Christmas or not, a freighter crew worked when the skipper said so. Our family festivities are more civilised these daysListen to the podcastEVERY MONTH TOM RECORDS A PODCAST OF HIS COLUMNListen online or download at: ONLINEMORE
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12 http://www.yachtingmonthly.com JANUARY 2016
Longer ago than I care to admit, I spent Christmas and New Year alongside in Eling Creek above the container
Water. Back then, the drying coaster berth that now acts as an overspill for unlovely shipping terminal at the top of Southampton
containers was a thriving wharf importing timber. Steam cranes lit up every
morning at 0600 including Christmas Eve. That year, it was my turn
to brew the morning tea for the crew of the 90-ton Baltic trading ketch
aboard which I was bound, ultimately, for Madeira. I blew the galley fi re into life then went on deck
for a look round and a smoke while it got going. It was snowing and the view has stayed with me ever since. A small ship was coming up on
the tide to berth ahead of us, her decks piled high with logs from Finland. Her foremast light picked up the driving fl akes, and above it, spotlit
at the truck, stood an illuminated fi r tree. I was so touched by this international statement of goodwill that I’ve set up my own on-board tree
every Christmas since.such high romance came as a rough contrast. The New Year which followed that season of
The crew had been working all day rigging a new mizzen mast. We’d knocked off shortly after sunset and were struggling into our shabby
go-ashore duds anticipating a lively night in The Anchor when the call came from the skipper for all hands on deck. There’d been some
unpleasantness that afternoon after the boss criticised our excellent bosun over a racking seizing on a cap shroud, so relations between the
focsle and the cabin were not cordial. When we shambled up to see what was afoot, despair was soon mixed with righteous rage. Up on the dock
stood a full-sized ‘ready-mixed concrete’ lorry and we knew what that meant. We’d cleared the hold after Boxing Day and had packed in several
tons of pig iron. This was to form the core of our ballast. To tie it all together, we’d shuttered the lower lining of the hold around the iron. The
concrete was to be dumped in and shovelledaround until it formed a smooth upper surface. When it hardened, the weight we needed to sail the ship would be both low and immovable.
can be imagined. One of the lads started telling the driver where he could shove his truck, What we all felt about the timing of this arrival
but the skipper wasn’t budging. Sending the cement home again was
going to cost him a lot of money, a commodity in even shorter supply
than conviviality, so we were given the option of walking away into the
it. We changed back to working togs, opened the snow and never coming back, or knuckling down to
hold and stood aside as ten tons of the roughest grade available roared down into an enormous heap. Then we lit the oil lamps – no luxuries like
electric lighting for us – and started shovelling. closing, deeply knackered. Strategic foresight We made it to the pub half an hour before
was vital in those days of ‘Time, Gentlemen, Please,’ and our ‘last orders’ amounted to fi ve pints each which, since the landlord sportingly
offered a lock-in, enabled us to forget our troubles until 0600 when the cruel alarm rang and it all began again.
My boat winters at the bottom of the street at Bucklers Hard on the Beaulieu River. The family New Years’ Eve is more civilised these days.
are always on board, especially my wife, who spent a lonely evening in the public bar on that dreadful night back in the dark ages. We party
with whoever shows up and all are welcome; often it’s sailors we’ve never met before. We turn out on deck to ring in the New Year and enjoy
the free fi rework show courtesy of the Master Builder’s House Hotel. We drink by the lights of my Christmas tree and nobody has to shovel
even a bucketful of wet concrete. Wup the driving snow ‘ Her lights picked
fl akes and spotlit at the truck stood an
illuminated fi r tree’