Book Review: Voyage East

Ex-Beatle Ringo Starr recently made the headlines by saying he missed nothing about his home city of Liverpool. It is indeed a city that is short of admirers, but there is one thing it was rightly famous for, and that was its shipping lines. And arguably the greatest of those was the Blue Funnel Line.

Ok, maybe I'm more than a little biased given it was founded by a great-to-the-something relative, but it seems that I'm not alone, and the Voyage East would be one of the exhibits in my defence.

This book describes the journey by a ship of the Blue Funnel Line in the last days of Britains once great mercantile fleet. There isn't a precise date as its an amalgamation of several journeys - I'm guessing around 1960 - into one, with names changed to protect the innocent.

Not that there were many innocents among the crew, for this book makes it clear the reputation of the merchant seaman was well earned, and the description of the temptations of shore are graphic, together with the risks and fears of STDs.

It makes a great companion to a book previously reviewed, namely the Surgeon's Log. There are strong echoes of this earlier book in Voyage East and I wouldn't be surprised if Richard Woodman, its author, was familiar with it. He seems well read, often quoting the likes of Conrad, just as the Surgeon's Log was frequently quoting my favourite buccaneer, William Dampier. 

In both cases the journey starts and ends in what was the great port of Liverpool, taking in the Suez Canal, Singapore, Bangkok, Hong Kong, Japan and back again via the Philippines and Borneo. The boat has a rich but realistic cast of "characters" from the old man, known as China Dick (and for a reason), the Mate (from the old school - efficient and married to the romance of the sea), to the engineers and deck hands. 

I really enjoyed it, and felt it captured the reality of that life, the hardship of endless watches and loss of roots that comes from continual travel, balanced by the wonders of strange lands and those experiences of the sea worth remembering: perfect sunsets and endless stars at night.

In the end the British merchant navy was to be destroyed not by war or angry seas but a metal box. For the soulless container ship operating under flag of convenience would make the general cargo ship an anachronism.

But there are many that morn its loss, and there are those Blueys still out there with memories of derricks and cargo storage, carrying anything from palm oil to the kitchen sink through storms and typhoons.

And I'm sure they will look back on those days with affection and read this book with a smile of recognition

Book Review 3: The Surgeon's Log

This weekend I've kept my upper lip stiff and my shirts starched while had a spot of tiffin with the natives as sailed from Liverpool to Yokohama courtesy of "The Surgeon's Log".

It was an unexpected delight. I picked it up without great expectations in a local charity shop, but it turned out to be a bit of a minor classic. Its a travelogue, written in 1911 about the experiences of one Dr James Johnston Abraham on board the S.S. Clytemnestra between January and June 1907, and which went on to have over 30 re-prints.

Only there wasn't an S.S. Clytemnestra. After a bit of Googling discovered on the forums of this web site that the boat name had been changed to protect the reputation of its crew. Its real name had been the S.S. Polyphemus of the Blue Funnel Line, as pictured above from the book "Ships of the Blue Funnel Line" by M.M.Le Fleming.

Now this got me pretty excited as the Blue Funnel Line was set up by one of my great-to-the-something uncles, and it was wonderful to get a feel for what life must have been like on one of his fleet. Often there was mention of seeing another of the company's ship in a far off port, and the comradeship between the crews.

There was another family connection, as the doc had to hand William Dampier's writing, which he often quoted. The opinions of that "quaintly pious buccaneer", as he was described, were given on topics from water-spouts, to places like Achin, to the taste of the durian fruit.

Some aspects were less encouraging. The views and character studies of the peoples of other nations would be pretty unacceptable nowadays. Basically there is John Bull (solid, adventurous, brave, active etc), John Chinaman (respected as ok in a hard working way) and then the rest, Johnny Foreigner (misguided, devious etc). Having said that a Google for "cheese eating surrender monkeys" returns over 60,000 links, so maybe we haven't progress that far.

But there are signs his views changed as the voyage went along. In Penang on the way out he admired the white formal dress of the Brit abroad; but by the return journey in Java he was suggesting that the native dress was far superior for the climate. By then he was also more receptive, and able to spot the subtleties of local architecture and drama.

My copy of the book was illustrated with 16 photographs, though the first edition had more. One that was missing, but found on the Ships Nostalgia forum, was particularly touching. One of the ship's officers had a romance with a Japanese girl called Ponta, and there a photo (below) of her and her friend walking down the street, with umbrellas to protect against the heat of the day.

I wonder what happened to the author and what romances he had. He dedicates the book to "My Australian Wife" and my copy was published in Melbourne, where co-coincidentally I should be in a few weeks.

There is a wonderful sense of what life must have been like to have been a privileged European touring the world and getting a glimpse of life of so many other cultures. In those days wind jammers - tall ships as we would call them - still sailed the sea. Opium was not banned, just subject to a Government monopoly.

Life was indeed very different then, over a hundred years ago, in the days when you didn't have lunch - you had tiffin.