When I read about the price of Gold it takes me back to something that happened on my first ship HMS Nigeria. I had joined her in March 1947 in Simonstown South Africa and in June 1948 she had been away two and one half years spent steaming up and down the East and West coasts of Africa and also an emergency trip to the Falkland Islands and the Antartic. Gold price had been $37 an ounce for years untill in the 70s I think it was it started climbing and is now aroud $1300 an ounce.
We were ordered round to Capetown to load Gold bullion for the Bank of England have no idea of how much in value but I do remember the train pulling up alongside the ship and a whole army of South african Police and Soldiers guarding it. As a warship has no cargo space the gold was stored in two Gun Turrets ammunition magazines X and Y turrets. We sailed out of Capetown with the Marine Band playing the No 1 hit of the day "Now is the Hour"
Now each gun turret had a maintenance worker called "Turret Sweeper"who kept the turrets in working order. However unfortunatley the sweeper in X turrent forgot about the gold in the magazines which had been loaded right up to the ceilings and without thinking had switched on the turret power and tried to turn the turret outboard resulting in a lot of the gold ignots in individual boxes being squashed and gold sprayed everywhere. The magazines two entrances were sealed off and Marine sentrys put on guard untill we arrived in Plymouth and Band of England employees came aboard to sort out the mess. The sweeper was demoted??. Mauri

As a follow up to this story which nobody seems interested in but here goes anyway. I think it was in the 70s when one of the Union Castle Line ships which ran a passenger service to South African ports, I believe it was the "RMS Capetown Castle" was also carrying gold bullion back to the UK and as usual stopped in Las Palmas in the Canary Islands to refuel (Duty free fuel). The gold was stored in a cargo hold which had ventilation shafts with openings in the hold. Somebody or more than one crawled through the shafts and removed X number of boxes of gold ignots. The theft was not discovered untill the ship reached Southampton and the hold was opened for unloading, I believe Scotland Yard was involved in the investigation but I never did hear if anybody was ever charged maybe Dabbler living in England remembers something about this. Mauri

Mauri, very interesting, as usual. I suppose your wife never even got a gold bracelet from all these gold bullion.!!!!!!!!!!!!! Like everyone else, you probably had to buy one. So near and yet so far.

Ann, When I was on the "Nigeria" I was not married, only a green 17 year old when I joined her and just a little bit wiser when I left her at 18. In the 60s I worked on several Union Castle ships and again no wife to worry about as we had seperated when I was serving in the United States Air Force although she tried to sue me for maintenance in a Manchester court which she lost as I attended and told the court about her relations with other men,, in fact at the time the BP oil company had witheld a lot of my pay for nearly nine months when I was working on one of their ships, it gave my great satisfaction to go to there London office and collect nearly 300 pounds of back pay and go out on the town.?? Mauri

Mauri you yarns are always very interesting to me and others i am sure find them interesting also, just keep it up ,as you could very well write a book on your adventures

Mauri; Sorry I can't add to your amazing tale.The nearest I ever got to lots of gold was standing against the bank wall in Market Square. Your life has been full of adventures.

Dabs

You have that ironic humour that makes me smile.


Mauri,

Your stories are always interesting, we don't reply as there is no answer to them, we cannot follow your inputs by our little posts.

Pat