BEFORE THE MAST

Waihi Daily Telegraph, Volume XXXI, Issue 8835, 21 October 1942, Page 3

BEFORE THE MAST

CUTTY SAftK OFFICER TRAINING DAYS RECALLED INTERESTING EXPERIENCES Training years “before the I mast” and incidents of 10 years at sea, a few months of which were spent as second officer on the well-known Cutty Sark, were recalled by Mr John Heard, of New Plymouth, who is now 85 years of age, in convosation with a Taranaki Herald reporter recently. Mr Heard was modest enough to say he had no specially adventurous experiences • while he sailed the seas in windjammers, but many experiences of apprentice seamen ( in the ’7o’s of last century were adventures compared with the present-day training period of British seamen. Mr Heard is a son of the late Rev. J. B. Heard, who was one-time Halcyon lecturer at Cambridge at Cambridge University, and for many years was a leader writer for the'Dublin Daily Express. He and bis brother, Robert, who lives in Auckland, came to New Zealand and before retiring Mr John Heard carried on farming in Taranaki. He has lived in the Wanganui and Taranaki districts for about 20 years. He first went to sea as a boy of 15 years of age in the Duke of Edinburgh. The term of apprenticeship in those days was three years, but he did two years on the training ship Worcester, which was counted' to apprentices as equal to one year at sea. Another ship in which he sailed was the Thyatira of the Aberdeen White Star Line. These ships, ■ said Mr Heard, carried crews of about 25, including a carpenter, a sail-maker and a painter. The latter, he said, was only a paint mixer, the seamen doing the actual painting of the ship. MiHeard gained his second mate’s certificate in 187 S, his first mate’s ticket in 1882 and his master’s certificate in 1884. Shipwrecked On First Trip

His most exciting experience was in being shipwrecked on his first voyage in 1875, off Dungenness near the lighthouse. The crew were hauled ashore in breeches buoys and no one was lost.

Apprentices in those days received no wages. They were victualled by the captain, who probably made something out of his allowance for that purpose. A captain’s pay was perhaps £2O a month and a mate received £8 and second officer £5 a month. The food was hard. It consisted chiefly of Mb. of broad, or duff, three times a week, ship’s biscuits, salt pork and hard beef, and dried potatoes, with 11b. of tea and half an ounce of coffee. The victualling was better “in the cabin,” said Mr Heard, but very little betterthan in the fo’castle. Crews fared better when ships were in port and the seamen made the most of sometimes long stays in some ports. Five Months To India In his early traps Mr Heard made visits to India, including Bombay and Calcutta (four times), when the passage, which could be done in favourable conditions in 80 days, round the Cape, sometimes took five months. Those were the times when food and water often became short. He also traded to St. Johns (New Brunswick), New York, Boston and 'Frisco, as well as to Australia and New Zealand. He made his first trip to New Zealand in T 875 when the Duke of Edinburgh brough English emigrants to Lyttelton. The Indian Oceon and the Bay of Bengal were among the stormiest parts of the sea, but it was also common in the Indian Ocean to be becalbed for days and sometimes weeks in the doldrums anywhere to 11 degrees on either side of the equator. The slightest sign of breeze was sufficient for the crew to be sent aloft to trim the ship but it was often fruitless work. In such times they were often short of water when perhaps for three weeks they had no rain and they washed once a week “if possible.”