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IN PASSING
PEOPLE WITH CONNECTIONS TO THE SEA AND SHIPS
WHOSE LIVES HAVE MADE A DIFFERENCE TO OUR WORLD
*****
From one of the Lads
To Rear Admiral
Rear-Admiral "Mack" McArdle, who has died aged 85, rose from boy seaman to command three ships and make a memorable rescue from the fierce waters of the
On January 31 1953, as some of the worst weather on record swept
The first message at 9.45am declared: "
Princess Victoria's stern doors had been ripped open by the storm, and the stanchions had buckled so that they could not close. As walls of water flooded on to the car deck, the drains could not cope, the cars broke free and the ship listed heavily.
While the wireless operator sent out frantic SOS messages, the passengers hauled themselves by lines up the sloping deck. One boat was filled with women and children and lowered, only to capsize and spill its occupants into the raging sea to be swept away.
At 1.47pm a message from Princess Victoria indicated that she was off the entrance to Belfast Lough, but a few minutes later she foundered.
Contest had difficulty finding the wreckage, but by early afternoon McArdle, who was supervising the rescue operation on her upper deck, was able to pluck a few survivors from the mountainous seas.
As darkness fell Contest came alongside a weakened man clinging to a raft until his grasp slipped. Without hesitation McArdle tied a lifeline around his own waist and jumped into the water, where he grabbed the survivor and brought him back to the ship's scrambling net. But he was so exhausted by the effort that Chief Petty Officer Wilfred Warren also put a line round his waist and jumped into the water.
Contest was rolling heavily, and all three men were in danger of being swept under her before they were eventually hauled to safety.
A total of 128 people died, including J Maynard Sinclair, the deputy Prime Minister for
McArdle and Warren were awarded the George Medal.
Stanley Lawrence McArdle was born on September 27 1922 at Lochmaben, Dumfriesshire, the son of a colour sergeant in the Royal Marines, and was educated at the
McArdle saw service worldwide as a torpedoman before being the only successful candidate at a fleetboard for promotion to officer in
Contemporaries agree the report on McArdle in 1965, when he was in command of the frigate Mohawk, was typical of his entire career: "A most efficient commanding officer who has run a well-organised and happy ship very successfully. An officer of particular dynamism and energy, a vigorous, positive man of action who sets a first class example to his team."
He served in the directorate of Naval Operations and Trade at the Admiralty in 1969, and commanded the guided missile destroyer Glamorgan the following year.
McArdle understood sailors, and when one appeared at his table for the award of a Long Service and Good Conduct medal, which was accompanied by a £20 gratuity, he would flourish a new note from his wallet (while the ship's "pusser" skulked in the passageway to complete the necessary forms and to obtain a signature).
Sailors enjoyed this theatre, which led to his becoming Director General Personal Services and Training until 1977. His last appointment was as Flag Officer and Port Admiral Portsmouth, when he was made CB.
In retirement McArdle was a director of British Bus and Endless Holdings, a JP and a commissioner of taxes as well as a governor of Godolphin school,
Mack McArdle, who died on December 4, married Joyce Cummins during the war and then Jennifer Goddard, who survives him with their daughter.
31/01/2008
Sounds as though he was a” real good bloke” certainly it was a real good climb from RN lower deck to an Admirals rank.
A Master and Commander
After more than 40 exciting years at sea, Hillsborough man Captain Alan Roach - who was awarded an OBE in the New Year's Honours List - is ready to hang up his oilskins.
Janet Devlin -Belfast Telegraph
***
Captain Alan Roach QCVS OBE, the Ulsterman at the helm of Royal Fleet Auxiliary Wave Knight, comes from a long line of seafaring men. His father, Captain Henry Roach, was a Master of BP tankers and served with the Royal Naval Reserve during the Second World War.
His grandfather was a chief engineer on tankers operated on the high seas by the Burma Oil Company.
His great-grandfather was a Master lost at sea in 1873, when the four-masted barque Valdivia went down off the west coast of Africa.
And his great-great-grandfather was himself the descendant of a long line of Roachs who made their living from the sea in the area around St Ives in Cornwall.
Captain Alan Roach (59) - who was awarded an OBE in the New Year's honours list for his outstanding performance as Commanding Officer of Wave Knight - hangs up his oilskins later this year, after 43 years at sea, 37 of them with the RFA.
It has been an exciting career, seeing him perform in major theatres of war, dramatic rescues and in the apprehension of desperate drug dealers.
And over his five decades as cadet and officer, he has seen some amazing sea changes in the merchant service.
"My parents never forced me to go to sea," he says (his mother, Marie, is still alive), "although my father was pleased. I never fancied the Royal Navy - I've never been particularly fond of warships - and I eventually ended up in the RFA.
"The RFA is a standing fleet of 20 ships, ranging from tankers and what we call 'one stop store' ships to air training ships, and is the biggest employer of merchant seamen in the UK, with about 2,300 personnel.
"These days, it is about half as big as when I joined, but then the Navy is shrinking too - it's only about half as big as well."
Alan attended Inst in Belfast before signing up to the Southampton School of Navigation for a year at the age of 16, followed by a Cadetship of three-and-a-half long years of on-the-job training.
His first posting was with Royal Mail Lines (who had all their ships built at Harland and Wolff) plying the sea routes to the United States and South America with cargoes of fruit, sugar and fishmeal.
The young Alan swabbed decks, understudied watch officers and carried on correspondence courses before returning to shore to gain his Second Mate Certificate.
"My first job as Third Mate was on the 7,000 tonne Roonagh Head for G Heyn & Sons, owners of the Headline Company," he says. "We sailed from Belfast to Liverpool and I was watchkeeper on the 8am to noon shift and on navigation watch from 20:00hrs to midnight.
"It was very scary at first for a young fellow, I can tell you, but the captain was always available, literally on the end of the blower!"
Eighteen months later, in 1969, the young seaman became a landlubber again, sitting behind a desk with a career in sales with Goodyear in Craigavon - but that didn't last long.
"I just didn't see myself sitting in an office for the rest of my career, yet I didn't want to go back into general cargo or fancy tankers either. I thought the RFA, which supports the Royal Navy, had a lot to offer.
"We're always at sea doing something, working with warships, going on manoeuvres, having helicopters flying around us.
"The ship can be in Plymouth for maintenance (as I am now), sailing UK waters - or out of the country for six months at a time. Last summer, for instance, I spent four months in the Caribbean."
Life on board has changed vastly since Alan first went to sea, as he explains: "Then there was nothing to do except reading and the dreaded Monopoly. Now there are DVDs, the internet, videos, satellite TV, gym, excellent food and bars.
"But I like to think there was more cameraderie back then - we did much more as a ship's company. As a captain, I try to get everyone physically together on a regular basis for barbecues on the flight deck and horseracing meetings and so on.
"Life at sea is not for everyone, it has to be said. I think you have to have a good sense of humour, be outgoing and have the ability to work within a small community.
"RFA Wave Knight weighs 28,000 tonnes and with 102 aboard it's like living in a small village. You have to be a good communicator... make a personal connection.
"The captain must gain the respect of the crew and to do that you must respect them. If you can achieve that, life is almost a doddle, really."
Another big change is, of course, the introduction of female crew.
"About one in ten crew is female and, apart from a couple of incidents (though not on this ship) I have had no problems with the girls. I find they do just as good a job as the men. In fact, my Third Mate is a girl from Southampton.
"I am quite sure that personal relationships can strike up, but I just say one word: 'Discretion'. We do have some husband and wife teams working, but I find that can be awkward when it comes to pecking order...
"Female crew have to move to a job ashore in later pregnancy and most tend to stay there until the children are raised. We currently have several older married women serving."
Alan is himself very happily married to Elinor, a former special needs teacher of 30 years' experience, and they live together in Hillsborough, Co Down, with their four cats.
It's a lifestyle that works for both of them (they have no children) even though they may be apart for many months at a time, but Alan admits it hasn't always been easy.
"Sometimes I'm not around when Elinor needs me there and the partings can be long ones, but we've learned to cope with that.
"These days, there are so many more attractions ashore than there were in my time and young men are expected to take a much more active role in raising children and family life."
But Alan has no regrets - his work has been exciting as well as rewarding. The first major conflict in which he was involved was the Falklands War in 1982, when RFA Sir Tristram ferried troops around the islands.
During the attack on the ill-fated Sir Galahad, Tristram was hit first in a no-warning air attack that killed two members of the crew and forced the rest to abandon ship in life rafts.
"It was so shocking simply because it was so unexpected," says Alan. "At first we suspected we had an unexploded bomb on board, then we discovered we were on fire and it all got a bit hairy.
"Funnily enough, I am sitting here right now, looking out my porthole in Portsmouth, and I can see Sir Galahad - she was brought back from the Falklands in 1984 and rebuilt."
It was while at Harland & Wolff for a refit in 1987 that he was promoted to captain (funnily, it was while his father, Henry, was at the yard for a refit in 1961 that he was also promoted to captain).
In 1994-96 he broke in RFA Victoria, a 'one stop store' ship and it was during seagoing trials up the coast of Norway, when there happened to be a Sea King helicopter on board, that Alan was involved in a dramatic rescue.
"We saw distress flares and discovered that a Norwegian fishing boat had capsized nearly immediately after snagging its trawl on the seabed.
"We were able to get 11 men into the aircraft and back to the ship within 35 minutes. We reckon these fishermen had a very lucky escape, since their survival time in those waters would have been about ten minutes."
Alan and the crew of the RFA Fort Austin, an ammunition and dry goods ship supporting HMS Invincible, were awarded the QCVS (Queen's Commedation for Valuable Service) in 1999 for work in the Gulf.
"We had to take precautions because we were on constant alert to attacks on us," says Alan. "Arab dhows full of explosives were about and missiles could be fired from launches."
In 2000, Alan spent four months aboard RFA Sir Percival looking after troops, Army training, and providing food and hospital facilities for the Armed Forces at Freetown in Sierra Leone.
A year later, he brought into service RFA Wave Knight, his last command. She's 197 metres long, has a flight deck and hangar capacity for a Merlin anti-sub helicopter, and her role is to supply aviation fuel to warships when at sea.
The ship has already been involved in two major counter-narcotic operations, one off the coast of Spain which netted 3.5 tonnes of cocaine, and a second in company with HMS Cumberland in the Caribbean just last October, which netted 2.2 tonnes of cocaine.
"We worked with a ten-strong US Coastguard Law Enforcement Detachment Team for a couple of months," he explains. "Intelligence reports reveal when drug boats from Columbia are heading towards the Caribbean islands or Mexico.
"These 'go-fast' launches, as they are nicknamed, are 60ft long, travel between 40 and 50 knots, and can carry three tonnes of cocaine.
"We intercepted them and if they refused to stop, we launched our on-board Royal Navy Lynx helicopter, complete with Royal Marine snipers to persuade them to do so!"
So how will Captain Alan Roach leave all this CSI:Miami-type excitment behind when he finally drops anchor on his 60th birthday on November 23.
"I'm delighted to be ending my career on a high note," he says. "I was surprised but delighted to receive an OBE, because it is a personal honour for the work I have done, rather than a group award, like the QCVS.
"I don't intend to take up any job in retirement, that's for sure! I am looking forward to relaxing and enjoying life. I may potter around Strangford Lough on a boat, but that's as far as it will go.
"My wife and I work out together at the gym three times a week and we enjoy walking and going to concerts at the Waterfront and the Ulster Hall in Belfast.
"We don't go on holiday because of the cats, but we love working in the garden. We had thought of moving to the south of England at one stage, but then we decided not to.
"I've been all round the world and, when it comes down to it, there's no place like home. Anyway, I quite like the Ulster cold!"
The Times October 27, 2005
Sir Barry Sheen
August 31, 1918 - October 25, 2005
Judge whose verdict on the Zeebrugge ferry disaster blamed captain, first officer and owners of the Herald of Free Enterprise
IN 1987 Sir Barry Sheen presided over the inquiry into the deaths of 193 people in the Zeebrugge ferry disaster. As the High Court’s Admiralty Judge since 1978, he delivered a damning report that concluded that the ferry Herald of Free Enterprise had capsized as a result of negligence on the part of the ship’s captain, first officer, first bosun and owners.
Sheenordered the suspension of Captain David Lewry’s master’s certificate for a year and the suspension of First Officer Leslie Sabel’s certificate for two years, but declared that blame for the errors that led to the disaster lay far up Townsend Thoresen’s management.
There was “a vacuum at the centre”, he declared, and the directors had no comprehension of what their duties were: “From top to bottom, the body corporate was affected by the disease of sloppiness.”
Such a harsh statement from the Admiralty Judge carried extra weight in Sheen’s case since he had had extensive experience at sea during his wartime service as an officer in the RNVR.
Barry Cross Sheen was born in 1918, the second son of an accountant. He was educated at Haileybury College and in America, at Hill School in Pennsylvania. He began to read law at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, but service claimed him.
By 1941 he was serving as first lieutenant of the corvette HMS Aubretia.
On May 7, as part of the 3rd Escort Group, Aubretia met a convoy of 40 merchantmen at a point 200 miles south of Reykjavik.
Two days later the convoy came under attack from a German submarine, U110, and two merchant ships were sunk.
After an attack with depth charges had forced the submarine to the surface, her crew leapt into the water and were picked up by the Aubretia. U110’s commander, Oberleutnant Fritz-Julius Lemp, had given orders to set scuttling charges but these failed to detonate.
He had also failed to destroy vital documents and secret equipment.
While Sheen was interrogating the German sailors, a party from the destroyer Bulldog boarded U110 and seized a haul that included an Enigma cipher machine and codebooks.
This most valuable capture enabled the British to read German encrypted messages and break a variety of codes. U110 subsequently sank in tow.
In 1943, at the age of 25, Sheen was given command of the corvette Kilkenzie. Two years later he returned to Cambridge to finish his degree.
Called to the Bar by Middle Temple in 1947, he joined a set of common law chambers at 1 Temple Gardens, before moving on to 11 King’s Bench Walk and then 4 King’s Bench Walk.
In 1955 he was invited to join 2 Essex Court as a replacement for a junior who was about to embark on a parliamentary career.
The set’s clerk had not gone to any great trouble in his search for a new tenant. In fact he had simply relied on a recommendation by a young junior at 3 Essex Court — the future Master of the Rolls, John Donaldson.
At that time, 2 Essex Court was just one of many small, sleepy and undistinguished sets in the Temple.
Of its two silks and six juniors, half-a-dozen were men of independent means with no compulsion to earn a living. Fortunately for Sheen, one of his fellow tenants soon chose to retire, and he was given the opportunity to take over his colleague’s shipping practice.
He went on to specialise in “wet” work, notably salvage and collision cases. He enjoyed nothing more than the opportunity to cross-examine a master who had falsely altered the deck log or, in one case, had the engine movement book rewritten in order to suggest that the thing.
Sheen was appointed a junior counsel to the Admiralty in 1961. He took silk five years later. In 1968 he acted as counsel for the Board of Trade in the inquiry into the Peridot and St Romanus, which sank in gales off In the case of the St Romanus, he suggested that one of the lessons of the tragedy was that trawlers should maintain daily contact with their owners and give their position.
Two years later he appeared for the Board of Trade in the inquiry into the loss of the Nicolaw, a 776-tonne British coaster, off Boulogne. At that hearing, he claimed that the crew was inexperienced and that the foreign-going master’s ticket that the captain claimed to hold was a forgery.
Sheen was both a Wreck Commissioner and a member of the panel of Lloyd’s salvage arbitrators from 1966 Before joining the High Court bench, he served for six years as a Crown Court recorder.
Shortly before being appointed Admiralty Judge, Sheen went to New York with his junior, one David Steel now the Admiralty Judge). The two men stepped off Concorde to a special reception from British Airways, under the impression that on this occasion the aircraft was being used by the motorcycling champion and the leader of the Liberal Party.
But for Sir Henry Brandon’s long stint, Sheen might have become the Admiralty Judge much earlier. This had the unfortunate consequence that he was not quite able to complete 15 years as a judge before his 75th birthday and, as a result, it was adjudged that he was not entitled to a full pension. In protest, he chose to retire a term early in the spring of 1993.
Sheen played an active role in a range of Bar affairs.
He was a member of the Bar Council from 1959 to 1963, was elected a Bencher of the Middle Temple in 1971 and became a Reader in 1990. He was an unfailingly supportive pupil master who went out of his way to introduce his young charges to anyone who might support them.
His former pupils include Nicholas Phillips, who was appointed Lord Chief Justice this month; Anthony Clarke, who succeeded Phillips as Master of the Rolls; and Michael Thomas, who served as Attorney General in Hong Kong between 1983 and 1985.
Barry Sheen married Diane Donne in 1946. Two years after her death in 1986, he married Helen Spink (née his first marriage and two stepdaughters from his second.
Sir Barry Sheen, High Court judge, 1978-93, was born on August 31, 1918. He died on October 25, 2005, aged 87.
ROYAL NAVY PQ17 DESTROYER CAPTAIN
Captain Alexander Dickson
(Filed: 21/10/2005)
Captain Alexander Dickson, who died on October 1 aged 85, served in destroyers throughout the Second World War and was second-in-command of Keppel during the ill-fated PQ17 Russian convoy; in his later career he was head of marine operations for the Shell oil group.
PQ17 sailed on June 27 1942 from Hvalfjord, in Iceland, for Murmansk, with supplies for the beleaguered Red Army. Keppel, under command of Captain Jackie Broome, led the escort flotilla, with Lt Alec Dickson responsible for signal traffic. Although the dangers of sailing close to occupied Norway in continuous daylight and under constant aerial attack were extreme, there was still scope for humour: when a British submarine commander signalled "In the event of engagement I intend to remain on the surface", Broome's reply was: "So do I."
The Admiralty in London became concerned that the German cruiser Tirpitz was steaming towards the convoy - despite Enigma intercepts indicating that she was still at anchor in a fjord. On July 4 the order was given by Admiral Sir Dudley Pound for the convoy to scatter and for the escort to attack the German fleet, but no contact was made. Meanwhile, the merchant ships were left to their fate: of the 37 that had sailed from Iceland, 24 were sunk, with terrible loss of life.
Many recriminations were to follow - including criticism of Broome in a book on the incident published in 1968 by the controversial historian David Irving. Broome sued for libel, and with the support of Alec Dickson's testimony, won record damages.
The son of a merchant marine captain, Alexander Forrest Dickson - known as Forrest to family and friends, but as Alec in his working life - was born in Edinburgh on June 23 1920. He was educated at George Watson's College, but left at 16 to follow his father to sea.
He became a cadet with the shipping line of Patrick Henderson and joined the Kemmendine, one of the last passenger-carrying cargo steamers also rigged for sail, bound from Glasgow to Rangoon.
In 1938 he joined the Royal Naval Reserve. His first experience of action was in Keppel in the Mediterranean, patrolling the straits of Gibraltar against U-boats. As a midshipman, Dickson was given command of the Dutch tug Valkeryie, which had been taken as a prize and had to be sailed to Gibraltar. He was also involved in the evacuation of Polish and Czech troops from the south of France, where he witnessed chaotic scenes as smartly dressed local women fought over scraps of food.
In 1940 Keppel was ordered back to Britain for Atlantic convoy duty. Dickson's recollection was that, during the winter months, seamen on both sides found themselves fighting the weather more than each other: on one occasion he was swept over the side but managed to hang on to a rail.
Having survived PQ17, Dickson joined Relentless on convoy duty off the coast of Africa, where orders came to attack a heavily armed German U-boat supply ship, Charlotte Schlieman. In view of the Germans' heavier guns, it was decided that Relentless should attack with torpedoes. Dickson navigated the destroyer into position and gave orders to fire. Schlieman was sunk and Relentless rescued 50 German seamen; but at the debriefing Dickson - having been complimented for his action - was asked why he had to fire quite so many torpedoes, since they cost £2,000 each.
At the end of the war, Dickson moved to the destroyer Anthony as first lieutenant and then captain. But he decided to return to the merchant marine rather than pursue a naval career, and completed his master's certificate before joining Shell.
There he undertook a range of assignments on the marine side of the business, including organising hydrographic surveys in Borneo and becoming a temporary US lieutenant colonel in order to carry out work in Korea. He was involved in the early development of offshore drilling operations, and in addressing problems arising from the increase in tanker sizes from around 20,000 tonnes in 1950 to 300,000 tonnes in the 1970s.
With his engineering colleagues Dickson introduced innovations, later to become industry standards, that included a device slung between tankers to allow part of a cargo to be offloaded - this had been inspired by his observation of Norwegian whalers using the body of a dead whale as a buffer between ships in heavy seas.
He joined the board of Shell Marine in 1970 and was later head of Marine Operational Services for Shell International, controlling what was then one of the largest shipping operations in the world.
He was increasingly concerned with issues of safety and pollution. When the tanker Pacific Glory ran aground in the Channel, his handling of the incident minimised pollution - in stark contrast to the earlier disaster of the Torrey Canyon. The wreck of the Amoco Cadiz, which spilled 1.6 million barrels of Shell oil off the French coast in 1978, was largely beyond his control since the ship belonged to another company, but it fell to him to respond to public criticism.
He was also a leading proponent of the adoption of standard shipping lanes in the English Channel and elsewhere, an initiative for which he received the Institute of Navigation medal. He was appointed OBE in 1979.
Dickson retired to Kenmore on Loch Tay, where he occupied himself with fishing, curling, golf and bridge and sat as an honorary sheriff in Perth. He also joined the Northern Lighthouse Board, the body responsible for Scottish coastal navigation; he was proud of ensuring that, despite budgetary pressures, the Board's ageing fleet was replaced by a modern British-built vessel, the Pharos. In 1995 he published his memoirs, Seafaring - a Chosen Profession.
Modest about his achievements and always interested in other people, Alec Dickson was a man of courage, loyalty and good spirits.
He married, in 1947, Norma Houston; they had three sons and two daughters. As he wished, his passing was marked with a "really good wake" and a Ceilidh dance.
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Sir Walter Runciman
From the website "Significant Scots" I copied this wonderful story of
a great seaman, shipowner and patriot.
Walter Runciman
“THE captain kept the helm to allow the whole crew to work at the pumps until they called out ‘She sucks! "
‘The sweetest phrase of the sea’.
Here were men who had stood almost continuously up to the waist in water, and frequently a lump of sea would smash right over them. Their sleeves were doubled up, and boots and stockings were discarded.
They had salt-water cuts in their fingers, and their arms and legs were red raw with friction and salt-water boils.
Let him who may estimate, if he can, the sufferings of those who were carrying this unseaworthy vessel in their arms.
These were the good old times”.
There are very few British sailors to-day who can recall so many varied and adventurous voyages in the old windjammers as can that wonderful old sailor and shipowner, Sir Walter Runciman, Bart., from whose fascinating autobiography the above quotation has been extracted.
In the "Good Old Times"
The "good old times," to which Sir Walter refers, were not good in the sense of ease and comfort; their goodness lay in the quality of the seamen they produced.
The sailors of the days of sailing-ships made the British Empire possible, and established the supremacy of the British mercantile marine.
No specimen of British manhood is more truly characteristic of the race than the British tar; in none do we find our conception of pluck, hardihood, and daring so fully personified.
Sir Walter Runciman, born in a humble home in Dunbar on the 6th July 1847, and reared in a hard school, owes his success entirely to his own efforts.
It seems almost incredible that anyone now living can say that his boyish ambition to go to sea was quickened by listening to stories from the lips of sailors who had fought with Nelson at Trafalgar.Yet Sir Walter Runciman can say it.
*****
Sailor Men Relations
In 1855 three big sailor men, none of whom was less than six feet three inches in height, came to spend a few days at his parents’ house on the northeast coast.
They were Scotsmen; one was his grandfather, the other two were his great-uncles, and all three had fought at Copenhagen, the Nile, and Trafalgar, and had boarded French and Spanish line-of-battle ships, cutlass in hand.
With what breathless interest did little Walter and his brothers and sisters listen to the stories these old British tars told of hand-to-hand fights, sharpshooting from the "tops," the blowing-up of enemy ships, and the death of Nelson.
Young Runciman was then between seven and eight years of age, and as he listened open-mouthed to the yarns of those ancient mariners, nothing appealed to him more than the frequent references to the "powder-monkey," the little sailor boy who carried the powder from the magazine to the guns.
He resolved to become a "powder monkey" himself, and, when the old sailors took their departure, they left behind them, as their descendant tells us, "in the mind of one small boy a fixed idea that the plain duty of every Briton was to become a sailor and nothing else."
The young lad’s mother, however, did not by any means share his love for the sea.
The reason why is not surprising. She had heard her father tell of his fighting under Nelson, and she could remember how, in her childhood, he had been dragged compelled to join the navy, thus well nigh ruining his Three of her brothers, also, had been drowned at sea.
Small wonder that she had resolutely declined to marry the man who became her husband until he had given up the sea and found employment on shore.
But neither his mother’s understandable prejudice, nor his own observation of the danger of a sailor’s life as illustrated by the frequent shipwrecks that occurred almost at the very door of his home, could turn Walter What mysteries surround human existence!
The whole of my boyhood was spent during the winter months in shipwrecks, hearing the thunder of remorseless breakers against the cliffs, making the earth tremble; and yet what is termed the terrors and privations of sea at an age when I could take to it as a profession.
Or was it some powerful influence directing me to my destiny? Whatever it was, I went to it wholeheartedly.
When he was twelve years of age Walter Runciman left the house of his parents secretly, at three o’clock in the morning, and started out to walk to the nearest seaport.
Two weeks later he had actually set out on his first voyage to Mozambique as an apprentice seaman,
having signed indentures, which bound him for six years.
There was none of the anticipated glamour of romance about his early experiences at sea; nothing he saw or did could thrill him as his grandfather’s stories of Nelson had done.
His duties included brushing and folding the captain’s clothes, scrubbing the cabin floor, polishing brass-work, cleaning knives and forks, making beds, wants little sailor lad had settled down to his new life, and as duties more nautical than domestic.
The runaway had truly to sail a long and stormy course before, finally, he reached the post of his ambition, and became a captain, and afterwards the owner of many ships; but, as he says himself, "I would not be without my experiences if I could, terrible as they were at times."
The dangers of the sea were only too evident in the early life of Sir Walter Runciman. He had not been at sea many months when he fell out of the jolly boat, while rowing his captain ashore, and very humiliated the poor little fellow must have felt when the captain, on dragging him out, roared at him in a most furious and trousers, you young rascal!"
Sir Walter tells of one thrilling experience a
*******
