In May 1962, I joined American Export Lines (AEL) as Third Mate on the SS Express, a seven-hatch C-3, sailing from their Hoboken, New Jersey headquarters to India. To fill jobs engineers had been Shanghai'd from AEL s passenger ships, the Independence and Constitution.
Because the ship hadn t been stored properly, we ran out of meat almost immediately. I remember lots of sandwiches of either catsup or peanut butter.
The trip went as far as Chittagong, in Bangladesh. Under a new contract we loaded jute for carpet backing. In Madras, India the jute caught fire. We fought the fire by pouring water into the Express' forward cargo holds. On the second day the weight of water in the ship caused her to roll fourteen degrees toward the dock. Our National Maritime Union crew reacted to this emergency by jumping ashore or overboard. The Purser and the Chief Steward tried to launch the offshore lifeboat. We officers continued to fight the fire in six-hour shifts for ten days. All but three crewmembers left for a hotel uptown.
The fire knocked out electrical power to the forward cargo booms. On arrival back in Hoboken the water-damaged cargo was discharged using shore cranes. The Express went into a Wehauken, New Jersey shipyard for repairs.
I had the option of staying on the Express or going around the world on one of the fourteen ships of Isbrandtsen Line, which had just merged with AEL. I jumped at the chance and have made twenty-three voyages around the world. Loading and unloading a ship three times in four months at sea is "steamboatin " at its best.
My first Isbrandtsen ship was a C-2, the SS Flying Gull. The author was the other Third Mate. The Skipper was Captain John McLean, nicknamed "Iron John" because in North Atlantic storms he stood on the bridge for days at a time. At age fourteen he was a sandhog working with his father on New York s Holland Tunnel. As a Navy officer in World War II McLean had a couple of mine sweepers blown out from under him. The Chief Mate was Henry Lexius, like a character from a slapstick movie. The twelve passengers were a varied lot - quiet to boisterous, pleasant to whiny, and inquisitive to bored. They saw about fifteen ports in four months for $1,600.
The most eventful part of the voyage was our collision with a Greek ore carrier, the SS Batus, leaving Kobe, Japan. I was on watch, relieving Second Mate Leo Valentius for supper. The Gull had the right of way. Instead of a Half Astern bell, the Batus got a Half Ahead bell on her turbo electric engine and headed for us. Captain McLean took the conn from the pilot and almost succeeded in turning the Gull away. Batus hit us on the port side of Number One hatch above the water line at the upper tween deck, pushing us over about fifteen degrees. As collision became imminent the Chief Mate and the Bosun ran back from the bow. A Mercedes stowed in the upper tween deck escaped damage by inches. After a week of repairs in a Kobe shipyard, the voyage continued eastward.