Food Presentation

I have sailed on US flag ships, tugs and ATBs. I have also worked on and ridden a lot of foreign flag ships when I was with ABS. On US ships, the food in the officers’ mess is the same as served in the crew mess. Or was, anyway. This was a long time ago where there were two separate messes. I found on foreign flag ships that, for the most part, the food in the officers’ mess was quite different from that in the crew mess. Often the officers were of different cultures and nationalities from the crew, so that only made sense. For instance, AMOCO (yeah, again, a long time ago) had ships with South Korean offices and Italian officers; but both had Filipino crew. So, on some ships you would have Italian food in the officers’ mess and others, Korean. The crew’s mess always had Filipino food.

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I don’t think you read that story very closely.

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The comments about my age require perhaps some explanation from my side. When I went to sea the year was 1954. In Holland, at that time, many things had still to be bought on rationing coupons. In the evening shops in Holland were unlit for energy saving reasons. Rotterdam was a dark gloomy city at night, almost like in wartime. The streets were empty and desolate.

The inner city of Rotterdam cleared from the bombardment debris. They spared the City Hall and partly the Laurens church,

We lived just outside the bombarded inner city. Only most of our windows were broken. We survived the hunger winter of 1944 when I was ‘skin over bone’ as we say.

The Germans liked parades. Here is one more or less in front of our house to which the red arrow points.

After the war we were rebuilding our ransacked nation almost from scratch and the average Dutch was poor in almost all respects, poor like church rats as we say. Our fathers used to work on Saturdays also. To keep things balanced we went to school also on Saturdays until 1300 hours. But we were by all means not unhappy, on the contrary.

We were at last on our own again and climbing out of the pit. Wages were very low and new housings were sparsely built as the rebuilding of the harbours, industry etc. had priority. Young people, after getting married, had to move in with one of the parents as a standard rule. In that atmosphere I felt privileged to go to sea.

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Almost departure time. The beginning of my first voyage, many to follow. The date was August 30, 1954. I am on the right.

Yes, I am pretty old as Sand Pebble already ever so tactfully pointed out. I went to sea for the first time in 1954, a trip from Rotterdam to New York, what more could I have wanted! However, I was ‘warmly’ welcomed in NY by a very hostile immigration officer who thought that I was a communist spy or something like that. I was grilled for about twenty minutes or so. I had never heard of McCarthy but then I did. Do you have relatives in America? Yes. Where do they live? In Ronkonkoma. Where is that? On Long Island. Are they communists? I don’t know, never met them. And on and on… It was funny that I had more local geographical knowledge of New York and surroundings then he had. He didn’t like that, I could tell. We were also fingerprinted, like criminals. You could refuse that but then you were not allowed to go ashore and you would get a mark behind your name that would probably haunt you forever. For the crew there was one more stop, the notorious dick parade and the inspection by a doctor. Luckily this privilege was not for officers. But all was forgotten when I saw with awe Broadway and all the shops filled with goods with at night the fully lit lights which were everywhere! At Times Square I ate my first Hot Dog, I loved it and it matched my budget. Items to buy for the wives and fiancées back home were nylon stockings and bras and for the male relatives and friends long playing records. The buying of bras turned out to be pretty hilarious as the sales ladies of such a shop were totally unprepared for an invasion of seamen wanting bras. After explaining they onderstood that we weren’t a couple of perverts.

I was with a number of captains who had sailed during the war. Some on the Murmansk route who obviously were PTSS victims however that phenomenon was unknown at the time. Chin up and go. Heavy drinkers who told chilling stories of having to plough through fields of Mae West life vests with little red lights of their colleagues in the water, shouting.

On a 18.000 ton general purpose Shell tanker we sailed with a crew of 47. There was accommodation for 55. To give you an idea, we were with 14 officers. 14 deck crew, 9 in the engine room department and 10 in the department of the chief steward. The officers, deck and engine room crews all had their own mess rooms.

In those days it was hard to get crew members for the expanding Dutch merchant fleet. Therefore a clever plan was concocted to give prisoners an early release when they went to sea. So we got an influx from former jailbirds which altered the atmosphere totally. There were fights going on, vandalization of equipment, emptying of fire extinguishers even putting axes in officers cabin doors. We slept with the doors locked…

Yes, I realize that I lived in a totally different area, only the sea is the sea that didnot change one bit. Also the ships, less sophisticated then these days, were in principle more or less the same as were the dangers of navigation and the seas. That in my defense for writing out of that experience which is my only reference point. Sorry for that. I like this forum because you cannot talk sensibly about maritime matters with people ashore who have no clue what life at sea is. I have nobody in my family and circle who can. So lucky me. Even my own father detested that I went to sea. For him seamen were just a bunch of drunks and whoremongers. If somebody asked him where his son worked he answered testily: “My son doesn’t work, he is at sea.”

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Dang it Dutchie, your last comment was so good I read it twice. Thanks for sharing sir.

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As did I.

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The way we lived then made sense. I’m with Dutchie.

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owoah! Tell me more stories, @Dutchie! You know I was only teasing, right?

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I went to high school in Ronkonkoma. I probably never met your relatives either.

[Bonus points for spelling it correctly]

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I did read your post quite well… That you can’t or won’t solve your problems onboard is not my problem. Perhaps I misread your message. I don’t think I did. Solving things onboard is much better than bringing management into it, a mate that goes behind your back is poison. If they complained with your backing, you hid behind them. I made sure my crew was fed well.

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It wasn’t my post.

That’s exactly what happened.

From the telling I’d imagine either the captain didn’t care enough to do anything about it so the mate had to or the captain was ok with the mate’s methods.

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I rest my case sir. Glad you got a salad.

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This thread definitely took on a life of its own!

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I sometimes suspect you of having an extremely subtle sense of humor. Either way, you just spilled coffee all over my laptop.

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You’re right on both assumptions. That Capt is way down on my list of one’s who I respected & found effective. He didn’t care & needed alot of help with command decisions. He was afraid of the office too. That old crankity CM was awesome though. An old NY’er who settled in St. Pete, FL. He made the comment at dinner time in front of everyone. No animosity in his tone, just matter of factly. I don’t know if he meant it or not but I guess the dayman didn’t want to find out. Problem solved or at least improved to passable.

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Klaveness, I thank you for recognizing that fact. Hope your laptop is ok. I do mean well.

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Okay, one then, one more.

Remembers the jailbirds we got on board? Apart from their behavior they were also a disaster because they knew nothing about ships, never set a foot on a ship. They could not handle the lines when mooring and unmooring, could not steer and pretended not to be able to learn that art. The Radio Officer was usually on the wheel when necessary except when he had to receive the weekly soccer results, that had priority over anything. They were extremely lazy, cheeky and refusing boatswains orders. They were set mostly to painting and chipping rust. Sailing with that lot was in fact endangering the safety of ship, crew and cargo in my opinion.

Therefore it was a relief that right at the beginning of a two week docking period in Cadiz in Spain ten of them deserted the ship. That was good riddance as far as we were concerned. You can imagine our frustration that shortly before departure time they were kicked up the gangway by the Guardia Civil and these guys ment business, mean bastards.

Guardia Civil with their special hat wear.

As it turned out they bought train tickets to Madrid but were soon detected by the Guardia Civil who always traveled on trains. The dictator Franco was still in power and everything was suspicious especially a bunch of foreigners with no traveling permits which you needed for any trip by train. They had no idea thus… They were thrown in jail and badly treated, slapped around by the guards and other prisoners. They had to drink water from the toilet flushing system, had to fight for some grub. They looked terrible, we almost pitied them. And we were not even informed about their arrest so our surprise was complete. After their ordeal the ship must been a safe haven, paradise and heaven all at the same time. They had obviously learned their lesson and I must say that after this they were much more cooperative and accepting orders rather meekly.

Seen all the complaints to the office, also from other ships, they were soon after discharged. It was a crazy irresponsible plan to begin with for sure

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Wow, thanks for that. I never got to Rotterdam until 1981, and of course, it looked much different from your photos. I also can relate to your last paragraph. I have been with my current wife for some 17 years now, and I can’t really talk with her about my seagoing days. This is one place where I can certainly relate to folks. Even when I first came ashore, I worked for a Class society, so much of my time was spent on vessels of many flags, and there was always a commonality of experience. I don’t spend much time otherwise with maritime folks. There are a few in my current business, and another former mariner in our office. It is really so very difficult to speak with others who haven’t been to sea at times.

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I sailed with for the most part with some pretty sharp engineers that could stomach the offshore tugs. A special breed of fellows. We were all in when they needed help. To relate to this post, Made damn sure they had a plate waiting for them if they were delayed taking care of our shit, no matter what the hour of day.

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Youths who would normally gone on for a life of crime were often picked up by the justice system and sent to seamen’s school up to the 60’s when the Brits had a sizeable fleet. A good friend of mine went to such a school that had been a women’s prison built in the 18th century with due regard to habitability.:joy:
At that age the bosun’s boot offered powerful persuasion In altering a tendency towards crime and most became good citizens. My friend became a successful businessman.

Thanks Dutchie. The story of the guys being locked up in Cadiz brought back memories of my father at the end of WWII. After his time in the Atlantic as the war was winding down he caught a job in the Pacific. He was on a Liberty ship in Manila after the war ended. He and his mates saw cots stacked up on the pier, ready to be shipped out or discarded. They relieved the pier of a few cots so they could sleep on deck instead of in the heat below deck. Sadly they got arrested by the Marine guards who took them to a former POW camp. Sailing was delayed until the captain found them. It was not a good experience for him.
In later years my Dad had 0 patience with me bitching about food, air conditioning or anything else while working on ships.

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