[BITList] Cliches

[HUGH MCINTYRE]

During one of my periodic and vain attempts to tidy up this room I picked up my copy of Sailor In Steam, by J. Murray Lindsay.  The author sailed with one or two companies for brief periods before joining BI as 3/O on HATKHOLA in Calcutta, so all but the first few pages concerns his life with BI.  A fascinating book indeed, even when he strays into the engine room, literally and figuratively, and comes out with cliches about "flashing cranks" and the Chief with "his beloved engine" and cotton waste hanging out of his pocket.  Many engineers loved the Doxford, but it was purely platonic I can assure you.  Ivan Leitch's relationship with steam engines is another matter entirely.

And the other day we had a re-run of The Battle of The River Plate on TV.  Dozens of Allied merchant ship officers imprisoned on the Graf Spee, and any identifiable C/EOs were wearing white boiler suits.  I've yet to see a Chief in a film not clad in a white boiler suit, but I saw gey few in that garb in real life, and these were only in the ER because everyone else was there in some emergency.  One not easy to get on with Chief personally kept a supply of beer mixed with lime pani and ice going from buckets during a stoppage at sea when we were working 10 minutes in the crankcase and 20 out.  And the only time I recall seing the Chief on Dilwara in a boiler suit was when I pressed the Panic Button after both engines ran out of fuel on my watch, the previous watch fiver having left a valve open after sending diesel up to the galley, so when my fiver filled the settling tank he unwittingly did so from the service tanks as well as from the storage tank.  Not for nothing are generator rundowns placed lower than the engine rundowns, so we had light to work with and were soon up and running again.

Of course, most films are awash with cliches about all departments aboard ship, I've only touched on some of those involving engineers.

Hugh.

  



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