I think you will find it was Camerons Strong arm, brewed in British West Hartlepool.

Tony,

Thanks.

Neville

I gave the Radio Room Sealing official some Brylcream to stick the paper across the RR door.
No way was I missing the football results for the crew.

The short answer is: it varied.
On British ships, except for Bank Line, there was nothing to do and no-one seemed to expect the R/O to do anything. Bank Line just loved the R/O to get involved in cargo matters, whether tallying or drawing stowage plans; which was fine by me.

Once 'freelance', however, vast new horizons opened up and one could find oneself dealing with immigration, customs, port authorities and anyone else who represented officialdom. In Bejaia, (Algeria), I represented the ship before a judge because the chief steward had miscounted the cases of cigarettes in the bonded store and a customs officer caught the mistake. In Japan I used to accompany the 'sick list' to the local clinic to act as interpreter so far as I could, and do relevant hand waving when I couldn't.
Anything to help the port call run smoothly; I was never a fan of protracted shore visits.

In the two direct employ British companies that I worked for (Brocklebanks and P&O) you most certainly did not do nothing in port. They expected all preventive maintenance to be carried out, repairs that had not been carried out at sea for whatever reason to be completed, anything to bring the station and equipment up to date. As an example both companies had their own equipment monitoring books which required you to take weekly readings, voltage mainly, at pre designated circuit points throughout the equipment. These were company not manufacturer generated. It was a long time ago but the book for the AEI radars in the mid 60s contained about 50 readings from memory. They were very useful tools in both fault finding but also in what subsequently became called preventive maintenance (PM) where you could see from the readings something was starting to fail.
I am not saying we worked flat out every day in every port but neither did we lock the Radio Room until it came time to sail.

I'd also say that when I got my MED in 75 and joined CP Ships as REO you were expected to earn that extra pay. Had to look after a range of equipment from steering flat, through the engine room and with regard to the chemical tankers the cargo control room and tanks for the level monitoring systems.

When they made the decidedly bad decision to take the Leckies off the ships that workload was increased for both myself, the Third Engineer and the Chief. You didn't get that much time in port anyway on those ships. So in that last ten years from 76 to 86 there was plenty to do.

British Ropes (my mother used to work for them, late 40's early 50's)

Greetings Sparky1 and welcome to SH. Bon voyage.

GKA used to keep skeds with vessels in port, with any to-ship traffic being transmitted blind twice (once daily) before being held awaiting QSL. This was "Point 43" and an assigned duty. If no skeds were arranged on your watch then normal HF working took place. It was a very manually-intensive duty and depended on the sked being held at the Bureau position and any associated traffic being linked to it. In the new (post-1982) building it was a bit easier with traffic being held electronically and released to the GKA R/O at the appropriate time. Seemed work quite well all things considered.


Larry +