A glittering
nautical
occasion
It is an ancient Mariner,
And he stoppeth one of three.
'By thy long grey beard and glittering eye,
Now wherefore stopp'st thou me?'
WELL, I'm not so sure about the long grey beard. My old shipmate Captain Allen Brink seemed to have shaved that morning, but the glittering eye was there as he introduced Captain Nick Sloane to a splendid lunch at Royal Natal Yacht Club.
Nick, you will probably recall, is the marine salvage maestro who some years ago achieved world renown (and an Italian knighthood) for successfully rescuing and refloating the cruise liner Costa Concordia in the Mediterranean. He's always doing that kind of thing. He was supposed to address the Nautical Institute at RNYC last August but at the last minute had to nip over to Patagonia to rescue another ship in distress. Or was it Panama? Something like that anyway.
And here he wass at last in Durban addressing the Nautical Institute on the problems of fire-fighting on super container ships. Massive vessels these are. Nick showed in an illustration how the QE2 plus a jumbo jet plus plus plus could fit into one of their hulls, let alone the stuff stacked on deck.
Yes, the Nautical Institute. The place is positively crawling with ancient mariners. I find myself sitting beside one with shortish grey beard and glittering eye, Captain Alan Pembroke, recently retired from the South African Navy. (Also known as the Grey Funnel Line). Alan and I have the navy in common. He is a captain which, for those unfamiliar with naval ranks, is the equivalent of an army colonel. As a national serviceman, I achieved the exalted rank of able bodied seaman. (What's an able bodied seaman? You'd better ask my girlfriend).
Which brings me back to Allen Brink, a former ship's master with Safmarine and now a marine consultant here in Durban. He's kind enough to describe me as a shipmate and fellow "Bothy Boy" because he was with the General Botha training ship in Cape Town, while I spent a few months there learning navigation. Them wuz the days.
The gap in our seafaring expertise has widened somewhat, I have to concede. Allen has just returned from London where, aboard HQS Wellington, moored at Temple pier in the River Thames, he was invested as a chartered master mariner by the Honorable Company of Master Mariners, a City of London livery company with Queen Elizabeth as patron and Prince Philip as admiral.
You have to know your bends and hitches, your sextant and quite a bit more to get that "chartered" tag. Allen is the only South African ever to have achieved such a thing. There have been only 30 world-wide. (Hey, it's not too late. Maybe I should go for killick – that is, leading seaman).
A great lunch, loads of bonhomie and a fascinating illustrated talk by Nick Sloane. Scary stuff - those shots of blazing super-container vessels are worse than Diwali and Guy Fawkes combined.
Tailpiece
AN OLD sea captain is sitting on a bench near the wharf when a youngster sits down beside him. He has spiked hair, each spike a different colour - green, red, orange, blue, and yellow.
The captain stares at him.
"What's the matter old-timer? Never done anything wild in your life?"
"Got drunk once and married a parrot. Was just wondering if you're my son."
Last word
Writing about music is like dancing about architecture. - Elvis Costello
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