Sometime I was thinking that the stewards got it easy, like the time I hung around the midship pantry, just outside the officers mess, hoping to get some banana off the A/S who was busily mashing it with a fork so it would spread to make sandwiches for the mates to have when on watch but he couldn’t give any away, the Ch/Steward monitored the officers food too closely. The stewards and galley staff were worse off than the deck crowd; at least we were outside in the fresh air and even on the worst feeder the food was better than most of us got at home, as per the cliché “we were all in the same boat” and there was good and bad in all jobs; it’s not surprising that many of us would be pushed to remember any bad times; that’s why we come here, to relive those halcyon days of our youth. They were real happy days for me, so much better than the days after I got my tickets but I also had some good mates in the upper deck and towards the end of my career it became common messing, so we all lived together but had different areas of responsibility. We were all Merchant Seamen!

I think every department thought that they were the worst off and that the others had it cushy, in my opinion the ones that were misused and taken advantage of the most aboard ship were the, cadets, apprentices, or midshipmen, as they were called in differant companies, quite often they were used as cheap labour and dogs bodies, and on some ships they were not given any free time for their studies, on one ship I sailed on, a tanker called the " Cerinthus " belonging to Hadleys Steamship Company, the ship carried three apprentices and after the 8 - 12 watch on Friday night one of us was taken off watch and replaced by an apprentice untill the 12-4 watch Monday morning when we were put back on our watches and the apprentices back on day work to do all the dirty jobs, this saved the company paying 3 men overtime for Saturday and Sunday, a total of 48 hours OT each weekend spent at sea, obviously we were all incensed about it and felt sorry for the apprentices, as they was no way at all that their greiviences could be redressed during the voyage. stan

Doing things on the cheap really did nothing to keep the British MN from foundering.

i have an uncle that was a seaman too, tommy donkin, he's 74 i think and he still tell his yarns. another, once an associate of my uncle, davey hopper , oh boy the mischief he got up to was unbouded. they could make a film about him.

then there is my x inlaw and his mate. Brian Western amd Jimmy Callender, more salt stories.. you never know, some might know these names.