Search results for ""Author David Creamer""

As a sequel to the successful Rats, Rust and Two Old Ladies, the story of Oriental Endeavour begins when the author delivers a tugboat from Avonmouth to Buchanan in war-torn Liberia. Four years later, he is asked to command one of two tugboats for delivery from West Africa to Singapore and, despite being renamed, he soon realises this is the same boat. Along with its sister, Oriental Tug No. 2 has been terribly neglected whilst in Liberia and requires extensive repairs at Las Palmas. The 11-day trip becomes particularly memorable due to a funnel fire, the discovery of a stowaway, a wheelhouse that is no longer water-tight and bad weather. En route to Malta they are battered by a violent storm and Roland, the unfriendly rat, is sighted. After a short stay in fly-infested Djibouti, they successfully avoid Somali pirates in the Gulf of Aden and attempt their first crossing of the Indian Ocean which is thwarted by further machinery failure and partial flooding of some cabins. After 13 weeks they arrive in a muddy backwater creek in Singapore where the owner mysteriously declines to show his face. Before sailing from Buchanan the ships were visited by employees of timber companies involved in gun-running and the illegal stripping of Liberia's hardwood forests. Were blood diamonds from Sierra Leone concealed on board? Ex-President Charles Taylor of Liberia is on trial at the Hague - will the truth ever be known?

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Delivering two 38-year-old Mississippi river tugboats halfway around the world from Bahrain to Trinidad would not be every ship master's dream employment. However, for Captain David Creamer, the seven-week voyage of the Justine and Martha was not only unique, but a memorable experience he was unlikely ever to forget or repeat. As the author relates the day-to-day problems that the twelve crewmen encountered while living onboard, the reader is drawn into their world. The discovery of a plague of rats, steering problems, running out of fresh water and running aground in the middle of Sitra port, Bahrain are just some of the difficulties the two old boats encountered on their way to the Caribbean. Rusty water, fuel oil in a toilet, and a fire onboard in the Gulf of Suez were some of the setbacks experienced on the first leg of the voyage.Designed principally for river work and not as ocean-going or deep-sea vessels, the hapless Justine and Martha encountered a short but violent Mediteranean storm on the passage from Port Said to Malta rendering conditions onboard extremely uncomfortable.On the leg of the journey from Malta to Trinidad, they hit more bad weather, partially flooding the Martha. It also became apparent that the fuel taken onboard by both vessels was biologically contaminated. Forced to stop at Gibraltar to clean the fuel tanks, the author and Chief Engineer visited Nerja in Spain, which coincided with the start of the Mardi Gras. Although blessed with good weather for their crossing of the Atlantic, this epic voyage almost ended in disaster just a few meters from the final destination. An explosion from the engine-room, followed by a high-pitched mechanical whining, signalled the end of both engines, leaving the Justine to drift helplessly towards the jagged edges of a ramshackle concrete pier.

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Recollections of an Unsuccessful Seaman was written in 1928/1929 by George Leonard Noake, who wanted to keep himself occupied for the rest of his days after learning of his incurable illness from which he died, aged 42 years, in 1929. Born in 1887, he joined the nautical training establishment, H.M.S. Conway, in 1903 and then served an apprenticeship at sea until 1908 when his detailed memoirs commence with him sailing as a second officer in the European/West African trade. After going ashore to work on a farm between 1913 and 1915, he returned to the mercantile marine in 1915 during the First World War to sail in a number of ships carrying horses, grain and coal. He survived not only being torpedoed in the English Channel, but also making 112 trips between England and Europe on a ship carrying war materials. Subsequently joining one of the largest tankers in the world, he endured a hazardous passage without a naval escort through the Channel to Rosyth to deliver safely the precious oil cargo before hostilities ended. The narrative of his wartime experiences are both harrowing and humorous. The tanker continued to trade in peacetime between Mexico and South America before eventually returning to Hull, where he signed-off to see his family after being away for seven months. War reparations had him travelling out to the East as a passenger to sail as second officer on board a German vessel bound for Europe, where the Depression after the war gave him no hope for further seagoing employment. Borrowing money from a relative in 1921 he bought into a farm before becoming a haulage contractor. On the verge of bankruptcy in 1923, he escaped his creditors by joining a ship bound for Australia as a quartermaster. Luck was on his side and upon his return home, he became master of a `Glasgow Puffer' that had been converted to carry oil. He remained in the employ of the National Benzole Company to take command of three coastal tankers before accepting work as a chief officer on a ship trading in the Mediterranean. His seagoing career as a chief officer ended in 1927 when he was diagnosed with tuberculosis. Readers of this poignant portrayal of life in the 1900s, not only at sea but also ashore, will be thoroughly entertained and moved by the author's experiences and humour. Leonard Noake was undoubtedly a true character, a person who enjoyed more than a tipple or two, a strong supporter of the fledgling unions being born in that era and an unrelenting critic of shipping magnates and their shareholders. The last chapter of the book has been published without correction or editing to permit the reader to make his/her own judgement of Len, his heartfelt style of writing and his passionately held beliefs.

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