大象传媒

The big steep hill was made of wooden sleepers and so on and so forth. Where the railway used to take their horses, because they used a lot of horses in those days the stables were up the top of this hill and they were lined with sleepers to enable them to get up, it was used by the public to get up onto what they called the railway. There is another steep hill which runs down to the railway that is called North Road this is very steep and has hand railings on one side and some steps in some places for pedestrians it finished with an embankment and finally the railway. My grandfather used to sledge down North road, how the hell they managed at the bottom I don't know but they used to sledge down there when they were kids. It went up unto the railway Grove St is where my grandfather grandmother and some of my uncles were brought up 22, Grove St

In that house, when they bombarded Whitby the shell, there was one shell, just clipped the eaves and went into the house at the back, over the other side of the street. The bits and pieces fell on your grandfather and my uncle Jim down the stairs at 22, Grove St. That house was like a museum absolutely like a museum (I remember the old range) There was the ornaments on the mantle piece old dogs at one end and the other and there was the firedogs, separate things the first dogs I was talking about were porcelain and there was an horsehair settee (I remember that) The table there had a centre stalk and it was cockily. There was a model of a ship in a glass case. I did not know a terrible lot more about the house.
The kitchen was just a slop stone, just a stone, a very very shallow stone which was used for washing up and so forth, it wasn鈥檛 like the present sink you had to have a basin or something like that in it. Me and my Uncle Billy was a cobbler and he had a cobbler鈥檚 shop in Silver street. He was bombed out of that during the war and he then moved, he carried on with his business at 22, Grove St. he used to do it in the back kitchen. Him and Aunt Geana lived there together for years. Aunt Betty once said that she did not know why Aunt Geana did not marry him Uncle 鈥楤ill but he never spoke, I don鈥檛 think I ever heard him put two words together never spoke at all.
My grandmother (Cummins) was a very daunting woman she wouldn鈥檛 let any of her sons smoke in the house they all had to go outside to smoke and right up till he died your great uncle 鈥楤illy had to go outside to have a cigarette or light a pipe she wouldn鈥檛 let anybody smoke in the house by she was a real stickler you couldn鈥檛 muck about.
Seaton Carew when we bought it. It looked beautiful but then later on we found the faults when we started investigating under the floorboards it was a semi bungalow and we got underneath the floorboards and we found that there was water there, water standing all the time. Once there was any heavy rain it flooded right up to the back door time and time again. The drains themselves were only just to say under the surface you could say they were under the surface and that was all. The bedrooms, the upstairs bedrooms, there was no insulation in the loft at all and the result was that they were extremely cold.
We used to stay at granddad鈥檚. It was called 鈥楤oulby house granddad and grandma. The kitchen had big stone slabs which the maid used to scour and stone most days there was a big range in there. If granddad wanted to clean the chimney we used to go up on the moor and get a gorse bush that had been half burnt run it up the chimney and set fire to it. It had a crane on it, crane for holding pans and frying pan and that sort of things in the fire instead of then resting in the fire the crane held them above it. We used to play quoits there I think they still do play quoits. Hawksworth made me a small set because I couldn鈥檛 pick up a full size set.
They were properly made rings which were beveled which meant that if they went on the hob lined up somebody could knock the edge of this quoit and it would tip off the hob. It had to be bevel side down the edge down over so it wouldn鈥檛 tip off. A very skilled game is quoits a bit clarty because you play it in mud, clay but very skilled.
The house is still there but it has been split into two. It is two houses now still there still the same. What has happened to the outbuildings which were out the back, and I know that granddad had some outbuildings out the back I never used to bother a great deal with them when I was a lad.
Father finished up working for Norman Thompsons who were generally contractors his work then was foreman, chief foreman mainly on putting shutterings and that sort of things for ICI.
He had the house on Athol St from about 1916 (accommodation in the Larpool)
The accommodation was in the forepeak and we went in the door from the deck. The doors there were 5 foot by 2ft solid teak about 2 inches thick with a big sill you had to step over it to get in. That went into the messroom. The messroom was on the ship's side there was a table and a bench on the ships side and another form and a bogie a stove. The bogie was the one and only form of heating that we had. When we were at sea and everything was quiet at night time the rats used to come up through the drain hole and get onto this form that was against the ships side because there was a gap between the back and the actual plating of the ship made because of the actual frames that supported the ships side. Many is the time I tried to catch hold of a rats tail when it poked through the slot in the bottom never succeeded. From there you went into the sleeping quarters, there were six bunks in there and six lockers and a chest of drawers we each had a drawer. The bathroom was across the other side of the ship and the toilet was across the other side of the ship.

Well I went along to visit an old friend of mine who was Kenneth Robinson who was away at the war. They were going along to the dance would I like to come? so I said, 鈥淵es鈥� and that is how we met.
She was sat at the Robinson鈥檚 house waiting to go to the dance.
The Food on board ship was to a proper scale reckoned out by the board of trade for all the crew so much meat so much of this so many pounds of that, that is what it was based on. It wasn鈥檛 dished out to each man independently because this would have been idiotic. It was dished out in my case to the apprentices and we ourselves had to ration it out so that it was fair.
All the ships bread was rationed as I said but it was really lovely bread there was no question about it. I can鈥檛 remember how much they used to make but they used to make bread every day, every day that dawned there was bread made. It was proper bread except when the ice was getting down and they ran out of shop yeast they only used shop yeast as you know. When they ran out of that we had a rough spell until the cook got his own yeast working Many and many is the time I have seen them cook a batch of bread an take it to the ships side and dump it straight away. It was too heavy you just couldn鈥檛 eat it or else it was sour, because sour bread is awful really awful. Obviously they had to at sea but sour bread is really obnoxious but eventually the cook used to get his own yeast working and it was lovely bread again, it was perfect bread again. The only single difference was that they used to use hops to make the bread, hops potato water some sugar it was very touchy, in the tropics you had to keep it cool, in the colder climates you had to keep it warm. The only fault with it was that the hops we used to get the seeds from the hops and we used to get like little black bits in the bread but they weren鈥檛 harmful there was nothing to them they just went down that was all to it.
The City of London that I was on when we went round the Cape, we called at Capetown, East London, Port Elizabeth, Bier back again the same way home. That ship had a quadruple expansion steam engine four cylinders steams a very big engine the only one I have ever seen.

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