A Tale Of Christmas Spent At Sea

Wanganui Chronicle, 24 December 1947, Page 7

A Tale Of Christmas Spent At Sea

( By lAN BAKER, the Noted Author of Sea Stories.)

A thousand ships will be at sea this Christmas—maybe more but certainly not fewer—a thousand ships ploughing a lonely way through all the seas of the world. But it will be a great day for those on board. Large or small, passenger ship or eargo tramp, the picture is largely the same. Christmas at sea is always a day to remember. Perhaps it has to be to make up for the undignified scramble that takes place among ships to clear port before the day begins. For there is no holiday in a ship at sea; the wafehes must go on, the firemen must tend the furnaces, the engineers must be at their controls, and the quartermasters at the wheel. There must be bridge officers and the navigator must take his morning and noon sights, and at night the look-outs must be aloft in the crow’s nest or on the foc’sle head.

But allowing for all this, Christinas' Day is a special time for all on board. There are special meals and work is cut to the minimum. And there is even more of the convivial spirit than usual in the songs and carols that the sailors sing at lights-out. Four Christmas Days I have

spent at sea—once in a North Atlantic gale, twice on or almost on the Equator, and once in the great Australian Bight. But each day followed the same pattern.

at four bells. We were all assemlged in the messroom at our places at table when the Old Man's stewards came staggering down the companionway each carrying two cases of champagne. The Old Man, complete in all his finery, brought up the rear, and, as we stood there stupified with amazement, commenced to open the bottles. “Come along there, some of you,” he cried at last. “Give me a hand

with these bottles.” There was a rush of volunteers, and all went well until a cork came suddenly from a carelessly held bottle and shot across the messroom with the velocity of a bullet. The iron shod top ' struck the Captain squarely in the back of the neck, so that he howled with pain and dropped the bottle h e was opening, luckily without breaking it. “You fool,” he snarled, clasping the back of his neck. “Would you point a loaded gun at a man?” But everything went off famously after that. By the time we had finished the meal, the Christmas spirit was on us and from then until lights-out at nine there was carol singing and sea shanties. When I went on deck for my lookout at nine o'clock, the sound of singing came from all parts of the ship. From the officers’ saloon I could hear the strains of “Adeste Fideles," from down below in the apprentices’ messroom the sounds of “Hark the Herald Angels,” from the engineers' quarters “Good King Wenceslas," and from aft, under the poop, the wonderful harmony of able seaman and firemen singing “I’ll go no more a-roving.” The night was dark and very overcast. The ship was lurching to the rising gale, and solid water was pouring over the foc’sle head and creaming about the foredecks. Jt was cold and wet and unpleasant. But it was Christmas after all. It will be like that in a thousand ships this Christmastide.