering, so much so does it smell that one night my mate and I went to the canteen there for supper, which was bacon and chips, and when it was on the table the breeze bought in the smell through the open windows, we just looked at the food and then one another, got up and left, we just couldn鈥檛 face it, and it takes a lot to turn me off my food, especially bacon and chips.

All along the sides of the streets there are Chinese with little fires on the pavements with a greasy pot hanging over them with an awful mess of boiling stuff what it is I doubt if they know themselves, they seem happy enough to sit on the edge of the pavement with a pair of chopsticks and eat it.

A regular sight alongside the ship is to see a sampan by the gash chute, and a bloke standing in it with a large Butterfly net, and as the gash drops in the water he swoops down on it with the net and puts the catch in the family kettle.

It is nothing unusual to see a little child of about four or five to totter over to this kettle and eat this sopping wet mess. Whole families live on these Sampans which are nothing more than glorified dinghy about 15 feet in length and 5 feet wide, the deck boards life up and it is down in this miniature hold that they live. What an existence.

How would you like it dear reader?

We went on a very interesting trip on Wednesday the 23rd when we went over the mountains to 鈥淩epulse Bay鈥� which was a scene of very heavy fighting at the fall of Hong-Kong, the road over these mountains was in pretty good condition, but wound back and forth across the mountain side and climbing steeply at the same time, in places running along narrow ledges with a terrific drop on one side and a cliff face on the other.

Houses on the tops of these mountains still had scars of battle showing on them especially round the windows where the stone was all chipped and broken by machine gun and rifle fire, while some had holes in the roofs probably caused by trench mortars and such.

Repulse Bay itself is a lovely spot nestling between the hills, it had a beach of silver sand or about 70 years in width. The water was amazingly clear and we spent a very enjoyable afternoon there, swimming and such. The lorries which took us picked us up again at 5pm taking us back to Hong-Kong. During our stay there the weather was great and was gradually getting warmer as each day went by.

Numerous ships were sunk in the harbour but on the whole the shire installations were untouched expect for damage caused by our own bombing.

鈥楾his story was submitted to the People鈥檚 war site by Jim Salveson of the CSV Action Desk 大象传媒 Radio Stoke. On behalf of Elizabeth Adams and has been added to the site with his permission. The author fully understands the site鈥檚 terms and conditions.'

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