Mid December, a telegram reached Rhiw from “Odyssey” with clear instructions in it, about what I would be doing with myself for the next 38 years, it had a pre-paid return, and Elsie at the post office assured “Odyssey” that I would turn up on time. And on December 18th 1968, I traveled by bus (No 4X) from Caernarfon to Liverpool, stayed the night at the Seaman’s Mission, and next day, with all the crew assembled at Lime Street Station, we boarded a train for Hull, and by mid afternoon I was walking up the gangway of the “Hector” for my first trip to sea, and within an hour I was signing her ships articles, and became one of two "Deck Boys" for this coastal voyage.

Job Description!!!

Now before we go any further, lets break down my job description as a “Deck Boy”, the boy part of it is quite straight forward and easy to work out, to me a “Boy” is a male human, aged between a baby and 18, I don’t think many would disagree with me on that one, it was the “Deck” part of my “Job Title”, that would have come under closer scrutiny today, at any job description analysing convention. Now to be fair on ship owners, they had to have a constant flow of recruits to man their fleets, and deck boys were a vital part of that chain, Blue Funnel for example had over forty British crewed ships, with two deck boys on each of them, and given the fact that after nine months sea time (That’s actual time spent on a ship) deck boys were automatically promoted to Junior Ordinary Seaman, J.O.S. So with this information at hand, it was clear that nearly eighty boys had to be encouraged to leave home and go away to sea every year, and that’s just with one company, and in 1968 Britain had one of the largest Merchant fleets in the world, and literally thousands of “Deck Boys” had to be found every single year, and this chain could not be broken at any cost. Imagine for one moment if ship owners then were advertising for “Dishwashing Boys” “Toilet Cleaning Boys” or even worse “Toilet Unblocking Boys” every school leaver in the British Isles would have been filling in application forms for train driving jobs, there would have been ships laid up all over the place, and the whole economy would have just ground to a halt, and within a month Harold Wilson, the then Prime Minister would have been stacking shelves at “Kwiks".

So for my first nine months at sea, and a £6 weekly wage, I was a “Peggy”. The word comes from “Peg Leg”. In days of old when a seamen would loose a leg, whether through battle or accident, they didn’t pension them off, as would be the case today, but they would be kept on, and because they couldn’t go aloft, they would just do the jobs inside the accommodation that no one else wanted to do, and I’m quite positive that, many a mutiny had been avoided over the years, because of a few chosen words “We’ll get the Peggy to do it!!!” I won’t go in to the gory detail, or what many of the jobs entailed, but suffice to say that it wasn’t the happiest time of my life, but like every Deckhand  that had come before me. (and many after) If one wanted a life at sea, this part of it had to be endured.

First Deep-sea Ship; By ten o clock the next day I was heading south, and the only thing I can remember about the train journey home, was the harrowing tale from an elderly Farmer from Shropshire sitting next to me, he had been up to Scotland buying cattle, his entire herd had been wiped out with Foot & Mouth. This stay at home was even shorter, and on the 28^th after just enough time to pick up some summer clobber I joined the “Perseus” at Birkenhead. Unlike the Ixion which I had just left at Glasgow, the Perseus was gleaming like a new pin, her black ship side was newly painted, her funnel gleaming, and even her pink “Boot Topping” next to the waterline was like brand new. All Blue Funnel boats that loaded at Birkenhead got this same treatment, and when they left the locks for the Far East they looked incredible, as anyone that saw them at the time would remember.

Hong Kong; What can possibly be written about this jewel of the East, that hasn’t been written before. It was just an unbelievable place back then, and I can’t think of anything bad to say about the place, it was just sheer bliss. We used to load cargo from sailing Junks, not the ones that prance around the harbour today, so that tourists can take snaps of, but proper working Junks that had come from China, and all the family would have come along for the ride. From grannies to tiny babies, the smallest children would have dog collars around their ankles, with a stout bit of rope attached, this was then tied to some anchoring point well inboard, so that the infant couldn’t wander too close to the side. Every meal time the Dockers, who had their own cooks on board, would stop and have their meal, they sat in a large circle on the deck, and if we walked past, which was every meal, we would be offered a bowl of what ever that happened to be on the menu that day, that’s why I described Hong Kong earlier as “Sheer Bliss” And the Chinese were the nicest people you could ever wish to meet, always smiling, generous to the point of embarrassment, and nothing was ever too much trouble for them. The only thing that clouds my memory of Hong Kong is this “Peggy” thing that kept cramping my style. One day it was my turn to clean the crew bar, but I used to leave it till after morning smoko. (Tea break) Anyway who came walking down the alleyway with the Mate but the big man himself Mr Julian Holt one of the owners, very smart he was as well, round gold rim glasses, Bowler hat and pin stripe suit, He only wanted to see the bar, (As the Perseus was the first in the fleet to have one) and I was the only one with a key. You can just imagine the rest, the place was a tip, with empty beer cans all over the place. I don’t think the mate talked to me again for the rest of the trips!!!!

The Perseus bar was built by the ships Carpenter, Dennis Cassidy, from Holyhead, I was on my first trip, and Dennis was on his last. He left the sea as he was getting married when he got home. The bar was named after him "The Cassbar" Dennis is on the left in the bar photo. Thanks to Steve Hanson for the photo.

A couple of days later we sailed for Singapore, and on to Port Swetenham (Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia’s capital city’s port, now called Port Kelang) where we loaded rubber bales, and filled our latex tanks. I was told several times when I was with Blue Funnel, that just one tank full of latex paid for the whole trip, and we had several of them on the Perseus, so maybe Julian Holt if not the Mate, did forgive me for that bad day of mine at Hong Kong!!! Then on to Colombo, Sri Lanka (or Ceylon as it was called) Here I saw the biggest Tugboat of my life, it was more than half the length of Perseus, an old steam thing, probably coal burning as well, with billowing clouds of black smoke coming from its tall rusty funnel which completely engulfed his tow. There we topped up the hatches with "Ty Phoo" tea chests, before we headed for home. Whilst on passage in the Indian Ocean, I remember seeing the peak of Reunion island, rising well above the high clouds from a deep blue ocean below, and even though the photograph of it that I took was lost a long time ago, the image is still vivid in my mind. A few days later we berthed at Cape Town in South Africa for bunkers, which used to take about eight to twelve hours to complete. And as soon as we left the second mate posted on the notice board, the day, and exact time we would be in the locks of the Gladstone dock Liverpool, and do you know what, he was bang on, and that was with two weeks of steaming ahead of us. We arrived at Liverpool, on the 28th of May, having circumnavigated the globe in just three months, and bang on time!!!

I was to do one more voyage on the Perseus as deck boy, and with the passage of time, the two trips have merged in the old gray matter department, the only difference that I can definitely remember are, on the second trip, when we were half way across the Pacific, the American first men on the moon, splashed down not far from us. And the other thing, we hit the tail end of a Typhoon off the Japanese coast, and this wrecked our make shift swimming pool, which was erected on the forward deck.