1950s: Lucky to be alive after riding 200ft waves in stormy seas

Jump to: navigation, search

Former Merchant Navy ship’s engineer Councillor Frank Leeming loves to tell his grandchildren tales about his life on the ocean waves. There is one trip in particular which he will never forget, when he stood on the bridge and saw a 200ft high wall of water bearing down on the vessel in the boiling seas of the Australian Bight – as Frank, of Alvaston, narrates here.

IS there anything better than sitting comfortably in your favourite chair in front of a log fire, a glass of malt in your hand on a cold winter’s night with your grandchildren sitting at your feet?

“Grandad.”

“Yes, dear.”

“Tell us one of your stories about your life at sea.”

Well, now, let’s see. The year is 1954 and I am enjoying a berth as acting second engineer on the steamship SS Maplebank. She is a former “Sam Boat”, a Liberty ship.

Built in America, she is an all-welded construction created as a “one-trip ship”.

If she survives the crossing of the Atlantic with her cargo safe and is not sunk by the U-Boat packs, then she will show a profit and her job will be done.

The Liberty ship was the biggest transporter of cargo at that time. But, she had the nasty habit of breaking her back in a very bad storm.

I know. I once sailed in one that almost suffered that very fate.

We were due to be a few days at sea on a passage from Sydney to Freemantle, through the great Australian Bight where the great Southern Ocean rampages for thousands of miles.

Homeward bound at last. Blighty. Here we come. These were the thoughts in my head as we left Sydney, Australia, one windy day, headed for Avonmouth.

A short stop at Freemantle for “bunkers” (fuel oil), another to pick up the pilot in Port Suez for the trip through the Suez Canal, then a few days in the Mediterranean sunshine and home.

But little did I know what the next few days had in store for us.

Out in the great Australian Bight, the wind was blowing up the whitecaps and the foam was scudding off the crests like an Antarctic blizzard. I was not all that worried. I’d been through the Bight in bad weather before.

The worst of it, I thought, would be the tiredness that one gets from fighting to keep your balance – not to mention the rude awakening when you are thrown out of your bunk. Also, there is the difficulty of trying to find your mouth with your fork while holding on with the other hand.

The next day, 50-footers were rolling down on us. Looking at the inclineometer, I saw that we were rolling through 90 degrees, which is not unusual for a flat bottomed lady.

Two days later, on coming off watch, I noticed all the companionway doors leading onto the deck were battened down and all the scuttles on the weather side had their deadlights down and battened – a sure sign of really bad weather.

I’d noticed that the ship was struggling a bit and, once or twice, I’d found myself hanging on, but this was normal at sea. Stopping off at my cabin to shower and change, I found that all was not well. Things that did not usually move had moved.

As I had not stuck my nose outside for two days because it was blowing very cold from the Antarctic, I went off to find a shipmate and have a chat and a dram.

Things were not well. The mate was still on watch In fact all the mates and the skipper were in the chart room. Now, on big passenger ships, the chart room is out of bounds. But, this was a Liberty, so I wandered in.

I often took sun sightings with the mates as I had a sextant, a navigating instrument, and I liked to keep my hand in.

“What’s up?” I asked.

“Everything,” said the second mate. “We’ve a lee shore only seven miles away.”

“So what?” I said. “That’s miles away.”

“Did you and the chief open her up yesterday to give us all she’s got?” asked the skipper.

“Yes,” I replied. “You’ll not get any more out of her.”

“Well, that’s it,” said the skipper. “We’re altering course. Swing her dead into the wind.”

I looked at the second mate. As navigating officer, it was his job to plot the course.

“This lot’s blowing us ashore and we are only just holding our own,” he said. “Nobody is allowed on deck. The forecast is winds over 100 knots and there are ships in trouble all around us.”

I went out on to the wing of the bridge. The wind was a screaming demon in the masts and the rigging and my lungs were being pulled out of my mouth by the force of it. I slid the door to and bolted it.

What I had seen was a wall of water 200ft high bearing down on us and we were in a trough about a mile wide. The mate was holding me up. He could see the question in my face.

“We’ve been riding them all day. They don’t break at the top. We can ride keep riding them.”

With her head now into the wind the ship’s motion was different. You could feel her straining to lift herself to the challenge as her body twisted with the effort. Each time she came up shuddering – and shedding water, deep and green.

Cooky hadn’t kept much on the stove all day and we made it up with cornbeef sandwiches, as usual. Meanwhile, the weather steadily got worse and the ship’s screw was as much out of the water as in it, the governors slamming in monotonously.

She rolled over and water started to pour in through the engine room skylights, normally 60ft above us. The inclinometer was hard on the 45 degree stop. Suddenly, she swung back hard and over.

This is it, I thought, as I flew off the generator platform, cracking my head on the way. I found myself hanging off the crankshaft guardrail. The engine stopped, under the pressure of water on the screw.

Terrified, I hauled myself out. Safety valves were screaming off and my fireman, bleeding from the nose, was desperately turning off fires.

The ship had caught the wheelman unawares and steered off course. She shuddered and groaned. I could feel her pain. I hoped she could hear my prayer.

I looked at the inclinometer. It was again swinging through 90 degrees. The engine started to turn over, the bottom ends picking up water and throwing it all over the engine room.

I quickly put the main condenser cooling water pump on to bilge suction.

By now, other engineers were coming to our aid. We found my greaser trying to fight his way back to the engine room through the water that had poured him into the tunnel. Apart from a broken arm and some very nasty bruising, he was fine. Not so the ship or the cabins.

I still have my sea chest with its water mark and my cabin was on the boat deck. It wasn’t until we were back on top of things that I realised I was bleeding from a bad cut to my head. Over the next few days, we fought hard for our lives. We lived on whatever Cooky could manage. Food was not short or cooking heat. The galley, being on the main deck, had taken a lot of water and pots, pans and everything else had gone.

So had everything topside – lifeboats, rails, vents, rigging. Mast houses had burst open and washed out. Derricks were bent and twisted, porthole glasses smashed, outside doors buckled and twisted. Not a lick of paint was left on her anywhere.

All we had were three bare masts. We would have to be completely refurbished before we could work the ship. We ran without lights and it was too dangerous to go out on deck to hoist some makeshift rigging.

Just 18 miles away, a Japanese ship had gone down with all hands. She was hit by the same wave that had nearly destroyed us.

Eventually we limped into Freemantle, 11 days overdue. There were cheering crowds.

A band was playing and people were waving flags. We thought it was Australia Day, but, no, it was for us.

When the Japanese ship gave out her mayday, they thought we had gone down as well.

So did my mum. She had a telegram to say we were missing.

I did not really know how bad it had been until I went ashore and had a look at her from off the quay. However did we pull through?

Having a few lagers, a day or two later, with the second mate, he said to me: “You know when you first realised what was going on and the mate had to hold you up.”

I said: “Yes, I was out of breath.”

He said: “Well the reason why the old man asked you if you’d opened up the engine and given us all she’d got was because the sea and wind had blown us backwards for two- and-a-quarter miles after steaming into it full ahead for 24 hours.”

Well, my dears, that’s the end of that story. Well bless me. They’re all asleep and my glass is empty. Ah well! Time for bed.

Pages linking here