ForumGarden

:-6

Hallo there, randall here, waving the flag,

There are many stories that seamen can tell but don't because "landlubbers" simple wont believe them so why waste time and try.

I was asked to go to join the anchor handling vessel "Atco Hind" (ex "Maersk Trader; I believe) in Rastanura on the Persian Gulf side of Saudi.

It is purely an oil port owned by ARAMCO - Arabian American Oil Corp. With is own PX and airfield although I was doomed never to see them.

I jumped at the chance because my daughter and her husband had just moved out to Saudi a few months earlier. "That's great," I said stupidly. "I'll be able to see my daughter."

The first thing I found out was that I was not even allowed to telephone her!

There is a white line painted parallel to the edge of the quay with large signs posted every few yards which bluntly stated, "Any Seaman Crossing This Line Will Be Shot."

Bedouins, with long rifles lying across the back of their necks and a hand slung over each end walked up and down remorselessly. Shoot first and ask questions afterwards sees to be the law.

One day a poor looking, wizened old man was dusting the dust of the dust on the quayside and suddenly, upon looking up got into quite an excitable state.

He kept shouting at me and pointed up wards - following his arms direction I saw he was looking at the two flags flying from the mast.

One was the Saudi flag and the other our port of registry which, if I remember right was Panama.

As only the master and I were British (Born in Ireland BUT, did you know, that all Irish citizens born up to 1948 had to have British passports???!!!)

"Sure and begrorrah," he said, he was always making jokes at his own country's expense.

"What flag is highest?"

"The Panamanian. It seems to me to be just a little bit higher than the Saudi."

"That's what the poor devils all upset about. Lower our one a bit."

That solved the problem. The guest ship in any nation must never have its own flag higher than the flag of the port it is in.! Political etiquette it is called, I believe.

"He would likely have had us both shot for that." the captain remarked with a grin.

There is nothing stranger under the sun than the experiences of the sea going fraternity

Merchant ships when passing the naval ship of any nation is required to lower it flag flying from the stern and the naval should respond likewise.

I was sorry for a British destroyer steming north through the Suez canal once because the poor rating had to stand by the stern jackstaff and dip the flag to every ship in the convoy going south.

The Suez canal worked on a system of a dozen or so ships steaming either north or south in one convoy. Halfway down the convoy anchored for an hour or so in the "Bitter Lakes" whilst the convoy going the other way passed by.

God Bless.

randall.

randal here Arnold,

Nothing surprises me at what the British government will do to appease all other peoples of the world except their own.

To me, democracy has long disappeared from the British Political scene.

I personally have never ever understood the so called first past the post and isn't it curious that the parties who advocate changing to proportional representation forget about it as soon as they win using the FPTP system.

Recently Anthony Blair tried - TRIED - to justify the efforts of the British Consuls during the New Orleans catastrophe. He needn't have bother. No one believes him anyway.

Going to sea the first thing I was told was never to go the British Consul for ANYTHING - they wouldn't listen and certainly would not help unless you were Lord and Lady so and so.

If all the expariates ( I have been both an expatriate as well as a seaman in the long lost British Empire) and all the seamen of the past fifty years were to write all at once with all their compaints and experiences of "help" from all the consulates all over the world in one week - I think Number 10 Downing Street would be buried under the paper and would notr reappear for a year or more.

One man only recently contacted me and we shared similar experiences such as the great difficulty (no one at home wil believe this ) of obtaining British Passports for your children if they are unfortunate to be born abroad.

He had bee, amost many other thing, Secratary of the Port Sudan Club in the Sudan when it was attacked by rebels. He counted almost three hunred bullet holes in the building - for insurance purposes - and, naturally, because the Sudanese Gavernment cutoff all communications with the outside world, he went to the British Consulate to try and get them to contact his relatives back in Britian to tel them he was alright.

They refused downright to offer him any assistance at all. In desperatition he went ot the US consulate who welcomed him with open arms, gave him as much coffee as he cold drink and showed him into a room which had telephones, computers and fax machines and told him to use them freely to contact all of his relatives and friends and refused any offer of payment?

Immediately after joining the EEC the words spread swiftly around that if you needed any help whatsoever go to the Swedish Embassy as all members of the EEC must help the citizens of any other country in it.

They treat you with kid gloves was a common phrase.

Not so long ago being driven on a sightseeing tour around Dubai by the International Seamens' Club padre we drove past the British Consulate building in its massive gardens.

A voice from the back suddenly said, "Never, ever go near that place unless you have been a very, very very good boy. And I am speaking from experience."

I never found out who said it but he was just reiterating a common belief in the British Merchant Navy that has existed since before I was born.

I remember that after court case in Plymouth or Portsmouth the judge who heard the case was ordered to make a public apology because he called British seamen the "Scum of the gutter".

Nuff said.

God Bless.

randall

Once again Arnold I typed out a letter to you and when I press "SUBMIT" it just disappeared - the second time in two days. Apparently my web server had decided I had done nothing for long enough and switched me off - on broadband too?

What I would like to know is where do these letters disappear to. Lady Cop suggests clicking "New Post" and other offer alternatives but apparently no one really knows - it is as if "SUBMIT" equals "DELETE"

What I wrote is along these lines - if you ever read the life of some head of US Intelligence called Bundy or O'Hara or something like that - you'll likely have to research it.

Anyway, the US newspapers were always taking the mickey out of him as the man who forgot where his money was and the cartoons, some very impolite, always depicted him with a brown paper bag over his head so you never saw his face.

Apparently the Internal Revenue had him in court endlessly trying to find out where his money had come from and where it was now.

I am sure our American friends from the USA will enlighten us.

It mentions in one sentence that he attended (on an official visit to Saudi) Easter Sunday Mass in the Saudi Cathedral.

My daughter spent five fearful years there and never got to the bottom of it.

Rastanura, as I said was a self contained oil town and the British men I spoke to told me that they had heard that another similar town had the only Christian church in Saudi - that I never proved either.

They also said that everyone of there company built flats had a built-in still for brewing their own hooch.

My daughter says that all the Saudis knew it was going on and if she bought a large number of paper cartons of fruit juice the check out man would ask her if she had bought sufficient sugar to make it all into alcohol - what a country!

I, me, myself, sat onboard the ship listening and watching the minister of internal affair on the TV being interviewed by a tough interviewer who brought this question up.

His reply floored me because I had seen and heard of what had happened to some fellow countrymen who were "bad boys".

"We have never said that alcohol is illegal in Saudi." he started to reply, completely unabashed. "We do not stop any one from having alcohol, drinking it in their own home or even making it in their own homes. The only crime is either in transporting it, selling it and giving it to people in their homes."

This explained the notorious booze up parties that were reported in the European press and at which one Irish nurse, I believe was killed when she fell from a balcony - her folks insisted, naturally, that she was either pushed or flung but it is all old news now.

One superintendent told me that one of his chief engineers lost a leg in a wire rope accident and although he he received first class care and treatment in the very well equipped hospital the company had a hundred times the trouble getting his leg out of the country as the Saudis would not allow it to either buried or cremated. "I wish someone had flung it over the side." he said to me.

My daughter had several miscarriages including three in one year but a friend of hers gave birth to a stillborn child and the hospital handed the tiny body to the husband in a supermarket plastic shopping bag and told to get it out of the country as quickly as possible.

When I managed to talk to most common Saudis very much alone, away from anyone, far, far away they told me that they wanted Saddam Hussain to invade Saudi as it was their only hope of getting rid of the Royal Family and the Mullahs who take over 60% of the GNP.

The northeastern Saudis had the same complaint as my ain folk, the oil is on our door step but all the benefits go south.

My daughter, I am convinced, lived in terror for those five years. It took her two years to get a visa for my wife to come out and visit her for a month.

Her husband - him being a male - could get his mother and father out for visits several times a year.

My wife had to wear the jehab or whatever they call that long shapeless black robe that covers everything from the hair to the feet and the religious secret police walked around with long bamboo sicks and if they thought that you were showing far too much ankle or wrist they whacked you across the calves of your legs - they would never lay their hands on a foreign woman - until after she had been arrested for something.

My daughter lived in such fear that my wife missed shaking hands with Nelson Mandela in "CHOP CHOP SQUARE" the place where people are behead with a sword every Friday.

My wife saw a crowd gathering around this tall man towering over everyone else, mainly europeans, and wanted to go over and see but my daughter was so aftraid of doing anything wrong she her pulled away just as my wife recognised Nelson Mandelas face and he signalled to her to come and shake his hand but my daughter pulled her away swiftly.

We are a very lucky family because we have all shared so much in common as my wife travelled extensively with me onboard ships and actually saw my work and almost every place my daughter has been to, either to work or on holiday, we have already been there before they became holiday destinations.

Nuff for now.

God bless.

randall.