Banana Boats

[John Rogers]

Sailed on four of Fyffes in the 1950s, Ariguani, Bayano, Cavina, and the Corrales.Jamaica seven times and West Africa once.

[Dartskipper]

What Ports and voyages John? Please tell.

[John Rogers]

Port Royal, Kingston, Port Antonio, and Tico West Africa

[BobClay]

I managed to give them the slip .... (arf arf ... get it ? ... the slip !! ... I really should get paid for this sh1t !!)

[Tom Alexander]

Originally Posted by BobClay

I managed to give them the slip .... (arf arf ... get it ? ... the slip !! ... I really should get paid for this sh1t !!)

What kind of skin flint are you??? (Guess I'd better peel off outa here now.)

[John Rogers]

You two would make good second banana men.




Definition of second banana

:a comedian who plays a supporting role to a top banana; broadly :a person in a subservient position

[BobClay]

I think that means John has given us the 'virtual' groanometer ...

[John Rogers]

All in jest Bob.

[BobClay]

S'allright, I don't mind being the Bud Abbot ..

(I was going to use Laurel and Hardy, but the fact is, neither of those was a banana man. They were both comic geniuses. )

[Dartskipper]

Somebody mention banana boat comedians?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-9h1pjTP74

[Tom Alexander]

Originally Posted by BobClay

S'allright, I don't mind being the Bud Abbot ..

(I was going to use Laurel and Hardy, but the fact is, neither of those was a banana man. They were both comic geniuses. )

If I could get a better sun tan, I would be Jack Benny's Rochester. Mind you, he was brilliant in his own right as well.

Don't worry, John; I've always said "If you can't take it yourself, don't hand it out" So whatever you say, I'm fair game.

[John Rogers]

Crews of the Banana Boats named their ships Skin Boats, however the dockers at Avonmouth had their name for them, they called them Plumb Boats because they made a lot of money unloading them. I bet you knew that anyway.

[Tom Alexander]

Originally Posted by John Rogers

Crews of the Banana Boats named their ships Skin Boats, however the dockers at Avonmouth had their name for them, they called them Plumb Boats because they made a lot of money unloading them. I bet you knew that anyway.

No! I didn't know that, John. I knew of the boats, but spent a lot of my time runing the whisky boats from Glasgow to the U.S. and Canadian West Coasts.

[John Rogers]

Was that Donaldson Line ships.?

[Tom Alexander]

Originally Posted by John Rogers

Was that Donaldson Line ships.?

No - Furness Withy on the ss "Pacific Northwest". Part of the Pacific Fortune, Unity, Reliance, Northwest, Enterprise, Stronghold group - named after the letters in "Furness". The Last "S" was never built to my knowledge.

I think Royal Mail also did much the same run. At up to 120,000 cases per trip, 3 times a year, we transported, and exported a lot of hangovers over the years.

[John Rogers]

Many broken cases found in the holds I bet.

[BobClay]

...... fortunately all the broken cases were found to be empty.

[Tom Alexander]

Originally Posted by John Rogers

Many broken cases found in the holds I bet.

You betcha! It was strange though, when loading in Glasgow it was only the wooden cases that got broken against the hatch coamings - that way the whisky didn't taste of cardboard when it was strained into the tea cans.

The cardboard cases of mickeys were another thing though - box cutters made a nice slash along one side of the top, the case was turned 90 degrees, another slash, no - the case was best stowed in it's original place with another quick slash making a lovely three sided lid which could be accessed from time to time until hidden in the stow.

[John Rogers]

I guess containers put a stop to the free whisky.

[BobClay]

Put a stop to a lot of the things that were enjoyable about going to sea ...

[Farmer John]

I remember spending much time watching whiskey being loaded and tallying it into the area in the hold. A few hours down there, you walked out semi-pissed from the vapours from the broken cargo. Shockingly fragile, some of those bottles were. Hardly had to look at them.

[erimus]

In Middlesbrough watching a Clan vessel taking lots of cased whisky to South Africa.....a number of cases just happened to meet the hatch combings ......the dockers were 'dressed' with car tyres secured with twine under their coats...so broken bottles were tipped straight in....

geoff

[Tom Alexander]

Originally Posted by John Rogers

I guess containers put a stop to the free whisky.

I left deep sea quite a bit before containers came to the fore. But there was one episode which still befuddles me to this day. We finished facing off the stow in the #2 hatch port upper 'tween decks refer lockers and I personally put the padlock on the thick insulated doors. Immediately 4 Rolls Royce Silver Wraiths were loaded into the main hatch area leaving only about 18" between the side of the cars and the doors - hardly enough room to crack the doors even a little bit - certainly not enough to gain access to the cargo. The keys were personally placed by me on the keyboard. The main hatch covers were placed, tarped, battened and dogged. The access hatch was also padlocked shut.

When we started to break stow in L.A. after the cars were removed, I undid the padlock, opened the door, and lo, and behold there were two cases missing. If one was really skinny, and could squeeze through a small opening in the dunnage boards, accessed through the refrigeration hatch, and then in the very small gap between the top of the stow and the deckhead it was still not possible to reach the missing cases. Not only that why bother crawling all the way to the door, when it would have been a lot easier to pilfer from the cargo at the side of the compartment.

As I said, beats me!

[garryNorton]

Tofua,Matua, NZ banana and passenger boats, bananas loaded in cardboard boxes.Anybody remember these.

[Varley]

Tilapa was my first trip Sparkie 'in charge' (ie by myself!). 1972.