Page 53 - Michael Frost-Voyages to Maturity-23531.indd

had had to learn these arcane skills!). The actual towing preparation was no small
task, as the anchor cable had to be run out and a shackle of cable, with the anchor,
suspended from the hawse pipe, and a wire from Hercules attached to the remain-
ing anchor cable. This created a heavy towing cable, but in deep water provided
a sort of de facto spring, thus absorbing energy surges created by wave and ship
inter-actions (and a new word – catenary – entered my vocabulary).

The tow continued all night with virtually every officer and deck crew awake
throughout (and a cadet posted on the bow to see that all was well – actually on
a balmy Indian Ocean night, not such a bad job). This was, however, too good
to last long, for at sunrise we suddenly arrived on the Continental Shelf and the
whole system had to be re-rigged to a simple wire; our cable was beginning to
snag the bottom. Two pilots boarded to take us into the harbour, but after twelve
minutes under their guidance, the wire parted. This did not much matter, for
Goliath, another not-quite-so-huge tug, arrived, and we were alongside a repair
berth in the harbour. At that point Hercules, with a tired crew and probably itself
worn out, was relieved by Samson, a newish and much smaller tug with which I
became much more familiar as time (and there was a lot of it!) passed.

Colombo is described in places as a natural harbour. In part, it is properly so
described, but its northerly two thirds can only be utilised because of the exten-
sive breakwaters that man has constructed. The openings in the breakwaters lead
directly into the Indian Ocean, and because of the rough weather that can afflict
the west of the island, there would not be much of a port if the natural southern
inlet comprised the whole port; the west coast of the whole continent is not much
given to good natural harbours; Cochin, 350 nautical miles to the north, is the
nearest anchorage of any consequence, but in 1962 it was not a city nor a port of
substantial international commercial consequence.

One advantage of Colombo as far as we were concerned, however, was that
there was really no differentiation between the port and the city. And having
such a reputedly exotic city a mere ten minutes’ walk away meant that it was easy
enough to get away from life on board. And increasingly, we needed to do so.
Hitherto, the manifest problems of which the deck department was aware
related only to the ship’s boilers. These, however, comprised only one of the many
components of the ship’s propulsion and ancillary machinery. The stops to date
and to which I have referred had been numerous but not lengthy and consisted
mainly of the replacement of water-carrying tubes in the steam-producing boil-
ers, a steam-turbine propulsion being quite different in concept from the more
modern diesel propulsion. The lubricating oil omission with which the present
problem related occurred within the turbines themselves, these being numerous

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