During my time in the Merchant Navy I ran into some weird and obnoxious characters as well as some great people. One Captain stands out as the most obnoxious and idiotic of all the ones I served under. It was on a Gulf Oil Tanker that I first met him and we were running between the Persian Gulf and European ports. Heading up the Red Sea towards the Suez Canal one night we were threading our way through the south bound traffic when we spotted steaming lights dead ahead, Green,Red,and White which means one thing we were on a collision cours,nothing too unusual about this,the simple solution was for both ships to move to the right,unfortuatley because of the heavy south bound traffic the other ship was restricted in his moving too far to the right while we had plenty of sea room to the right. When asked permission to move the ship to the right our Captain went into a rage,screaming obscenities and stamped out on to the wing of the bridge. "Well" the other ship moved slightly to the right and when passing us there was only about 100 yards clearance and as we passed the Captain on the ship was bellowing through a loud speaker that he would report us to LLYODS of London plus some other choice words. I have often wondered if he made good with his threat. Mauri

Mauri,

How do these people get jobs of responsibility, they are everywhere.

No wonder there are accidents that could be avoided, we never learn that hot headed people are not fit for serious decisions.

I am sure you were waiting for the crash.

Pat

Pat, I should have said 10 yards separated us not 100 I accidently added an extra O, it was the biggest scare I ever got and I have had a few, the ship I was on was an oil tanker fully loaded and the one we narrowly missed was also an empty oil tanker which is just as dangerous as she would be full of fumes in the empty tanks, if we would have collided there would have been a very large explosion and I would be now digging trenches somewhere.????. Mauri

another good yarn from you mauri thanks

Mauri, "nutty" captain was the exact description for this eejit. Your lives depended on a man like this and the outcome could have been very serious. I hope he was reported and stripped of his rank. A little Hitler.

Ann, You would be surprised at the number of Nutty Captains at sea.?? The ship I was talking about was a Gulf Oil Tanker called the "Ragusa" which I believe is a small town in Italy, and the reason for the Italian name was because it used to be under the Italian division of Gulf Oil and therefore sailed under the Italian Flag untill one time another Gulf Oil Italian tanker called the "Melika" had an explosion while sailing in the Persian Gulf,instead of trying to put out the subsequent fires the crew abandoned ship including the Captain, however lucky enough there was a Royal Navy aircraft carrier not too far away called HMS Centuar and they landed a fire fighting party on the "Melika" by Helicopter and got the fire under control. Gulf oil when all the dust had settled immediately transferred all its Italian flagged ships to the Red Ensign but never changed the names,though all its British tankers were named Gulf then the name of a city like "Gulf Liverpool","Gulf London" etc. Mauri

Mauri, just as well we don't know the hair-raising events on board ship. Mind you, I've never been on a cruise but I'm sure there are incidents there too. j Regarding a cruise, although I would love to go on one, I would be a bit hesitant regarding the amounts of food offered. I love my food but am restricted unless I want a severe bout of IBS ore worse. The temptation to over-indulge might get the better of me. Also, if there is an outbreak of tummy bugs, everyone gets it. Another no-no for me.

Ann, I worked on two cruise ships the "Caronia" and the "Mauretania" though the latter one was not built as a cruise ship but built for the North Atlantic passenger trade between the UK and New York, but when jet passenger aircraft started becoming popular and the passenger trade on transatlantic ships started dying off they painted the Mauretania a pale green the same as the Caronia, stuck a swimming pool on the fore deck and started her cruising into the Carribean.
Since living in Canada I have done some eleven cruises as a passenger and in fact the first one I done was way back in 1973 on the Cunard liner "Franconia" which was also a former transatlantic passenger ship running between Liverpool and Montreal in fact one of four.its former name was the "Ivernia" I can tell you a funny story about that, while lying sunbathing on the upper deck I saw the Chief Officer who I knew coming along so yelled out "Hey Bull" his last name, he looked around but didn't spot me, "Over here" I yelled again,he then came red in the face and said "What the hell are you doing here", 'I replied be very carefull how you talk to me I'm a passenger" he splutterd something and stomped off, Mauri