The Birth of Sequential Formation Skydiving

Sequential Formation Skydiving was introduced in 1976, as the third generation of group free fall competitions

(The first generation was free fall relay: «baton pass», in use in the

late 1960’ies, – the second generation was free fall speed star: 10-man star formations on time, in use in the early 1970’ies.)

This is the story of how the sequential competition format came about, and who were the persons to bring it to the World scene.

The FAI – the “World Air Sport Organisation” – is the international institution that registers all kinds of aviation and space records, from spacewalks down to model aircraft, and authorises (sanctions) international competitions in aviation sports – particularly World Championships. FAI was established i 1905, so it has has been around for 112 years.

FAI oversees aviation sports through International Air Sport Commissions, one for each sport branch. Parachuting has been included since 1936, when the Commission International de Parachutisme (CIP) was established, so it has been included for just over 80 years.

Parachuting involves a number of competition forms , which are governed by subcommittees – the one involving groups manoeuvring in free fall were known under the name “relative work” – RW for short. In 1988, the CIP swithed acronym to IPC (english) and RW was renamed “Formation Skydiving” – FS.

The Start

Triple baton pass team (flour way) Elsinore, 1959

In the late 1960’ies, FAI’s parachuting section dabbled with some advanced frefall competition exercise called “baton pass”. It was used at the Adriatic Cups in Yougoslavia, but not much more. At the beginning of the 1970’ies, however, the idea of group freefall competitions was brought up, as a result of the widespread skydiving pastime of “star building”. The building of 10-way ”stars” was particularly popular in the USA.

In 1972, the CIP created a five member RW Subcommittee with Eilif Ness (Norway) as chair. At this time, the dominating competition forms were «style» – individual free fall maneuvering, and «accuracy» – precision landing. An intense fight ensued: as usual, it was the Rebels against the Established, the latter not wanting to share their glory monopoly with others. It didn’t help much that the Rebels had a reputation as unruly, long haired pot smokers.

The Breaktrough

The CIP went for the most common variety, building a 10-man star in the shortest possible time. Early on, it became clear that many small nations were unable to raise large teams, mostly due to lack of access to large aircraft. This was resolved by designing a competition format for a group of four: a four-man star – all four back-loop separately – build a new four-man star, the whole sequence in the shortest possible time.

It was the US who managed the coup that broke through the barrier. People like Norman Heaton, Bill Ottley (RIP), Chuck McCrone (RIP) and others, got someone high up in the US to say: “OK, let them use Sicily Drop Zone and a couple of Chinooks for a few days”. Which resulted in the first RW World Cup at Fort Bragg – a 10-way speed star / 4-way event.

First RW World Cup: French team loading up in CH-47 Chinook at Sicily Drop Zone, Fort Bragg, North Carolina, USA

14 nations participated, all Western. Please remember that this was at the height of the Cold War – which was very cold at the time – it was the Angels against the defined emeny: the Soviet Bloc – it permeated every aspect of life – the world of sports very much so. In the case of parachuting competitions, the Soviets didn’t want any new fangled activities.

The US won the Fort Bragg meet, with a funny team called “Jerry Bird’s All Stars”, who beat the French by a narrow margin. With that, the wall was broken. The year after, the Angels outvoted the Soviet Bloc in the International Parachuting Commission – the IPC (CIP it was called then) – authorising a World Championship in RW, to be held in Warendorf, West Germany, in 1975.

Rod Murphy,South Africa, RW Subcommittee member 1974

Thanks to efforts by South Africa, the development continued. South African Rod Murphy was a member of the RW-committee, and the South African situation at the time, with international boycotts growing, made for official domestic support. The organised RW Cup no. 2, in Wonderboom, Pretoria in 1974. Once more it was 10-way speedstar + 4-way. Again Jerry Bird captained the winning team, ”Wings of Orange”.

The first RW WPC

That first RW WPC in Warendorf, West Germany, became the only one to feature speed star / 4-way event. 23 nations entered teams, still, all were from the West only. The 10-way event was won by the US team – Captain Hook’s Sky Pirates – with Australia in 2nd place and the French. – surprisingly – in third place (they were placed to win, but blew the last jump).

But something else happened at Warendorf.

World RW Championships in Warendorf, West Germany, 1975

During the meet, a strange group of 16 Americans showed up, who called themselves the US Freefall Exhibition Team, outside the competition. They got two Hueys to lift them to 12,000 feet, and proceeded to make not only a 16-way diamond, but to do a two-point sequence with it. It left us all speechless.

The main architect behind many of USFET’s dives was one of its members, Skratch Garrison – a quiet, low voiced philosopher with a very creative mind. He inspired another one of the team, a long haired, mustachioed 23-year old: B.J. Worth, a gifted young man with an immensely productive mind.

BJ came up with the idea of a totally new RW competition format: sequences of different formations – fixed or random – to be scored by the number of formations made within a certain time.

All of us in the IPC RW subcommittee knew at that time that the speed star competition concept was a dead end – soon we would pull 10-ways out of tailgates – we needed something with open ended scoring. I was chair of that Subcommittee at the time, and I invited this young guy to the next IPC meeting i Paris.

The 1976 FAI-CIP Meeting

In February of 1976, at Rue Galilee in Paris, BJ presented his proposals for 4-way and 8-way sequential competition formats – complete with dive pools and everything . It had to be discussed step by step, finally fixing the format for the next WPC in 1977.

A strange session followed. BJ presented his case very convincingly I grew more and more surpsised as I led the delegates through five consecutive votings – all proposals were approved, the Soviet bloc voting Yes throughout (in view of later developments, I am convinced that the Soviet bloc was convinced that it was a fad that would die out).

The end result, however, was that we had eliminated a doomed competition format, and replaced it with an open ended system that subsequently proved its suitability and durability unchallenged throughout the next 40 years.

The «Dive Pool» – pre-determined formations from which each round’s set of manouvres was to be drawn. The ones shown are for 4-way teams. A corresponding Dive Pool was made for 8-way teams.

The Repercussions

That same year, I was invited to the Z-hills Turkey Meet- they wanted me to assess its potential for hosting a RW WPC. Fortunately, I stayed with Jim Hooper (who really hated me for having taken away the speed star, which was his True Love). But at lest he protected me from being killed by the multitudes of 10-way teams present, who were all furious at me for having quashed their event.

At Zephyrhills Turkey Meet 1976, middle: Jan Arvidsson, right: Eilif Ness

Which goes to prove the hard headedness of skydiving populations – at that time they did not recognise a dead-ended concept that was staring them in the face (at that meet, The Herd pulled off a 4-second 10-way jump – in reality signing the event’s death warrant. I, the paper pusher – the rule writer – got the blame, while BJ, the actual inventor of the whole idea – walked unscathed through it all

Testing

Once the new format for Relative Work Skydiving competitions was in place, it was –at that point – untested. It existed on paper only, but we had already made the decision that was binding for the 1977 RW-WPC. Once more, South Africa saved the day: Rod Murphy organised a RW Cup in Oudtshoorn , Southern Cape, in October 1976.

Chief Judge for the event was Charles Shea-Simonds (UK). Participation was limited because South Africa was under intensifying boycott measures, but with entries open, 25 teams from 15 nations entered: 18 teams in 4-way and 7 teams in 8-way teams.

Winning 8-way team at Oudtshoorn 1976
USA – «Baby Up» (BJ center back row)

Among the 4-ways were four South African, three US , three French and two Italian 4-way teams. Of 8-ways, there were two South African, two US (BJ was there with «Baby Up»), one French and two International (mixed) teams. Even if the Soviet bloc had voted for the new format, there was no participation from that corner – the cold war was still cold, and the boycott did not help. This test turned out to be very useful, as it resolved a problem that arose when the top teams overran the 5-point dive pools – it was quickly fixed by repeating the formation sets.

It also turned out to be a watershed in terminology: Due to a French all-girl, 4-way team named the «Pink Panthers» refusing to be called a «four man» team, the RW Subcommittee decided to use the term «way» in stead of «man», i.e. «4-way» and «8-way» replaced «4-man» and «8-man», thereby gender-neutralising all RW events.

Gatton 1977: The first Sequential WPC

As late as the FAI-CIP meeting in Zurich, Switzerland in February 1977, the location for the RW WPC in 1977 was not decided. At that meeting, however, Australia came up with Gatton in Queensland – on the other side of the globe – and won the bid.

FAI-SIP RW Subcommittee 1976: L to R: Curt Curtis, USA. Richard Charter, South Africa (RIP), Eilif Ness, Norway (chair)) , Bert Wijnands, Netherlands, Charles Shea-Simonds (UK0

Again, the entire West turned up, with 19 countries, but none from the Soviet bloc – this time there was no boycott to explain it – it appeared that the East was determined that sequential RW was to be a Western nations event only.

The US won the 8-way, with the team ”Mirror Image”, captained by BJ Worth, with Canada a close second, but winning the 4-way event. Sweden won a surprise silver medal in the 4-way, ahead of USA.

Epilogue

The big international break-through for RW (FS) came in the 1979 RW WPC in Chateauroux, France, as China fielded a full team in both 8-way and 4-way. The Soviet Union sent observers, but no team – no other Soviet bloc country participated. China was the sensation, with 4th place in both in 4-way and 8-way – following a shock opening with 9 points in the first round, ahead of all others – it was close to China winning the 8-way ….

Finally, the East was forced to show up – cold war or not. It was still quite cold, but Gorbatchov’s entry as leader in the Soviet Union started a thaw that would, eventually, normalise the situation …

Life on the High Seas (2)

As recounted in my previous post in «Life on the High Seas» («Rookie Sailor») I spent the first years of my early youth in the merchant navy – just after WW2. Between age 15 and 19 – from 1946 to 1951 – I served on Norwegian ships. By the 1950s, Norway’s merchant fleet was the World’s fourth largest, crewed by 35,000 seamen – 90% of them Norwegians.

Rookie No More

August 1st 1947 we arrived at Amsterdam from Abadan, and 22 of the crew had given notice and were leaving ship. There was a severe shortage of seamen at that time, so that it was clear that we would be short of crew. In a way, that was good news, since, by law, the actual crew would share the wages of any missing crew members as compensation.

As I recounted in my previous tale (Rookie Sailor), I often scrounged turns at the wheel in my spare time ass mess boy, and had done well, so the captain offered to sign me on as a deck hand – and of course I jumped at that chance. As a bonus, he credited me for my time as mess boy, and signed me on as Youngman (which formally required 12 months as deck boy). I was no longer a rookie.

Woman on board!

Our Sparks (the radio operator – officer by rank) was signing off, and the word spread as wildfire: we were to get a female Sparks! This was about the first female radio operator ever in the Norwegian merchant navy – among 35.000 men and more that 800 male radio operators. When the transport arrived at the quay, 30 men hung over the railing to watch her coming up the gangway. She was a real doll, a 19-year old long haired blonde. Everybody drooled, but the Wise Men aft – Bosun, Chips and the Cook – made it clear to the younger ones who drooled the most: ”Forget it – you need an anchor on your sleeve and a meatball in you cap to have any success there …” . They were proven right.

West Indies

I was put on the 4-8 watch. The transition from a mess boy’s gruelling 80-hour work weeks was like going to paradise. One hour at the wheel, one hour lookout on the foredeck (night-time), another hour at the wheel, another lookout – daytime, the lookout turns were replaced by miscellaneous maintenance work.

With most of the new crew aboard (3 hands short) we went from Amsterdam to Aruba (Dutch West Indies at that time) . Entering the roads of St. Nicholas to anchor and wait for loading space, we all lined the railing to admire the (then) world’s largest tanker – the American 28,000 ton dw turbine tanker ”Ulysses” – that dwarfed our 12,000 tons (the newest “Ulysses” – 2005 – is 300,000 tons dw).

Loading at Aruba was quick, about 18 hours, so shore visits had to be maximised – it became dominated by Cuba Libre – rum and coke – the national drink of the West Indies. This resulted in a large portion of our crew landing in the local (Dutch) jail, where they were put in zoo-like cages. Departure approaching, our First officer sent in a shore patrol, who had to buy out the whole gang and hire a bus to get them aboard. Still, at departure we were only five sober people on deck to cast off, two on the poop, two on the foredeck and me at the wheel. The captain was not amused.

A Wayward Sparks

We spent most of the next half year plying between Abadan in the Gulf and European ports. One of these trips we were returning to Abadan from Bristol, and I was on the 8-12 watch at the time. It was the duty of the last watch turn of the day – the lookout – to wake up the 3rd officer for the coming 12-4 watch. When I went in to wake him up I had to step over to shake him – and there was our lovely Sparks, stark naked – they were both asleep. Up on the bridge later, the 3rd officer came up to me and asked me to keep quiet about it. ”OK,” I said, I’ll keep mum” – which I did. But the Wise Men aft were right …

At the Wheel in the Suez Canal

During the trip up fom Abadan in November 1947 the passing through the Suez Canal was to become a very memorable one for me indeed. All ships passing through, both ways, are required to have a Canal Company pilot on board – and the Suez pilots were demanding and choosy. M/T Kollbjørg was fully loaded – 12,000 tons of kerosene, and, on entering the canal’s southern end at Port Tewfik, the captain put me at the wheel.

The pilot looked at me, obviously sceptical, but said nothing, and started out by giving me the courses to steer in points and half-points of compass, not in degrees. The hundreds of books on ships and sailing that I had consumed growing up during the war, a number of them in English, had made me familiar with the points system, so I responded without hesitation in repeating his orders – the pilot soon looked much more satisfied.

When my relief came up to take over after the first hour, the pilot told the captain: ”Keep the helmsman”. That was a right the pilots had, but rarely used – it resulted in my staying at the wheel continuously for five hours, until we tied up at the canal side to let an opposite convoy pass. Those hours remain – to this day – the greatest moment of my life. I had just passed 16 – I didn’t even have hairs on my chest. The captain was all smiles, too.

Trouble in Palestine

Our next trip turned out to be exciting (as well as historical) – we went to Haifa, that time in the British Mandate of Palestine. Israel did not yet exist, but British withdrawal was just around the corner. The Jewish resistance (Haganah) was preparing to take over and establish the new state of Israel, and was harassing the British continuously with bombs and sabotage. Haifa was the terminal of the oil pipeline from Iraq, and very important to the Brits.

Due to the continuous unrest ashore, we were not allowed to leave the ship. While we were anchored in the harbour waiting for a loading space, British warships kept dropping depth charges in the harbour area every 15 minutes to prevent frogmen saboteurs to sink us with limpet charges. ”Kollbjørg” was completely empty, without ballast, and with tank hatches open the ship was like a gigantic bass drum every time a depth charge went off.

Our cargo from Haifa went to Southampton – then another trip to Abadan – it was Christmas before we passed southbound through Suez With a new load of kerosene from Abadan we were ordered to Dublin.

Dublin partying

Our stay i Dublin became quite an experience. I owned a small book of English song texts, and had learned some by heart, among them the Irish folk song Molly Malone. Irish pubs were never known for their reserve, neither for low noise levels, and as soon as the locals found that I could sing Molly Malone – all of it – I no longer had to pay for my drinks. The same happened the next night at a new pub up the street – I must have sung Molly Malone a hundred times those two nights. I believe that it is the only time my voice has brought me benefits.

Going home

The rest of the winter and spring we went up and down between Abadan and North European ports, until we ended up in Hull and loaded a lot of pipes on deck: future steam coils in the tanks in order to convert to crude oil transport – then on to Antwerp. When we turned into June, I had been aboard for 19 months, and had 1500 kroner ($ 300) in a bank in Oslo. On June 25^th, four of us signed off at the Norwegian consulate in Antwerp. The captain provided me with an extra bonus: He certified that I had served 19 months as a deck hand – that would be enough for me to sign on as OS (Ordinary Seaman – lettmatros) next time around.

We paid for a four-berth cheap passenger cabin on the ”Brabant”, a Fred Olsen passenger ship plying between Antwerp and Oslo – it was strange for us to be passengers for a change. (In a twist of fate, this happened to be the very same ship that brought my family and me the same stretch 12 years earlier, when we were passing through as refugees from the Spanish civil war).

Four days later we landed in Oslo, ad I took the train to Fredrikstad – I had wired ahead, so they were prepared. What my Mother was not prepared for was that I was 3 inches taller and 30 pounds heavier than when I left i November 1946 – no fat, all muscles – when I rang the bell at our home that day, it took some time before she recognised me .

Life on the High Seas (1)

Rookie Sailor (1)

After five years of occupied Norway and another year with all kinds of restrictions, I was 15 and seething with desire to get out and see the world. Further trudging through school loomed ahead, fencing me in. At the time, just after WW2, 15-year olds were allowed as deck boys, mess boys, galley boys, wipers etc. So, as soon as I turned 15, in the autumn of 1946, to the chagrin of my parents, I quit school and went to sea. This led to my spending the first few years of my early youth in the merchant navy.

War sailors

At that time, just over a year after Japan surrendered, a majority of the crews still consisted of men who had sailed throughout the war. Many had not been in Norway for 10-15 years. All of them had served in convoy duty, and some had experienced being sunk by torpedoes or mines. Out of the 30 000 Norwegian sailors who served during 1939-1945 war, 3.640 – 12 % – went down with the 706 Norwegian ships that were sunk. Once the wartime losses were replaced, Norway’s merchant fleet was the World’s fourth largest, crewed by 35,000 seamen – 90% of them Norwegians.

I signed on as mess boy on the tanker ”Kollbjørg”, Odd Berg, owners. I was one of a group of 20 relief crew that included three deck officers. We were to replace those out of the crew of 41 who were leaving ship in Stockholm. From the train station, we were taken down to the harbour. ”Kollbjørg” was lying at anchor, so we went out to her by tugboat in the early morning. We were shown our cabin and bunks, and we two mess boys were ordered to don working clothes right away, and put to work 20 minutes after we set out feet aboard.

norsol — Motor tanker «Kollbjorg», 12800 tons deadweight, built in Belfast 1943.

Straight to work

The work was to deal with the three mess rooms aft, one for the deck hands (11 men), one for the engine hands (9 men) and one for the NCOs (5 men). I landed the deck hands’ mess. 11 men had just finished breakfast, and on the table there remained two trays with altogether 11 (cold) fried eggs. I asked what to do with those, was told: Dump them! I was 15 years old, came straight from strict rationing in Norway, and had not seen an egg for six years. There was only one thing to do: Eat them! All 11 eggs went down – no problem …

All of the 21 who were left of the previous crew had been sailing throughout the war. One of them had been torpedoed three times – his back was like a plowfield of scars from glass splinters – he had recurring nightmares. Our cook had crossed the North Atlantic 52 times during the war, and had never set foot in a lifeboat except for boat drills. They were all good sailors, and our captain ran a tight ship. Great instructors they all were for a rookie sailor, thorough and strict. It was a hard transition, of course – straight from schoolboy to grown up practically overnight.

At sea, the war was still on

From Stockholm we went on to Antwerp. On the oceans, the war was still going on in grisly reality. Mines were floating around by the hundreds – we went the whole way at reduced speed along a buoyed channel that was being kept free from free loose mines by mine sweepers. The wages reflected the war situation. As mess boy I had 154 kroner ($ 28) per month basic wage, on top of that came 100 % for war risk and an extra 50 % for tanker risk, altogether 385 kroner ($ 77), a hefty salary at that time.

The trip to Antwerp took four days with winter storms and head seas. In the merchant navy there are (were) two kinds of ailments not considered valid excuses for not working: Hangover and seasickness. The cure for both is food and hard work. As soon as we hit open sea, I became terribly seasick. When I was at my worst, they put one of the deck hands to keep watch on me – I was not allowed to slink off for a single minute. He kept force-feeding me so that I always had something to throw up. I was allowed to creep into my bunk 9 at night, where I passed out until 6 in the morning. Then the same torture was repeated: get up, eat, throw up, carry food from the galley, throw up, wash up, throw up more … If I had been able to, I would have jumped overboard. After three days of this regime, the seasickness disappeared – and I was never seasick again on that ship.

Later, I found that the cure is good for one ship only – aboard a new ship, you become seasick again, but usually much milder and with a speedy acclimatisation. This is due to each ship having a different motion at sea. However, on every ship there is one place where you are never seasick regardless of the seaway: at the wheel. The feeling of control and your close attention to the ship’s every move eliminates any seasickness.

Antwerp

We stayed in an Antwerp shipyard for five weeks of continuous noise and dirt. ”Kollbjørg”s armaments from the wartime convoys had been removed earlier – one 105 mm aft and one 75 mm on the fore-deck, four 20 mm pom-poms on amidships (and cabins for 12 gunners aft) – but the gun platforms and gun placements remained and had to be removed, and the ship dry docked for re-certification. Wooden decks were installed on top of the steel decks aft and amidships.

Then (and now) Antwerp is a real shipping city – a huge commercial port with more than 100 kilometres of quays. All along the quays there were ample offers of entertainment, including the whorehouse street of Schipperstraat. A bar with the Norwegian name ”Fattige Augusta” (Poor Augusta) was close to the dry dock, and became the main hangout for our crew every night.

As rookies, we were shown the ropes by our elder shipmates, including some ground rules for taking care of ourselves, such as: ”Never trust anyone you don’t know, don’t use a wallet, never keep all your money i one pocket – spread it around in different pockets, never get drunk alone, if you desire female company, do it while sober and drink later (never the other way around), and stay away from fights». All advice useful for an eager 15-year old.

Style

Style (”steil” in Norwegian) are the unwritten laws that govern conduct aboard ships. They vary from ship to ship, but some ground rules ar fixed. Style governs everything: When the coffee breaks are for the day crew, that deck hands use the cabins on the port side of the ship and the engine hands use the starboard ones, the laying up of ropes and lines, there are style rules for everything. One set of styles are for sea use, i.e. when the ship is under way, another set rules things when the ship is in port.

At sea: never lock the door of your cabin – for two reasons: One is the psychological one: Anyone who locks his door does not trust his shipmates. A practical reason: a collision or an explosion may cause the door to be stuck, and locked doors are harder to open (there was still a real risk for hitting mines – the war ended only a year previously). Never enter a mess room without a shirt, or t-shirt on – no sleeveless (singlets or tank tops) allowed. It was bad style to be smelly. Showers were put to good use – cleanliness aboard Norwegian ships was high.

Basic style was «no alcohol at sea». You may be as drunk as you wish when the ship is in port, but not at sea – valid for all ships and all aboard. No homoexuals! – this was enforced with zero tolerance on all ships . At the smallest sign, the culprit was thrown ashore in the next port. Everybody had to learn and abide by the declared style for the ship.

In port: Always lock your cabin door, and keep all strangers out of mess rooms, cabins and corridors – never invite aboard anyone who does not belong to the ship into cabins or mess rooms. The mess rooms are sanctuaries for eating, coffee drinking and card games. No drinking of alcohol in the mess rooms, and no binge drinking in the cabins – «drink on shore!» Never bring women aboard – not only do you run the risk of being robbed, but you also expose your shipmates to the same risk. Such needs are to be taken care of ashore.

On commencing service on another ship, new rules might apply and had to be learned – the basic rules, however, were the same all over the Norwegian merchant navy.

Suez

We left Antwerp in January 1947 for Suez. The Bay of Biscay stretch, from Ouessant til Finisterre, was gales and head sea all the way, and an empty tanker is extremely uncomfortable. In the aft mess rooms wet table cloths kept plates and cutlery in place, even if the worst heaves created close to negative G. The cure that I had previously undergone proved to be good – I went through the ordeal without problems.

12 days out of Antwerp we arrived at Port Said, my first encounter with the chaos that surrounds the Suez canal ( in 1947 max. allowed draught was 35 feet, ships under 25 000 tons dw). We were surrounded by bumboats and boarded by a horde of Arabs who peddled all kinds of goods around on deck. ”Gamla Moses” (Old Moses) was in charge of the bumboats – he was generally trusted by Norwegian ships, and managed to keep the worst of the rascals away.

The new Suit

One of the sellers was a tailor. He hooked me, measured me up and down, and offered to have a nice brown pinstripe suit ready for me when we came back from Abadan up through Suez again, in about a month – 12 Egyptian pounds down, 12 by delivery (500 kroner) – more than a whole months wages, but the captain said it was OK and logged me for it. As it turned out, we did not go to Europe again from Abadan – we were directed to Freemantle in Western Australia, then from Abadan to Madras, after that to Chittagong in Bengal and then Bombay. More about that later.

Life aboard

Most ships at the time – the forties and fifties – both tankers and cargo vessels – had crew accommodations both amidships and aft. The officers’ quarters were amidships, everyone else lived aft (the poop). Tankers had the galley and the large mess rooms aft. On «Kollbjørg» we were 30 sailors under deck aft, in two-man cabins with bunks over/under – the deck hands on the port side and the engine hands on the starboard side.

Air condition was barely invented, and nonexistent in the merchant navy. Cabin ventilation was by an air duct with two nozzles in each cabin – with all in use, the ventilation was zero. There were wind scoops that you could stick out of the portholes to catch the wind, weather permitting. The ship’s freeboard determined the use of the portholes – fully loaded, a tanker is so low in the water that the seas swamp the tank decks even in good weather. In heavy seas the portholes had to stay closed.

We spent more than half the time in the tropics – sometimes months on end. Real cold we experienced only when in Northern Europe in winter. As soon as we had passed Suez south bound, we dragged our mattresses up on the boat deck and slept beside the life boats – you just had to watch the ship’s course and avoid being woken up by the morning sun. Life on the boat deck was only interrupted when we were in port – then we had to stay in our cabins below deck.

At the Wheel

I soon found out that if I sneaked up on the bridge and the weather was nice, the officer of the watch would let me take over the wheel form the helmsman for a while. The helmsmen didn’t mind a spell of relief, and the officers liked that I showed such interest. Autopilots didn’t exist at the time – the wheel had a direct hydraulic connection to the steering gear that was located aft, and the steering was pretty direct. Fully loaded, the ship’s displacement (weight) was about twenty thousand tons – empty about eight thousand. A fully loaded tanker and an empty one were two totally different animals. Fully loaded the ship’s response was sluggish, and it took a lot of experience to foresee the ship’s reaction to the wheel. There were many tricks to be learned in order to maintain a straight wake – the sign of a good helmsman.

As time went on, I took on such spells at the wheel quite often, mostly on Saturdays and Sundays so as not to be accused of failing in my mess duties. As I acquired the skills, I was allowed to stay at the wheel in rougher weather also, so, as the months passed, I became quite good at it. The captain was pleased, and in the end he let me handle the ship in heavy weather, learning me to use preemptive rudder and counter-rudder and foresee how much and to what side the ship would veer in the next wave – it became intuition-like.

Gasoline

At this time, «Kollbjørg» hauled gasoline, which was only possible because she was a young ship, less than six years old. Gasoline generated heavy rusting of the tank walls and ship’s sides. The last 10-12 days before we were to load a new cargo, «wind men» were rigged – great canvas ducts that led the wind down into the tanks to drive out the gases. After that, tank cleaning was carried out manually. 28 separate tanks were emptied for thick flakes of rust and sludge that was hoisted up and emptied overboard.

The process eroded the tank walls and the hull (this was long before double hulls were introduced) – the steel was gradually eaten up in 5 to 6 years. From 1948 onward, we switched to kerosene, and later to light fuel oil – after 8 years, however, steam coils had to be installed to haul crude oil, which had to be heated.

When we carried high octane aviation gasoline and leaded gasoline for cars special attention was required in the tropics. The tropical sun led to very high temperatures in the decks and tank tops. Sea water had to be pumped on deck in daytime – which helped, even if the sea temperatures in the tropics stay around 30 to 35 degrees C round the clock.

Back to Europe

When we finally got a cargo for Europe we had been south of Suez for 6 months. Back in Port Said I was handed my elegant brown suit and a bill for the remaining 12 pounds.

The snag was that during that half year I had grown two inches and gained 20 pounds in weight – my arms and legs stuck miles out of the new suit. The captain said that it was not the tailor’s fault that I had grown like beanstalk, nor that Kollbjørg returned 5 months too late – so, the tailor got his remaining 12 pounds. The super new suit I sold a few months later to a pawnbroker in Antwerp – one useless lesson wiser.

Life on the High Seas (3)

As recounted in previous posts in «Life on the High Seas» I spent the first years of my early youth in the merchant navy – just after WW2. Then, 15-year olds were allowed as deck boys, mess boys, galley boys, wipers etc. I served on various ships betwen 1946 and 1951. By the 1950ies, Norway’s merchant fleet was the World’s fourth largest, crewed by 35,000 seamen – 90% of then Norwegians.

Burial at sea

By 1949 I had come to serve on the 12,800 ton (dw) tanker ”Trondheim” (Hjalmar Bjørge, owners). She was built at Eriksbergs in Gothenburg in 1939, with a 3600 hp two-stroke, double-acting Burmeister & Wain diesel engine.

The «Trondheim” had an impressive war history: from 1941 to 1945 she served continuously in convoys between the US and the UK, carrying gasoline and kerosene, chalking up over 30 two-way trips across the pond, escaping unhurt. January 1946 she was returned to her owners and served them until 1952, when she was sold to Italy – she was scrapped in 1965.

At the time I served on her, we mostly plied between Abadan in the Persian Gulf and North European destinations, carrying light fuel oil. In August, however, we made a return trip Abadan-Aden: a 9-day trip each way. One of my 40 shipmates was an 18 year old mess boy – let me call him Kjell. 5 days out of Abadan he came to play the lead part of a four-act drama:

Act 1:

Kjell suddenly became ill. He developed high fever and became delirious. One thigh swelled up and became discoloured. The captain radioed a nearby Pakistani passenger ship out of Karachi, the Muhammadi Line’s S/S “Al Ahmadi” (as I remember), who had a doctor on board. She made a short detour, and her doctor was put over to us in a launch.

Act 2:

The doctor (who was British) examined Kjell, who was unconscious – he quickly determined that it was too late – Kjell died an hour later. We were told (I cannot vouch for the veracity of this) that Kjell had lied about his diabetes (which would have prevented him from serving at sea), and that he had brought a supply of insulin and syringes, and that by accident, a needle had broken inside his thigh.

Act 3:

Our captain radioed Aden’s harbour authorities (Aden was still British at the time) informing them that we had a corpse on board, to bury on shore. Aden authorities blankly refused – no corpse to be put ashore in Aden! So, it became a burial at sea – the only one I have experienced.

Act 4:

Kjell’s body was sewn into a Norwegian flag with weights, and placed on a board on top of the lower deck railing. Engine stopped, the “Trondheim” drifted slowly in the long, lazy swells, there was just a waft of a breeze. We were at 18 N and 59 E, the Indian Ocean was intensely blue, the water crystal clear – depth is 3700 metres there.

We stood around in a semi circle, bare headed, the captain recited the Lord’s Prayer, the board was tipped over, and Kjell disappeared into the clear, blue deep – flag and all. It was a solemn moment, one of those that etch into memory.

PS: Traditionally, the corpse should have been sewn into a weighted canvas shroud and the flag attached to the board, to remain on board. Making the arrangements, however, our carpenter didn’t like that idea – he felt the boy was worth a flag. So did the captain.