The Vessels have got smaller over the last 40 years.

 I did say I would put something on this blog even though we are not out boating at the moment. Our lack of boating is due to be extremely busy with other projects. The first of this has just started so I thought I would share a little of it with you here.

It is the 40th Anniversary of the Falklands Conflict and as the coincidence of this, in which I took part, and the need for an exhibition at the small museum in our town, Hedon near Hull, of which I am a trustee, meant that I stepped forward to produce something.

The Mayor of Hedon at the time was Henry Vies Suggit MM, JP., and he presented all the men from the town who took part in the conflict a tankard. I thought that it would interesting to track down these tankards and try to reunite the recipients. There were no records of who received one, but with a couple of photos and local social media and press I managed to track down 11 of 12 that seem to have been awarded. Not everybody wanted to be involved, and there is one person I have not been able to identify and track so far.

It turns out that H. V. Suggit was a WWII war hero himself. He was badly injured at the retreat to Dunkirk and captured. Once a prisoner of war he managed to escape five time! The stories of the men down in the Falklands was full of sinkings, salvage attempts, near misses, beach landings, boredom and tedium and hopefully I have managed to show this in the exhibition.

I don't feel able to share the others stories on this blog but I can give you mine.

In April 1982 I had just completed my Chief Officer's Certificate of Competency exams and was looking forward to a few weeks off before returning to sea. The British Merchant Navy was in terminal decline at the time through containerisation and foreign competition. I was going out with a girl from Wakefield at the time and my folks were living and working in New Zealand. I was in the West Riding helping her Dad with his cattle and other work around the place he had when one early evening there was a phone call. I was quite surprised when I was told it was for me! It turns out that it was my company, Ocean Transport and Trading (the group name for such shipping companies as Blue Funnel, Glen Line, Elder Dempster, Hendsersons, Guinea Gulf and part of Ocean Containers Limited). I was asked if I would join a ship the next day? I said that I was looking for a few weeks off and they replied that it is purely voluntary but they couldn't guarantee me a job when I wanted to come back. I said I would go but as I wasn't at home I would have to go home and get my kit first. I still have no idea how they got the telephone number!! They agreed to this and hired me a car for the next day from home.

I was to drive to East Midlands airport and catch a flight from their to Cornwall to be taken to Falmouth to join the vessel with the other crew. As it turns out there was a massive pile up on the M1 and I missed the flight. I was directed to keep the car and drive all the way to Falmouth. I got their quite late at night and the next morning at an early breakfast I met the rest of the crew before being taken to the river and been taken up to our vessel that was moored between buoys in lay up.

MV Lycaon being assisted to the buoys on the River Fal for lay-up just a week before we boarded her.

The phone call came on the 21st and we boarded her on St. George's Day 23rd April.

The ship had a Blue Funnel name but an Elder Dempster Funnel! As sign of strange trading patterns in the then economic climate.

We had learned that the vessel had been STUFT (Ships Taken Up From Trade) by the British Government to assist the military in any Falklands campaign that developed. We were under the impression at the time, I'm not sure why, that we were just delivering stores to Ascension Island. It took us a few days to get everything on line again and we then sailed for Southampton. As we entered the port the local news was on the TV and radio and stated that we were arriving and would be immediately loading ammunition for the Falklands Task Force. Immediately there was a queue at the Mates and Master's cabins with requests to be replaced! As it was 'purely voluntary' they had to be allowed to leave and replacements found sharpish.

LYCAON was built at the Kherson ship yard on the Russian Black Sea. She was a Dnepr class vessel. She was purchased by China Mutual Steam Navigation Co. Ltd (Blue Funnel) as as quick way of boosting container carrying capacity (and quite cheaply).

11,750 GT, Length 533’ (162m), beam 72’9” (22.2m), depth 30’ (9.1m). Engine 10,600 BHP for 18kts.

She was completed in December 1976 and was later registered in Liverpool. Despite owned by ‘Blue Funnel’ her buff funnel was for Elder Dempster Ltd another shipping line within the company. She was sold in August 1985 and after several changes she arrived at Alang Beach in India for breaking up in March 1998.

All Blue Funnel’s ships were named from classical Greek legend or history.

Railway wagons arrived alongside the vessel and the stores were lifted aboard. There appeared to be no loading plan, and certainly no stowage plan so we had no idea where everything was, and not even what much of it was? We hoped that somebody did! As this was going on they were also fitting a RAS mast. This was the point on the vessel that allowed Replensihment At Sea between vessel running on parallel course via a wire to run a cargo net of hose for fuel/water. More and different radio equipment was being fitted and more accommodation was added to take the extra bodies we would be carrying.

Lt. Commander David J. Stiles joined us and we became Navy Part 1900. when we sailed we had Royal Fleet Auxiliary radio officers, several RN staff, An Army Ammo. Technician, a troop of Royal Electirical and Mechanical Engineers and half a dozen Royal marines, plus our own crew of course.

Our main cargo appeared to be of 4.5" shells for the Royal Naval Guns on the ships. There were all sorts of other things too; pallets of hand grenades 105mm army artillery shells, land mines, sea mines, missiles, 1000lb bombs and much more besides. More soberingly there were many pallets of black body bags and crates of formaldehyde!

We finally sailed on 4th May. Once in the Western Approaches we were straight into a practise RAS with an RFA tanker. It was 'novel' to sail on a parallel course with another ship at about 6 or 8 knots just a couple of hundred feet away. It required the best helmsman and concentration. It turned out to be the only time we would carry out this operation.

We headed south and headed for Freetown in Sierra Leone. Elder Dempster's main shipping routes were to West Africa and I had been to Freetown several times in the past. We were there to take fuel and water and a few fresh stores. Usually it is a manic time as many of our crews were from the port and there would families coming and going along with the dock workers and plenty who were just there to see what they could nick! Not this time; an armed guard was placed at the foot of the gangway and if there was no name on the list nobody got aboard. It was heaven, rather than having to guard every thing and running around trying to keep order. We were only their a day before heading off once again, this time heading to the South Atlantic staging post Ascension Island.

The theory of zig-zag patterns

On the passage Lt. Cmd Stiles was training us up to Navy ways and methods, one of which was how to work in a convoy. We practiced zig zag patterns as above. They are designed to make it difficult for submarines and aircraft to plot and guess your future position. Basically there is a book full of different patterns that have different code names. as in the picture above the actual course set is not the actually direction of progress that the vessel is making. It looks simple enough, and if the time between each change of course is hours it is easy. However if the time between each alteration is a matter of minutes and the change of direction acute, and other ships of the convoy are close by, if you don't all do the same at the same time it can easily result in collisions or worse. There is a zig zag clock that every ship in the convoy starts at a synchronised time and so execute the changes at exactly the same time.

We learned what to do as officer of the watch when action stations were called under different conditions, such as when enemy surface vessels, submarines aircraft and missiles were seen. There wasn';t alot an unarmed ship could do but we were drilled repeatedly in them. I was the ship's navigating officer so all this dodging about was a nightmare to keep track of so that you knew where you were. And don't forget that these were the days before Satellite Navigation. Between sun or star fixes or distance and bearings from known points on land we had to DR or dead reckoning when you just plot the course and speed and if possible a guess as to what the drift of the vessel would be due to currents etc.

Yes it is me, on my previous ship, and I wasn't posing but taking the morning sight to run up to noon, (for those that may understand that).

We arrived to anchor of Ascension Island, along with plenty of other ships of the task force. There was much coming and going of helicopters and craft as more stores were loaded and others transferred to other vessels. We passed on some of the small arms ammunition and gained more missiles that were flown into to Wideawake Airfield, that at this time became the busiest airfield in the world.

Was this to be the calm before the storm?