North Sea Tales

The tugger winch made its usual squeals and squeaks and grinding mechanical bangs and judders…tightening up the winch wire, until it was judged just tight enough to not damage the container, but tight enough to stop “The Precious” going over the side.

The brake was slammed on, and locked. Job Done!

That bloody troublesome container wasn’t going walkabout across the deck tonight.

“Fuck it, lets get inside, thats everything secured”, The 2nd Mate gestured to the rear of the accommodation block, and with one last carful look at the aft deck, for anything loose, they headed inside.

They entered the ship’s accommodation through a large door, behind the huge anchor handling winches, at the rear of the ship’s accommodation block.

The crewman headed for a coffee in the crew’s mess-room, and the 2nd Mate headed up to the bridge, as he had the 6pm to midnight watch.

On the bridge, however, he was not going to be on his own, until the vessel was safely out of the harbour.

The Skipper, the chief officer/Mate, the Chief Engineer, and the pilot were all up there, doing a peculiar and well rehearsed dance in the confined space of the forward wheelhouse.

From years of perfecting this dance, everyone knew just where to stand to not be in each other’s way, but still be monitoring and operating the controls, switches, machinery etc, to enable the vessels operations to be carried out.

The Pilot knew he was basically controlling the ship’s progress through the harbour. The Skipper was manoeuvring at the controls, to the Pilots instructions, but ultimately was in command.

The Chief Engineer was at his console monitoring the engines and ancillary systems, and remotely operating winches etc, as ordered.

The Mate and Second Mate jobs were to secure everything, and prepare the charts, radio frequencies, navigation equipment, lights etc, in darkness, and silence.

Yes all done in near darkness, as just like in a car, any lighting on the inside, interferes with the view outwards. The windows of the wheel house/Bridge were angled at 60 degrees from vertical, to ensure reflected lights didn’t confuse the navigators within, with extraneous lights.

The Mate had just come in from stowing the forward ropes and like the second Mate was just getting out of his heavy weather gear, leaving it by the outside door to the bridge.

Coffees were handed out, by the thoughtful Chief, this was a good crew, who thought about each other, always planning ahead, using their experience to help prepare for whatever was going to be thrown at them by the job, the sea, whatever….

The loud thrumming of the ten thousand horses below in the engine room confirmed that the ship had all its engines running perfectly, ready for whatever awaited them beyond the harbour’s safety.

The Pilot held out his hand.