大象传媒

This story is submitted by Malcolm Mort of the Cardiff Merchant Navy Association, on behalf of Leslie Alan Boucher and is added to the site with his permission.

With the consent of my father I joined the Norwegian Merchant Navy in 1941, as an Engine Room boy at the age of sixteen because my friends had told me that they had better ships and paid more money than the British Merchant Navy.
On a wage of fifteen pounds a month I was very happy when I got a accepted and sailed from Newport, Gwent on my first foreign going deep sea voyage. The eight months passed quickly by as I became used to their ways of living. They are mainly fish eaters. Salted fish with onions and tomatoes was a poplar very filling meal. There was also a cheese which looked like a bar of soap.

On one occasion I was told to clean and scrub the engineers mess room table, and couldn't get the soap to lather.

When I told the person in charge of me about the problem. He picked up the bar and laughed before telling me that, 'Cheese was for eating. Not for cleaning tables with.' Needless to say that it was'nt long before everybody was laughing about it. Such was closeness and comradeship of the ships crew who took an interest in me and started to teach me the basis of the Norwegian language.

I was fortunate to dock and pay off at Newport docks, Gwent in time to spend Christmas at home with my parents in Stanway Road, Ely, Cardiff.

After my leave finished I joined another Norwegian general cargo ship named the MV Triton bound for Savannah in the USA. We loaded coils of paper which we discharged in Australia. Then we went to Port Pierie and loaded zinc ingots.From there on to Tasmania to load tinned fruit. We then went back to Australia to load bails of wool before sailing towards South Africa to become part of a Royal Navy escorted convoy of about thirty ships back to the UK.

In our previous ports the engineers had done the necessary routine maintainance work to the main engine and auxilliary plant to cut down the risks of our ship encountering any breakdown problems and having to drop out of the convoy. The reality of the situation was that the convoy was unable to stop without presenting itseft as an easy target for enemy submarines, warships or aircrafts.

On our way to South Africa we came across a ships lifeboat with the survivors of a Panamanian tanker which had been torpedoed by a Japanese submarine. They told us that the submarine crew had machine gunned them while they were trying to get off of the burning tanker. Those who had survived had manage to hide under the lifeboat or floating debris until the submarine left them all as dead.

We rescued and cared for them until we landed them in South African before joining the convoy bound for Loch Uewe in the UK.

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