大象传媒

We were told by the skipper never to upset the crew at any cost and it was a true lesson. The fact was, that an incoming boat always allows the outgoing boat access in a harbour - no matter who is in the other boat - according to the rules of the sea.
Full steam ahead with Bombay as the next port of call, which proved to be quite a place. On checking the radio office and its equipment,we discovered that the batteries for emergency on board were not only all flat, but the acid content was either too low or non-existent, which did not matter too much except for an emergency in which case, the emergency transmitter would not work without batttery power and there was none at all. This got us into hot water as the only source of acid aboard was in the urinal. So we filled the large batteries up with some cans of urine obtained from the toilets and put the batteries on charge after checking that it would be strong enough to work, the only snag was that boiling urine from the charger unit was not very welcome with the crew. Still, it got us out of trouble even though there was never any cause to use them. Other than that, we had three two-day stops at sea to do repairs to the boilers before we reached Bombay and the same again on the trip from Bombay to Port Aden. Port Aden is the place that God started to make and never finished and the town of Aden was out of bounds to us. Port Aden is just one block of brown sandstone with about twenty small laurel trees the only green in the place.
The rest of the journey up the Red Sea and through the Suez Canal was interesting enough as land was never out of sight though we had plenty of repair stops along the way other shipping and any land marks but there is not enough to be of interest except to say that it looked pretty inhospitable including the Port of Suez, which was little better than Port Aden but there is one event that will never be forgotten. As mentioned earlier, the Emille Baudot was a coal-fired ship and the workers at Port Suez refused to load the ship, so the crew were asked to volunteer and fifty tons of coal is a hell of a lot of coal, especially at fourteen pounds a basket. The system was that a barge would tie up alongside, a plank arrangment was organized at each end of the barge, one for climbing aboard and the other for going down to the barge, then each person with a wicker basket which held one shovel full of coal would be carried up to the ship and tipped into the coal-locker then by proceeding back down to the barge and repeat the operation until all the coal had been loaded. At least we understood what a Coolie was and the only comfort was to jump off the barge into the harbour to wash the dust off every so often. Eventually, the ship departed from Port Said and headed for Malta, which during the late autumn was quite a rough trip for a small ship but the boilers were very good and the ship arrived and anchored in Valletta harbour.
It still took two weeks work to make sure that the ship was seaworthy enough to carry on with the last leg of its journey to Gibraltar, where it was to be given back to the French. But there was little to be delighted about in Malta, as most of the town was rubble from the constant bombing by the enemy, which had earned Malta the George Cross. All that was left to was a street called The Gut, which was full of little bars where everyone got drunk every night, until 10 o'clock and then found someone to fight - maybe Yanks and the Navy or whatever, but once experienced was better avoided by getting out of The Gut and back aboard ship before time was called in the bars. So it was not surprising that the time to sail could not come soon enough for us.
It was late October when the ship left Valletta and set off in cold, wet and thoroughly miserable weather in a very uncomfortable sea.
So with the constant breakdowns, it was mid-November when the amazing sight of the Rock of Gibraltar loomed into sight. And what a sight it is for a first time viewer, especially from the sea! But that was not the end of the story of the Emille Baudot, because as the ship entered the harbour area the last of its boilers blew as it tried to pass a cargo ship, speeding at four knots and a huge cloud of white steam went up out of the funnel as a sort of final salute and a tug was sent to our rescue and towed the ship into the harbour to be tied up alongside the harbour wall. The next morning was really comical, as we were packing up ready to go ashore to the Naval base, a French full military band and a procession of regalia came down the dock to hoist down the White Ensign and hoist the French Tricolor in its place to reclaim the ship. It would have been very rude to laugh, but we did.

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