大象传媒

I was in Dublin aged eight when the war started
and when
I was twelve we were bombed one night and we were alwright as they exploded a few miles from
the house. I came to London aged sixteen in 1947 and there was rationing. I had a sister and a brother who were in London during the war
I did see the devastation and the destruction caused by the bombing. I worked for a short while in Holborn involved in demolition on some buildings which were badly damaged and in fact some were just rubble. In 1948 I joined the Merchant Navy as a steward and the first ship was the P&O liner. I joined the ship in Belfast with many others as the ship was being
converted from a troopship back into a passenger which she had been before the war The workmen were still working on it and after a few days we sailed to London with some workmen still on the ship We berthed in EAST INDIA docks and in the next few weeks the ship was loaded up with export goods and then we sailed down to Tilbury where we picked up a full compliment of passengers. A lot of the passengers then were imigrants leaving England and going to Australia. The ship was the Stratnaver It took six weeks to get to Sydney as we stopped at a lot of ports on the way. After unloading the cargo and the passengers had disinbarked The ship was loaded up with foodstuffs mainly sheep carcasses ,butter and cheese. We would then sail back to London calling at Melbourne Adelaide Fremantle Ceylon Bombay Aden through the Suez canal, stop at Port Said and then back to London. I did other trips to New Zealand South America where we brought back carcasses of beef from Buenes Aires.

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