Jim Wallace P&O RANCHI

"I served on all previous ships to the CHUSAN as a Scribe. Seemed to get ‘singled out’ a lot. With the RANCHI I was involved with the reports of our visits to Ceuta and Algiers to bunker oil as a result of the Iranian Oil Crisis and our breakdown in the Canal, south of the Bitter lakes that closed the Canal for 2 days and had us at anchor at Port Suez for a week whilst engineers were flown out from the UK to solve the problem. We had no power, a full ship of £10 families going to Oz and they were used, along with spare crew to assemble Aft so that drinking water could be available. On the same voyage, my first, mid way between Colombo and Fremantle we caught fire. One minute we had the Ocean to ourselves the next a dozen ships circling us. The fire was on top of the boilers in the engine room and the Mate’s solution was to break open the bulkhead leading down to ‘D’ deck and playing the hoses from there. The jet hit the oiling waste that had accumulated on the boilers that then showered onto the Engine Room crew who was tackling the blaze from below. End result several crew members with burns and the 4th Engineer with the most serous injury. Broken small finger that occurred when he slipped and fell with a fire extinguisher and his finger was between that and the deck.

I was selected as one of the skeleton crew taking her round to Newport (1953) when she went to the Breakers’ Yard. No.7 then sent me to Marine Office in KGV for 4 months shifting ships’ berths and I was offered the permanent position there. I took the CARTHAGE for a year in the Bureau but also served as Captain’s Writer. Alan Hale was Asst. Purser in Bureau. Dealt with Captain’s reports for visit to Almeria, Southern Spain for a ‘cargo inducement’ (of grapes!!). Whole town got a holiday to see us. Produced report for sinking a tug in Bombay as it was trying to berth us alongside Ballard Pier. 5 Indians drowned.

On final voyage before marriage lost a day in Hong Kong when props collapsed as CARTHAGE was being refloated from Dry Dock. I was on board. I docked in Tilbury 7/54 on the Thursday as I got married on the Saturday. 54 days leave but got recalled by No.7 the week after getting back from honeymoon in R of I to help them fill the Writer’s berth on the STRATHMORE 2 days before she sailed. Took it on No.7’s promise of promotion and China Run on return. Annoyed finding myself covering an In Ship promotion where previous occupant had only been to sea 3 trips. He had been promoted Tourist Baggage Steward, great pianist whom the Dep. Purser would get to entertain Tourist passengers on the After Deck. I went along to turn the music and enjoy the appreciation shown by passengers. His evening role was to close the Tourist swimming pool with a cargo net. I helped to chuck any unsuspecting bellboys, hanging around, in on top. The Second Steward wasn’t very happy as the kids only had two suits of ‘whites’. One on and one in the Wash so Trevor Stanford (TBS) and I had to give up some of ours. I left the STRATHMORE at the end of the voyage and Trevor became a ‘ship that past in the night’ but in the Late ‘50’s I enjoyed him on Tv as Russ Conway.

From Colombo the 2nd Butcher saved Blood and Offal and I got the Winchmen to make a hook and line. Hook attached to oiled rope by 2” shackle. We spent an afternoon on the Laundry Halfdeck tipping Offal into the water and casting the line with a leg of lamb on it upstream and constantly repeated the action when the bait floated past downstream. We all got bored, gave up, and left the bait dangling in the water but tied to the Laundry deck rails. Mid afternoon when my Locker was open (1600 –1800 hrs) I heard chanting through the hoist that connected me In Board to the Laundry, 2 decks up. When I got on deck half a dozen Engine Room crew were heaving on the line with a Shark on the other end. The hook seemed to be through it’s cheek and it looked as though we would lose it if it tore away. I fashioned a lasso that travelled down the line and I got it over the body so that when the line was hauled again the shark was left suspended out of the water near the stern. The Mate wasn’t best pleased that she thrashed herself against the hull leaving a large trail of blood down the ship’s side. She was finally hauled aboard, the surgeon did an autopsy and found she was pregnant with a couple of young and the fin got sold to a Malay. She didn’t stand a chance with the industrial tackle we made.

Your record mentions the bomb scare whilst Cruising. The Messina Straits actually and the first recorded ‘terrorist‘ attack. It arose because No.7 got an anonymous message that we had a bomb on board and it coincided with us leaving Naples short of an Assistant Steward who had ‘jumped’ ship. This particular ‘Winger’ had been through the War and was affected by it. He was always talking about it and when we got to Italy he was going to visit the graves where all the servicemen in his Unit were buried.

During Cruising the laundry didn’t operate. I stored all the dirty linen on the Inboard hatch of No. 6 Hold that could be accessed from my Locker. 2 – 300 bags of it that was put ashore in Southampton and washed over the weekend between cruises. During the panic with the bomb scare a Deck Officer came down and told me all the bags had to be searched and it was left to me. It didn’t get done and I heard no more.

I would contest Shipmates’ view that one ship or another was the happiest in the Fleet if they hadn’t sailed on the ‘RANCHI’. No.7 was the Home Port of the Crewing Department for the Purser’s Departments on each P & O ship in the Fleet. I spent two months there waiting for a berth and the RANCHI was regarded as the Punishment ship with the CHITRAL not far behind. Anyone leaving a ‘White’ ship with a bad report (not a DR) would be offered a berth of one of the Tourist ‘B’ ships because we were both carrying Emigrant families to Australia and they had no money to spare for tips. In fact I knew of several cases when crew offered money to families who were arriving in Oz, flat broke. The RANCHI and the shipmates I sailed with on her knocked the other three ships I sailed with into a cocked hat.