Professional Skipper Magazine from VIP Publications

S A LT Y D I TS LUBE OIL LEW BY PAUL DEACON Paul Deacon is Professional Skipper���s marine artist, a retired seafarer who will be contributing a regular column of memorable anecdotes he has come across during his time at sea. I ���ve sailed under a number of skippers and without doubt Lube oil Lew was a rare one. His nickname derived from his remarkable engine room skills and the fact that he would frequently undertake complex tasks down in the bowels of the ship and reappear on the bridge completely dishevelled, smeared, and smelling of lube oil. Ship���s engineers were wary of Lew as he knew more about their machinery than they knew themselves. Being an ex-deep sea mate, he had worked in shipping lines that maintained very smart vessels, yet Lew couldn���t give a toss for smartness, and instead preferred his ships looking like rust buckets. Secretly, we think he would have liked a smart ship, but his priorities lay elsewhere which usually included drinking, carousing, swearing, smoking and hurrying the ship from A to B. Lew was an excellent navigator, fearless ship handler, brilliant seaman, and teacher, but God help anyone who fell foul of him! Lew was always supportive of crew who were willing to learn and take responsibility, and it was through his support that I learnt much about coastal navigation, how to manage crew and also how not, to manage crew. My experiences under Captain Lew are too many to recount and some are unprintable, however I have to share a few for posterity as we���ll not see the likes of Lew again. In 1974 I joined the coaster Wegro, which was a fairly battered, rust-streaked ship owned by Osborne shipping in Brighton. The crew were a mixture of ruffians (of which I was now one): the mate who was an alcoholic, the engineer a posh hippy, the cook an alcoholic, and the owner���s son on board aspiring to be mate. The ship���s owner was an affluent butcher from Brighton so the freezer was always well-stocked with good meat. Lew was the master and commander who stood no nonsense, yet created mayhem himself, expecting everyone to party with him. Lew considered this as all part of our steep learning curve of life and if you couldn���t keep up then ���sod off��� was his motto. Lew was a ship owner���s delight, as he pushed the Wegro hard through all weathers to deliver cargoes and make a profit; in fact he revelled in bad weather as the ship rolled, heaved, slammed and tossed about. He was also quite ruthless to those who underperformed, and mates, engineers, sailors and cooks quivered when he started tongue-lashing incompetents. I���ve witnessed him punch out an engineer, haul other engineers up the gangway with their bag, and tackle the most obstinate seaman with glee. The concepts of positive people and performance and human resourcing were alien to Lew, who loved rattling people to gain a reaction, particularly any foreigner he deemed worthy of a wind up. Looking back on it, Lew was potentially an insurer���s nightmare, taking some wild risks to enforce his authority, and in the way he handled the ships. A ship according to Lew was, ���a large metal 58 Professional Skipper March/April 2013 box with a motor in its arse designed to lift crap from one point to another���, and that���s how he treated it. Perhaps the only bits of metal he cherished were the engines, and maybe that was his secret calling? We were inbound to Amsterdam one fine summer���s day to load at the grain silos, and we motored in through the canal and dock system without a pilot. Lew had a fairly low opinion of pilots, much preferring to undertake the work himself. We had on board a new engineer from Amsterdam, a loud braggart who seemed slightly drunk most of the time. This chief engineer was held in contempt by Lew and their two egos and personalities clashed. Now, Lew took great delight in winding Germans up at any given opportunity. Particularly German captains who kept immaculate ships. To Lew their pristine vessels just shouted and begged to be abused. So we motored at speed into a large dock area sitting high out of the water in ballast and covered in rust. Captain Lew surveyed the scene before him. I was on the fo���c���sle with two sailors preparing the mooring ropes and ensuring anchors were ready to drop in an emergency. Ahead of us lay three groups of coasters rafted together waiting to load at the silo, so Lew had a choice of ships he could lay alongside. Of course Lew didn���t want to put his ship alongside any old coaster, oh no, he wanted the smartest German ship he could find to scrape alongside to gain a reaction, and there lay a beautiful coaster much smaller than us and in pristine condition..! Without doubt, 99 percent of German ships were beautifully maintained, indeed almost yacht-like in comparison to the Wegro. Their paintwork gleamed, their brass shone, skippers and mates strutted around with black seaman���s caps and their crews worked diligently enhancing the ship���s beauty. No way in the world would they want a clapped-out, rust-streaked coaster crunching alongside, manned by a bunch of cowboys, but that���s what they got. Lew signals me from the bridge as to which ship is his victim, and commences his approach at alarming speed. I nervously have the spring ready to slip over the bollards on the German ship���s fo���c���sle. The gap narrowed far too fast. Lew was spinning the great wheel this way and that and the chief engineer was busy on the controls. I could feel our ship shuddering astern, slowing us down, as our great bow loomed over the Germans fo���c���sle. We connected with great force alongside the German ship, our tacky wooden fenders splintering uselessly. Rust dust and great flakes of paint filled the void. Both ships rocked sideways with the impact but within seconds we had bounced off and a gap quickly opened up between both ships. We still had some way on however, and I threw the heavy spring with all my might and managed to lasso the German���s bollards. Lew was pleased, giving me big grins and thumbs up as the main engine roared full astern to bring us to a halt. I could see several men scuttling about on the German ship and foolishly assumed the mate was running forward to take a head rope, but no such luck��� Lew had stirred a hornet���s nest and the Germans were determined not to have a bunch of cowboys and their rust bucket moored alongside in this fashion. The German mate and his sailors swarmed onto their fo���c���sle and deftly lifted the eye of my spring off their bollard and threw it into the water.

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