: Hi all,
My mate les and I at dunkerque, in Norfolk line days.
Boarding the maersk delft.a cracking ship.
This was taken about 14 years ago at A.P.Tyne Hebburn putting to sea from their yard, Regards Larry.
happy new year all,
you see these distinctive moby lines vessells all over italy,i saw this in port of rome civitavecchia june 2012.
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Until recent years the ships in our harbour ( Gt.Yarmouth ) could be heard from our house giving several blasts on their hooters at midnight on new years eve to signal the start of the new year. Not any more, too few ships and too many fireworks. Also I was on the beach this morning with the dog and there wasn’t a ship in sight on the horizon, not many in the river either. Not like the old days when there was plenty of work. Cheers Haddy.
Hullo Haddy,
I’ve staggered back to the ship a few times in the old days, from the Gallon Can, and what was that Pub right opposite the Yare Bridge, the one with the all night Coffee Bar beside it (not the Yare Hotel) or from the Jazz Club at the Penrice Arms. A Mis Spent Youth was mine. 
Cheers, Archie.
Archie Paice:
Hullo Haddy,
A Mis Spent Youth was mine.Cheers, Archie.
Yeah but Archie, it never went away!!!
Happy new year
rgds Ron
rondavies:
Archie Paice:
Hullo Haddy,
A Mis Spent Youth was mine.Cheers, Archie.
Yeah but Archie, it never went away!!!
Happy new year
rgds Ron
Thanks Ron, I look forward to seeing you both later this year, be good.
Cheers, Archie.
Hello Archie, the “Dukes Head” is probably the pub you are thinking of and it is still there. The all night coffee bar was called the “Greasy Spoon” and was known as the “GS” for short. I think it was the first all night place in town and, as a teenager, I was warned to stay well away from the place by my dad because of it’s notoriety. I didn’t listen though.
Another pub along that stretch (Hall Quay) is the “Star and Garter”, but the most popular one was the “Yare Hotel” as you mentioned. God it was rough in there at times! Come to think of it Yarmouth wasn’t a bad place to be in the '60s as a teenager, there weren’t many nights I didn’t pull. Cheers Haddy.
haddy:
Until recent years the ships in our harbour ( Gt.Yarmouth ) could be heard from our house giving several blasts on their hooters at midnight on new years eve to signal the start of the new year. Not any more, too few ships and too many fireworks. Also I was on the beach this morning with the dog and there wasn’t a ship in sight on the horizon, not many in the river either. Not like the old days when there was plenty of work. Cheers Haddy.
There’s hardly any oil work at the moment Haddy, we’re having a real lean time. I’m glad i haven’t got to pay our wages bill out of my pocket. 
Hurry up with the 8mm film…
norfolktrucker:
haddy:
Until recent years the ships in our harbour ( Gt.Yarmouth ) could be heard from our house giving several blasts on their hooters at midnight on new years eve to signal the start of the new year. Not any more, too few ships and too many fireworks. Also I was on the beach this morning with the dog and there wasn’t a ship in sight on the horizon, not many in the river either. Not like the old days when there was plenty of work. Cheers Haddy.There’s hardly any oil work at the moment Haddy, we’re having a real lean time. I’m glad i haven’t got to pay our wages bill out of my pocket.
Hurry up with the 8mm film…
Thats the trouble with the oil work mate, it’s either a feast or a famine. SBS seem to be doing a good bit at the moment but it may be short term. I hear they have a new man in the traffic office, that certainly is a hot seat!
As for the film, I will give it another few days then give the shop a call. I just hope it comes out OK on the disc.
norfolktrucker:
haddy:
Until recent years the ships in our harbour ( Gt.Yarmouth ) could be heard from our house giving several blasts on their hooters at midnight on new years eve to signal the start of the new year. Not any more, too few ships and too many fireworks. Also I was on the beach this morning with the dog and there wasn’t a ship in sight on the horizon, not many in the river either. Not like the old days when there was plenty of work. Cheers Haddy.There’s hardly any oil work at the moment Haddy, we’re having a real lean time. I’m glad i haven’t got to pay our wages bill out of my pocket.
Hurry up with the 8mm film…
Hullo,
It was’nt my ship that was honking and hooting, we used to nip in very quietly, we used to berth at the South Denes bringing Black Oil in for the Power Station. “SS Shell Exporter” was the ship, a small coastal Tanker. My mate on there was a bloke called George Stubbs, from Gorleston.
Cheers, Archie.
You can indeed see Moby Line ships all over Italy , as Pete 359 notes, but we were all lucky not to be onboard of this one on the night of April 10 1991 when she sailed from Livorno for Sardinia.
Only moments after leaving the port she collided with an anchored tanker, the Agip Abruzzo, and burst into flames.
From the 140 persons aboard only one survived.
It has always been rumoured that the reason that there was no body in the wheelhouse when she collided was an important Italian football match on the TV
David
Been on The MV Rozel a few times, she was troop ship ‘Keren’ during the Falklands war and I remember lying in a bunk bed looking up at the names of soldier scratched in the ceiling above my head.
Archie, I sure I’ve heard my dad mention George Stubbs and you you must have been a young lad if you were on a steamer. The only two ships that I can remember bringing in oil for the power station were the “Stanstead” and the “Petworth” do the names ring any bells with you? Cheers Haddy.
I was on a little tanker the “MAPLEHURST” we used to run from Thameshaven to the power station at Gt Yarmouth great days… I might have fallen in love with a lass there at that time ■■? 1961 
As we are talking tankers, this was my 3rd ship as a deckhand. I was ferried with the rest of the new crew to Amsterdam where we boarded the ship. The old crew passed us on their way down the gangplank. They were laughing. In those days tankers could be away from home for years. You could only leave a ship under certain union agreed conditions. To the best of my memory these were: UK port, after one year, N. European port after 18 months, rest of the world 3 years. The old crew had been away for a very long time. Not even seeing the world, they had spent several years on ‘the lakes’, that is running between Venezuela and the USA. The laughing was part relief, part schadenfreude. 
We set off empty for Piraeus, Greece for drydock. On the way through the Bay of Biscay we were tank cleaning. A horrible job. Kitted out with boilersuits and thick boots we descended the steel stairways right to the bottom where we found thick, black, evil smelling gunge a foot deep. Rubber (to avoid sparks 
) buckets were lowered down to us on ropes and we started shovelling (rubber shovels 
).
If anyone started singing or staggering they were hastily hauled up on deck, and, in any case, we came up every so often for a tot of rum and a spell in the tipping crowd. This involved hauling the loaded buckets up and tipping them over the side. Yes, really, but then this was 1965. 
Mind you we had it all done by the time we entered the Med. wouldn’t do to pollute those beaches.
The San Gaspar was an old Eagle oil tanker, a company with a famous history that Shell had recently bought. There was a book and a film called San Demetrio, London, about a forerunner which was torpedoed during the war and caught fire. The crew abandoned ship and drifted in an open boat for a few days before spotting a drifting ship on the horizon. Turned out to be their own ship with its fires miraculously extinguished. Re-boarded, she was brought home safely to a hero’s welcome.
No heroics for us, we arrived in Scaramanga, a drydock port near Piraeus where we spent the next 2 weeks while the Greeks hammered the crap out of the ship as we languished, potless, (no money in the ship, hadn’t been aboard long enough) and tried to relax. I went to a football match with a couple of mates, a Taffy and a Jock, to watch Wales play Greece. We were soon ejected because our Taffy mate objected for some reason to the Greeks kicking 7 kinds out of his countryment and ran onto the pitch to defend his nation’s honour. We sneaked back in via the players entrance and, after chatting to some well known players of the day in the dressing room, trotted down the tunnel after half time. We kept our mate in check and were allowed to watch from the touchline. Good job Wales lost though, allowed us to walk back down their equivalent of Wembley way all smiles and back slapping with the Greek fans.
Soon the job was finished and we rejoined the ship. We had spent a couple of days in a hotel while the ship was fumigated. The company thought it unproductive to destroy the crew along with the rats by poison gas. 
We didn’t go to sea though. We went on strike. The Greeks seemed unable to comprehend the complicated procedure involved in pulling a bog chain and the toilets were all blocked up and they had started to use the companionways. After refusing to budge when told that this was mutiny and still a capital offence eventually the British Ambassador was brought aboard. He didn’t need convincing, he could hardly stop himself from throwing up. A Greek gang was brought aboard to clean the place up. 
Shining like new the now renamed ‘Vertagus’ finally left and headed for Suez. There I had the terriying experience of steering the ship through the canal. Easy, all you have to do is follow the brief instructions of the Egyptian pilot, but no brake pedal to stamp on as the little rowing boats crossed and re-crossed in front of us, disappearing from view under the bow like kids on a crossing in front of a long nosed KW.
Up the Gulf to Kuwait, parked on the end of a mile long jetty to load naptha, we were in and out in 24 hours. Shore leave? Oh yes, a walk to the end of the pier to find - the desert, and a shack selling duty free goods. I bought a camera.
Then across the Indian Ocean, slow, slow, quick, quick, slow, we waltzed along while the bigwigs back in Shell Towers decided where to send us. One helpful hand predicted Indonesia, a much heavier spot in those days as he relayed being strafed by hostile aircraft during the Malayan ‘confrontation’.
Eventually it was Sydney. Result 
, well no, actually, no shore leave, we were anchored in Jackson Harbour for a fortnight waiting for a berth. 
Finally they laid on a boat to take us ashore, then cancelled it, we had a berth. 
That’s when I jumped ship.
haddy:
Archie, I sure I’ve heard my dad mention George Stubbs and you you must have been a young lad if you were on a steamer. The only two ships that I can remember bringing in oil for the power station were the “Stanstead” and the “Petworth” do the names ring any bells with you? Cheers Haddy.
Hullo Haddy,
I was the Cabin Steward on the ship and George Stubbs was the Cook / Steward, he was an ex Trawler Cook. When he left, then I took over as Cook / Steward. The Stanstead and Petworth were as far as I can remember were Stephenson Clarks vessels, we were Shell Petroleum, yes they were on the same run as we were. Shell Haven to Yarmouth. That picture of the Dukes Head was great, what a reminder, I was a regular in the back bar there, just through that archway you can see between the Pub and the Greasy Spoon.
Cheers, Archie.
You can’t leave it there David, it’s a long walk from Sydney to Darwin.
I hope your Grandfathers clock is still ticking.
Regards Steve.
I saw this a couple of years ago in Oman, I wonder if they are anything to do with Moby Lines.
