大象传媒

I emigrated to Australia from England in early 1939 when I was 17. After war broke out, I felt I was not making my contribution, so I left Australia to try to get back to the UK in 1940. I worked on a number of ships of the free Norwegian merchant fleet, and finally arrived back in Liverpool in January 1944.

When I arrived back I heard that the British merchant service was short of junior engineers and they were looking for anybody with engineering experience, so I wrote to them and offered my services, which was a bloody cheek! But I had references from the Chief Engineers of the Elsa, the Troja and the Tiradentes from the time I had been with them, so I sent these up with my letter, and they sent for me to have an interview. So they found out I knew nothing at all, but they were prepared to send me to a government training centre, which they did.

I went to a training centre in Newport, Monmouthshire. After a few weeks I was given an oral examination then given a temporary watchkeeping certificate, which allowed me to take charge of a watch on any ship, steam or motor, until the end of hostilities.

Then I joined the Moreton Bay. First stop was Bombay, waiting for Mountbatten's orders. After a week in Bombay we moved to the Rangoon river, getting closer to the action all the time - which is why I have the Burma clasp on my medal ribbons. From there we eventually got orders to proceed down the Malacca Straits to Singapore. There were seven minesweepers in front of us sweeping the Straits, but we got down there uneventfully, with Royal Air Force personnel on board.

We were present in Singapore when the Japanese general handed his sword over to Mountbatten at the official surrender ceremony. I didn't get to the ceremony myself, but the master, Captain E T Grayson, and the Chief Engineer, Ted Lee, they went. Grayson was an officer of the old school, I think he was Royal Naval Reserve. We had to choose somebody from our own ranks to represent us at the handover ceremony, and nobody had the gear, the white parade uniform, in those days. I had No 10 blues, and shorts and shirts in white, but for anything like that you need tropical No 10s in white. There were 16 engineers altogether, and the Sixth Engineer was a smart little lad and had his No 10s with him, so we delegated him to represent us - we got his whites and washed them, I starched them and ironed them and we sent him ashore immaculate. What happens? A photograph comes a couple of days later, of the master, E T Grayson, and the Chief Engineer, Ted Lee, in shorts. We couldn't believe how they had let us down.

We picked up a load of Australian ex-prisoners of war from Changi prison in Singapore, and went back to Australia.

We went back from Australia to Singapore and took a load of Indian ex-prisoners of war to Madras, then where did we go after that? Back to Australia. Up and down like a yo-yo.

We were back in Sydney again when the revolution started in the Dutch East Indies. The war with Japan was already over, but a new kind of hostilities arose, the revolutions. The Dutch troops were in Sydney waiting to get to Batavia [now Jakarta] in Java, and the Australian wharfies wouldn't load the victualling, so the ship couldn't sail. They victualled us, stored us, the Moreton Bay, and when that was all ready to go we pulled the Dutch soldiers over from their ship onto us and we sailed. The wharfies were furious, and told the Moreton Bay it was blacked forever and could never come back to Australia again. It didn't work, but they tried it.

We were supposed to discharge these Dutch troops at Batavia, but we weren鈥檛 allowed to land, as the revolution was getting stronger. So we took them to Port Swettenham on the Malacca Straits.

Then I went down to Saigon. I can't remember what we went to Saigon for, some kind of military activity there. They were machine-gunning in the streets even then, as the French were coming back. There were ships mined in the Mekong River. It was very windy, terrible. You would look at a ship ahead of you, then it would be astern of you as you wound round.

I eventually went back to Australia, then crossed over to New Zealand and got my first civilian cargo, a load of lamb and mutton for the UK.

That's all you want to know, really, isn't it?

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