Folks, Cornel's "CROSSING THE INDIAN OCEAN BY SHIP DURING WORLD WAR II" has prompted me to write about my own experiences crossing the Indian Ocean. Most Goans working in the banks in E. Africa during colonial and post-colonial days had contracts that gave them a four month paid vacation after every five years. The contract also entitled the employee to free tickets for the entire family to the employees country of origin. For most Goans, this meant travelling to India on one of the twin British India steamers i.e. the SS Kampala and the SS Karanga. These ships had first and second class cabins which could accommodate one hundred and two hundred people respectively. There also was a third class section which was like a big dorm which could hold about 1,000 people. Although I have seen some Goan managers travelling first class, most Goans travelled in second class cabins. Each cabin had two or four bunk beds. If your family had uneven numbers, you had to send the odd :-) member to share another cabin with complete strangers.
The ships began their journey in Dar-es-salaam collecting both passengers and cargo. Sometimes the ships docked at berth and sometimes they were anchored mid-stream. Boarding the ship when it was docked was less dangerous but wasn't an activity for the faint of heart either. Passengers first had to line up with their luggage at the customs sheds. These sheds were made of corrugated iron sheets and it could get pretty hot in there. At times, the line often snaked outside the shed and one could spend hours in the mid-day sun. Once you cleared customs and immigration, your luggage was divided into that which could be retrieved during voyage and that which went directly to the hold. The luggage that went into the hold were usually iron trunks. These trunks were piled onto a large net and then a crane lifted and deposited the trunks in the hold. The luggage that needed to go to the cabins where carried on the heads of porters. Remember, this was an era of steel trunks. The poor porter had to lift the trunk, then walk/run with it balanced on his head onto a little plank that led to the ship, find your cabin, deposit the trunk there and return for more. The porters used the wooden planks because only passengers were allowed on the gangway. Bellow these narrow planks were nets to catch any luggage that fell from the porters grip. I have seen several trunks being caught in those safety nets. When the ships were anchored in mid-harbour, a tender took you from shore to ship. First class passengers boarded first. Second class passengers followed. Your luggage then arrived by barge. A favourite passenger pass time was to try and spot your trunks when they were being lifted by crane into the ship. Third class passengers arrived last. The third class area was like a huge military dormitory. The open area had steel bunk beds but with a chain/spring combination where you normally have a board for the mattress. Third class passengers had to bring their own mattress! I can still remember fathers trying to carry five mattress while climbing up the gang-board. The ship deck afforded one a rare view of the Dar es Salaam skyline. With spires of a Goethic Catholic cathedral and a German designed Lutheran church, dark green vegetation and coconut palms close to the shore, Dar has got to be one of the best harbour scenes in Africa. The ship set sail and took about a day to get to Mombasa. At Mombasa we could all disembark and visit our relatives or visit the Mombasa Institute. The following morning, the ship headed to the Seychelles which was a three or four day journey away. There were plenty of Goans employed on board the ship. The band always had Goan players. The band first played in the first class section every morning before coming to play in the second class. By the time they got to the second class section, they were all in the mood and were very entertaining. On my last trip in 1971, the band always played the song, "Take off your clothes, let me see what it is that your hiding." I have never heard that song on the radio or anywhere else. I have however, met many a Goan who "knows" the song. Every evening, some sort of entertainment was provided. Apart from films and music, my favourite entertainment was horse racing. And yes, this was horse racing that you could bet on. For every race, the odds were written on a blackboard and an employee kept revising the odds every five minutes. The horses were wooden. A string was attached to the horse's mouth and the jockey sat on a saddle near the finish line. The jockey spun a reel that pulled the string and brought the horse to the finish line. The most interesting part of this entertainment was that the jockeys were the passengers. On one trip, my mom bet on the horse my dad was the jockey for. She won a hundred rupees on the first race! She won much more by betting again on an another race that was for jockeys that had already won a race. Yes, my dad won again! It was one of my proudest moments as a child. When the ship arrived at Mahe, Seychelles, a tender took you to town. If there is paradise on earth, it has to be the Seychelles. Simply said, the islands are lush, have sparkling white beaches and are beautiful beyond description. The people themselves are more easy going than Goans. At the top of one of the highest mountains is a satellite tracking station. This was the second station in the Indian Ocean after the one in Zanzibar. The ship took another four or five days to sail from Mahe to either Karachi or Bombay. If you were sailing during the monsoons, this was when the fun began. A sailor would come up to your cabin and tighten the brass screws to seel the portholes. When the sea was rough, it was real rough. At times, when the ship plowed from a wave crest into a trough, your porthole actually went underwater. Those in third class had a a miserable time as they were REALLY in the belly of the beast. Leaking portholes on the sides,a noisy engine on the inside and no privacy whatsoever. It was not a pleasant crossings for most of the people. If you were not travelling during the monsoons, this was the most pleasant time of the journey. My explorations led me to the very end of the ship where the kitchen door was. There would always be a Goan sailor who had a fishing line (or two) at the back of the ship. The bait used were large bones. The door opening from the kitchen was about eight feet above the sea. The sailor would cast the line and keep me to guard it, asking me to call him when a shark appeared. I never saw anyone catch a shark. I did however see many a sailor pull up a flying fish. Some were more than three feet long. Since I know that all the fishermen here are asking themselves, "Did he get to eat those fish?" The short answer is no. We travelled second class. The food we were fed was British food. There is a limit to how much boiled beef, french beans and potatoes one can eat. At the beginning of each voyage, the food tasted real good. Before each meal we were presented with a seven course menu. I still love the British soups and deserts. The problem with British food was that, in those days,they did not use any spices in their cooking. The second problem was that for some inexplicable reason, fish was not served in the second class section. One last thing about the fishing. Since the deck where the fishermen were was only eight feet from the sea, I used to have nightmares that a fisherman's line would get caught in the propeller and jam it. In my nightmare, the fisherman would be made to go into the water and unjam the propeller. Just after he did that, but before he could surface, a shark would appear and bite of one leg. That shark, named "George" would be served for lunch the next day :-) The third class section had cooks cooking Indian dishes. Since many of the cabin crew were Goans, they would offer to deliver the Indian food to your cabin. The crew would bring any kind of food to your cabin if you did not have the strength to make it to the dinning room. When the ship approached Bombay, the first thing you could make out in the distance was the aircraft carrier. Bombay has always felt dirty to me. Before you berth, you had to pass the dredgers that were constantly working and making the waters muddy. In Dar es Salaam you could look sixty feet into the water and see everything right to the bottom of the ocean. The contrast of the Bombay harbour was overwhelming. A day before we arrived in Bombay, the shippee who was in charge of our cabin would request my dad to take a bottle ashore for him (so that he could escape paying duty on the goods.) The shippee would take down the address of where we were staying and come and collect his goods the very next day. The return trip to E. Africa was always as exciting as the outgoing trip. In 1971 we were lucky enough to be on the very last trip of the SS Kampala. At every stop we made, the company threw a party. The ship itself was on its last legs then and was heading to the scrap yards. Jet travel was just becoming affordable to all. An era was about to end but we did not know it then. Mervyn3.0 __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com _______________________________________________ Goanet mailing list [email protected] http://lists.goanet.org/listinfo.cgi/goanet-goanet.org
