INSPIRATION OF YOUTH
"Give her the works, Sidney!" barked the Master, down the blower,
" The Pilot wants full speed and not one revolution slower!"
Our ship, a liner-steamship in UK/Australia trade
Was powerful and graceful. All was of the highest grade.
A four month trip: A dozen ports: Antipodes and back:
We were an ocean greyhound, keeping schedule, keeping track.
Wool: fridge-cargo, meat and butter: passengers First Class.
No stain was seen upon her decks, nor tarnish on her brass.
The Master was a martinet: a formalist : a terror.
No slack was tolerated. Not the slightest human error.
The Officers would stand aside through more than courtesy.
Through iron will he ruled us all, as Neptune rules the Sea.
And I, an humble Midshipman, an awkward, gangling youth,
Was terrified of every bark. That is the simple truth.
Four months I listened to this man. I heeded every warning.
He frightened me at dead of night, at noon and in the morning.
The only civil words I heard, throughout the voyage made,
Were spoken to the passengers: But they, of course, had paid.
Nearly home: Gibraltar passed and entered in the log:
Double-watches soon, for meeting European fog.
The Master on the bridge, chain smoking, peering through the murk:
Radar in its early days. Quoth he, "Does that thing work?"
Other ships approaching were detected through the ears.
The martinet relied upon experience of years.
And who was at the radar, no more trusted than the set?
'Twas I, the first-trip novice hand. So much could go wrong yet.
St George's Channel: Bardsey: What a foul and fearful night.
Off Holyhead at last the look-out saw the Pilot-light.
All was ready, ladder rigged, the speed reduced and dropped:
The Master, barking, paced the bridge. The smoking never stopped.
The Pilot came on board. The Master shook him by the hand.
"Dear boy! How good to see you! You have all arrangements planned?
Middy! Take the Pilot's coat and hang it up for drying!
Middy! Make some tea! Can you do that, for want of trying?"
The tension since Gibraltar showed that it had greatly eased.
The Pilot had the con: the Master very clearly pleased.
"How are things, now Mister Pilot? Tell me what you need?
For docking-time at Liverpool, how do you rate our speed?"
(Now, Sidney was the Engineer, the Chief of all his Ilk.
Relations with the bridge were formal. Not quite smooth as silk.)
The Pilot spoke. The Master strode unto the telephone.
"Keep her going, Sidney, if you stoke her on your own!
Give her the works, now, Sidney! The Pilot wants full speed!"
The martinet a messenger. My heart began to bleed!
"Give her the works, Sidney!" barked the Master down the blower.
"The Pilot wants full speed and not a revolution slower!"
The moment thus confirmed a thought which I had long possessed:-
To be a Pilot's son I was most fortunate and blessed.
For I had seen a martinet most pleased to recognise
The worth of any Pilot now, before my very eyes,
At highest standards operating in the Merchant Fleet.
A Pilot stands in independence. On his own two feet.
And I would be a Pilot, if I might be good enough,
To satisfy the martinet. If I could learn my stuff.
"Give her the works, Sidney!", how such simple words could mark
The confirmation of a youth, that foggy evening dark.
"Give her the works, Sidney!" Were there ever words so sweet?
Or explanation given for a function more complete?
The martinet earned his reward for sailing far and wide.
The Pilot? He did likewise. Why? Let other men decide:
I'd like to ask the martinet. Perhaps one day I can,
In the knowledge that he proved he was a fellow sailorman.
"Give her the works, Sidney!" How those magic words inspired -
As I became a Pilot, too, - long after they retired.
The moral being, I suppose - to mark the end of it,
That nothing is more proper than to see the biter bit!
The words "If you stoke her on your own" are poetic licence. Otherwise the above verse is a true and verbatim account of the occasion in January 1960 when the Blue Funnel liner ss Jason embarked Pilot OG Small off Holyhead. The ship was homeward-bound from Australia, carrying (amongst her passengers) the Australian Olympic show-jumping team together with their twelve horses accommodated in loose-boxes built on the after well-deck, all bound for the Olympic Games at Rome that year.
The Master was Captain John Gould, a Welsh-speaking Anglesey man. Amongst the crew of 72 were about a dozen more Welsh-speakers (mostly also Anglesey men), thus upholding Blue Funnel's unofficial claim to comprise "The Welsh Navy". The Chief Engineer was Sidney Smith of Greasby, Wirral.
It was the practice of the Blue Funnel line to embark the Liverpool Pilot by special arrangement off Holyhead, as opposed to the usual practice of taking the Pilot from the Pilot-Cutter cruising off Point Lynas.
BY
