Roger the Cabin Boy

One of the strangest periods of my life was when I once worked as a deckhand on a cargo vessel called the ‘Arco Humber’. At the time I was living near Shoreham Docks in Sussex and had just been sacked from my job as personal trainer to the actress Dora Bryan. One Sunday afternoon I took a walk in the April sunshine and found myself standing on the rails of the huge lock that connected the docks to the open sea. I was absent-mindedly watching the ‘Arco Humber’ as she was slowly being lowered down to sea level before being released to the expanse and romance of the world’s oceans.

Without thinking of anything in particular, I eventually realized that I too was being watched. I became aware that a man in orange overalls was leaning against the stern rail, smoking. He beckoned to me. “Want to come aboard?” he shouted. “Take a look round?” At this point the ship’s deck was now level with the lock-side and so, without considering the consequences, I vaulted over the rail and joined him. “Smoke?” he asked, offering a packet in his blackened, greasy hand.

I don’t recall now quite why I was offered – and accepted – a one-trip job as a deckhand on the forthcoming voyage to Panama. Apparently they were a man short after one of the crew had jumped ship to join a circus that had been sited on Shoreham Common that weekend. The ship was to be tied up for a while before the tide was deemed suitable for setting out, so I had enough time to run home to collect my passport and a small bag of essentials. Within the hour I was back and found myself being installed in a small (somewhat smelly) cabin, sharing with Enriqué, the guy who had hailed me aboard. I then began four weeks of the hardest work I’ve ever done in my life (except for that time when I was potato-picking in Herefordshire, but that's another story).

As the ship fell and rose beneath us whilst we pitched into the black troughs of the Bay of Biscay, and as we later languished in the blistering heat of the South Sargasso Sea when technical problems had caused a temporary engine failure and we were adrift, my job was to scrub the entire deck clean in a Sisyphus-like task, trying to keep the salt from forming a potentially dangerous film. At nights we sat in the stinking saloon with the other guys where we played cards, drank rum and smoked endless cigarettes whilst Joseph, the Philippino cook, fed us – invariably - with lamb stew and curried potatoes followed by pancakes coated with maple syrup and dried apricots. Sometimes there would be boiled fish, complete with the heads. If it hadn’t been for Enriqué’s incessant attempts to beguile us with his somewhat erratic (and usually unsuccessful) magic tricks, we might have become bored to the point of madness; we might have gone stir-crazy.

After Panama and the staggering grandeur of its canal, we unloaded our cargo of fertilizer, turned round, and headed back to Britain. Sometimes when we were lying in our bunks, either sweating in the cloying heat or wrapped in prickly blankets trying to hold on to the sides in an attempt to stop ourselves from being tossed to the floor (not always successful), Enriqué would send me to sleep with his inexhaustible supply of tales of his former life as a gaucho working on the plains of Argentina. Sometimes, when we could afford to take a couple of hours off during the day, we would lie pinned to the foredeck by the scorching sun, naked. We believed then that an all-over tan was de rigueur.

Arriving back in Shoreham, Stavros the captain asked me to sign up for a second voyage. I was tempted – oh, I was so tempted. Enriqué, calling me his ‘little blonde puppy’ (I hadn’t the heart to tell him it was peroxide), begged me to stay. But no, I decided to return to my flat and to my life amidst the fleshpots of Sussex. I decided that I had a life to get on with. Being Dora Bryan’s personal trainer had never really suited me; nor had washing salt from the burning metal of the ship's decks, if the truth were to be told. I decided that I needed a proper job.

Thirty-two years later, and I’m still looking. How different things could have been if I'd stayed aboard the 'Arco Humber'. How so very different.