大象传媒

Trust the Royal Navy to describe establishing a weather station as ''job nine''not only that but the location was out of this world too,
Well nearly out of our known world as R.N.ratings of H O (Hostilities Only)degree, I refer of course to what is described as The Loneliest Island In The World Tristan Da Cunha, halfway between S Africa and S America.
Serving on an Armed Merchant Cruiser HMS Cilicia with plenty of cargo space available we set sail from Capetown, after loading personel,stores and supplies enough for a 2-3 yrs.stay by the S. African weather team.
On the way out it was interesting to see ships carpenter making huge rafts out of 45 gal. empty oil drums and planks of wood etc.little realising they would play a part in my future escapades, in a few days time after sailing the weather turned real dirty and we then were informed by Capt. Scott that the island was a volcanic rock with no dock or landing jetty, all stores would have to be landed on rafts on a volcanic beach of tiny size.
We did with good navigation find the island and after dropping anchor, out came the Headman of Tristan in a canvas covered boat with 4-5 oarsmen doing duty to bring him alongside the gangway, that was an experience in itself seeing them in their homemade clothing and island costume.
when the headman came aboard, the boat shoved of and left him with us as evidentaly he was now the kingpin with regard to the weather forecasting in regards as to whether it was safe to anchor and unload stores or not
Luckily the first few days allowed us to work out the system to get the stores ashore, briefly it meant dropping a bouy offshore and attatching a pulley to it, with another pulley anchored ashore, we then passed an endless belt of one inch manila rope through them establishing an endless belt.
The rafts would be hoisted overboard and fully loaded ready to be towed by ships motorboat to the pulley offshore, attaching the rafts towline to the endless belt the gang ashore (islanders and matlows) would judge the rise of the surf and heave like h==l and get you inshore onto the volcanic ash beach.
As a leading Seaman it was my job to sit astride the raft in charge of 3 ratings and cast off from motorboat just in time to reach and attache raft to endless belt and be hauled ashore, with the raft loaded down with bags of coal sinking to the waterline the experience was something to remember believe me
It took us about 4wks.to complete the whole effort as some days the weather was too rough, so it meant just riding it out till the headman said it would be fine the next day, no shore leave as isolated as they were they could catch colds or suffer some of civilations aches and pains.
This is just a quick summary of this episode and wouldnt have missed it for the world, our Capt. Scott was a real trooper as he saw that we got hot food at night and best of all he had our tots issued at one and one,(one part rum,one part water,)if there is anyone out there from those days send me an e mail at jhurley713@rogers.com would be glad to hear from old shipmates anytime

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