Page 68 - Michael Frost-Voyages to Maturity-23531.indd

Hormuz, the entrance to the Persian Gulf (at that time, Iran being the primary
power in the Gulf, this was its name. However, because of the growing political
importance of the surrounding Arab states, the name was shortly thereafter
changed to, simply, the Gulf).

The voyage, now to be to Abadan and Bahrein, was accompanied by a rather
more gloom-laden atmosphere than hitherto. It was also noted by some wiseacre
that the masts, though small and barely to be noticed on a tanker, were no
longer precisely in line; it was evident that some damage had resulted from the
grounding. We did not yet know whether repairs would, or could, be carried out
in the Gulf.

We saw little of the ebullient Basil. The 2nd mate, however, advised me that
the grounding was not entirely unexpected, a similar incident having nearly
occurred too close to an island off New Zealand earlier in the voyage, when Basil,
anxious to take some photos for his wife, had taken the ship too close for the
comfort of the officer of the watch. I had moreover already learned that deep-sea
navigators very much dislike getting close to the shore, unlike coastal officers,
who, on the contrary, became uneasy when out of sight of land. On that occasion
things were close, but evidently the charts were at least current. No sequelae
occurred, but unfortunately Basil had insufficiently learned from the experience.

The trip to the Gulf was made the less pleasant by the fact that we were
traversing the Indian Ocean during the South-West monsoon, the effects of a
beam-sea made even less pleasant by my remaining on engine-room duty. But
the transition into the Gulf was dramatic, for that body of water almost never
experiences a truly rough sea, though the already hot environment in the engine-
room was made even more intolerable by our being surrounded by a sea degrees
warmer than anything I had encountered to date.

As usual in oil ports, Abadan contained no facilities ashore that were in any
way sought by itinerant seamen, even though the berth was actually alongside
the shore itself. There was a Seamen’s Club, but it offered nothing that anyone
aboard sought, so we were simply left to our own devices under the hottest sun
that I hoped never again to experience. However, given that there was a variety
of products to pump aboard, and we were to load in two different ports, the
pumping and diversion to of the cargo to discrete tanks was a complex exercise,
both from the perspective of non-contamination of products and the constant
need to be concerned about the balancing of empty tanks with the ones that were
filling; we were all to a greater or lesser degree aware of mysterious (and not so
mysterious) losses of tankers that had occurred because of intolerable strains put
on these enormous hulls by full tanks wanting to sink and adjacent empty tanks
wanting to rise. But, of course, there was drama elsewhere.

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