North Sea Tales

One slip, and they were in the oggin (The Sea), and probably crushed between their own pilot boat, and the unforgiving cold steel hull of the ship, their bodies, crushed and battered and split, then sucked down into the huge propellers, to be chewed up, and washed away like some old trawlers gutted fish, discarded, finished….

The irony was that in all probability, he would be found, in one of the usual harbour holes (deeper places in the harbour) by their fellow pilots and crew of the pilot boats, who had a habit of fishing bodies out of the harbour, due to their boats being low in the water, and out and about at all hours.

The pilot was escorted to the wheelhouse, on old tradition stemming from the fact that most of the crews and officers of the UK North Sea supply vessels were left overs from the old defunct British deep-sea merchant navy.

Traditionally “The Pilot” had the local knowledge, and knew exactly what was going on in the Port, or River etc, and he was needed on the bridge of the ship as quickly as possible, so it made sense and was courteous to have him safely transferred to the ship’s wheelhouse/bridge in a timely fashion.

If the vessel was arriving from sea, entering a strange/foreign port or river estuary the pilot climbed up a dangling rope ladder designed in the distant mists of time, out at sea, with the only protection from waves swell, and wind being afforded by the hull of the ship.

Very risky and dramatic, but nothing better had been figured out in a century at least….!

Large modern ships were often a maze of corridors and stairs leading to nowhere, meaning the pilot could often get lost. Not what you want when reefs and rocks are lurking sometimes only centimetres below the keel, and there is no convenient handbrake to apply…!

So…

On the bridge the pilot was not his jovial self.

“You sure you want to sail in this, Skipper?”

The Skipper: ”Are you closing the port?”

Simple enough conversation, but there were, of course, politics involved.

The Pilot was making sure he asked the Captain if he was agreeing to sail his vessel into the wild murky night. The Captain was saying, it must be safe, as the harbour control has not closed the Port.

If you were of a cynical persuasion the perceived “Elephant on the bridge” was that Aberdeen harbour didn’t operate on strictly logical grounds, i.e….? There was not a set of parameters with wind weather and tide, etc that meant that the harbour was always going to be closed if set conditions occurred.

Aberdeen harbour, and Aberdeen itself relied almost completely on the Oil Industry, and that “Industry” had certain key players. These players had enormous power, over peoples careers, even whole companies futures, even the continued use of Aberdeen as the main commercial port for the North Sea. There were other Ports who coveted the wealth and property Aberdeen was enjoying.

So, “The Elephant” wasn’t saying anything!