RE # 20 and falling apart boiler suits.
Anyone remember the old ' Sew Sew' chinese lady who came onboard in Hong Kong looking to do repairs to various bits of clothing?
She was given a very disreputable boiler suit by some sort of Junior or 4th/5th engineer, and he was well impressed with the result.
Please don't take from this that I was a boiler suit wearing person. That didn't come till much later in my career when I had to do things like fix telephones in that hot noisy nasty place down below the waterline.