Monday, 27 May 2013
EddieGubbins: Cleaning brass!
EddieGubbins: Cleaning brass!: Hi everyone. Spent the morning cleaning brass. It look shiny and new when finished. It brought back memories of the time when I was a cad...
Cleaning brass!
Hi everyone.
Spent the morning cleaning brass. It look shiny and new when finished.
It brought back memories of the time when I was a cadet with Shell Tankers. Saturdays one of the tasks of the cadets was to clean all the brass on the bridge.
I have described this in my semi-autobiographical novel about my years at sea in the British Merchant Marine:-
Tales from the Sea:
Spent the morning cleaning brass. It look shiny and new when finished.
It brought back memories of the time when I was a cadet with Shell Tankers. Saturdays one of the tasks of the cadets was to clean all the brass on the bridge.
I have described this in my semi-autobiographical novel about my years at sea in the British Merchant Marine:-
Tales from the Sea:
The bane of
all cadets’ existence, I found out, was Saturday morning. It was our job to
clean the brass on the bridge under the watchful eye of the third mate. I was
surprised at the amount of brass needing cleaning. Somehow, Captain Morris
always managed to find his way onto the bridge just as we were finishing. For
some reason, he always found a bit that we had missed. As senior cadet, Malcolm
always went onto the focastle to clean the ships bell and the brass plates on
the winches. I took note of this.
By keeping out of the way, he always missed the ire of the Captain.
Captain Morris
was a stickler for procedure. On Sundays, he did his rounds of inspection
through the ship seriously. It was a ritual. Unless the ship was clean he would
get the cleaning redone to his satisfaction. We cadets had to stand by our
bunks until he had inspected our cabins. Afterwards, Mister Marsh, the chief
officer invited us to his cabin for a beer with the other deck and engineering
officers who were not on duty. In that way, he felt the cadets would be part of
the officers’ circle. It was important because most of the time we were neither
officers nor crew but some undefined position in between.
This can be purchased from www.amazon.com or www.amazon.co.uk as a paperback or to download as an ebook for all electronic readers, through www.smashwords.com for download as an ebook for all electronic reader formats and as a paperback from www.createspace.com
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