Sign in or 
Share this
Martin's Story
The 1983 Australian effort to save the AV, SJ Harrison and the RA Leigh
From Martin - Sedgefield, SA
"About ten of us flew into South Africa from Australia in June of 1983, and came down from Johannesburg (by steam train!) and boarded the RA Leigh in Cape Town harbour - she was moored where the V & A hotel is now. Some of our party left for Luderitz (Namibia) and returned with the SJ Harrison. We stayed a few more weeks in Cape Town, eventually getting around the bureaucracy by registering both vessels as British yachts, thereby exempting them from survey & safety requirements!
We were given a terrific sendoff by the port authorities: the 'full monty': water jets from a firetug and a procession escort of pilot boats, tugs and workboats to the breakwater. Only once we were outside the harbour in these little things and they started to roll in the swells, whilst we all knuckled down to our various duties, did we realise what a task we'd taken on!
I can't remember how long we were at sea, but I do remember the rolling! The decks were constantly awash, and getting anywhere on board meant timing your run across the deck perfectly to avoid being soaked. Luckily we'd rigged lifelines before we left Cape Town, or we'd surely have had at least one 'man overboard'.
The one-way outlet flaps for the toilets on the outside of the hull were all seized in the open position, and sitting down for one's constitutional involved timing one's own motions with those of the sea - you had to jump up as the boat rolled to one side and seawater rushed back through the outlet pipe and up and out of the toilet pan like a geyser!
The radios all failed within the first 24 hours, so we brought both vessels close to one another at one stage (about 50 metres) and tried to shoot a rocket line across from our tug, the RA Leigh, to the Harrison in order to get a hand-held radio to them so we could communicate. Well, the rockets were out of date and didn't work, so it was decided to try and throw a line across. I heard all this going on whilst I was on watch in the engine room, and stuck my head out of the aft port door on deck only to be greeted by the sight of the Harrison's enormous propeller churning away, half out of the water as she rose up on a swell not 20 metres away from me! Both skippers frantically steered in opposite directions to avoid a collision, and that was the last communication we had until we dropped anchor in Mossel Bay.
As far as I can remember, we stayed overnight in Mossel Bay, at anchor near Seal Island, as we were not permitted into the harbour - I don't know why. One of our party, the skipper of the Harrison at the time, Stan Martin, had bought the Vintcent for himself, but it seems we left her there in Mossel Bay for the time being, and he continued on as skipper of the Harrison until Port Elizabeth. I had forgotten this until I hauled out all my old photos the other day - the Vintcent doesn't feature in any of the pictures I took in Port Elizabeth. I think Stan must have gone back for her later, taking her to Cape Town and - well, that part I don't know much about, just what I've read on the internet. He did, however, go into the harbour for a few hours accompanied by the harbour master who'd come out to castigate us not only for not answering him on the radio (we had none!) but also because we'd unknowingly dropped our anchors in a restricted area of the bay - on top of the oil / gas offloading pipeline ! This is when Stan took the people / post transhipping wicker basket from the Vintcent and put it on the Harrison (see the picasa pics in this link) Why he did this, I don't know. Perhaps he intended to use it for bunkering at sea later. The original plan to get to Australia involved towing lighters filled with coal (and oil for the Leigh) and bringing them alongside when necessary to bunker at sea. We never actually tried to do this, and I recall that the prospect of trying was another major factor in the decision to abandon the whole voyage in Port Elizabeth.
I recall going up to the wheelhouse once when I was off watch and talking to Ted Hall, our skipper. He showed me our course and waypoints on our chart, and I asked why if we were heading east our current position at the time showed us to be west of our last position. Ted replied that this was because we were heading east at 5 knots in a 7 knot westerly current! I think it was at this point that it dawned on me not only the craziness of the whole venture, but also the danger.
After some days at sea - again, I really can't recall how long it was - we found ourselves off Cape St. Francis and trying to locate the navigation beacons to line up our approach to Port Elizabeth harbour. The SJ Harrison was ahead of us, chiefly because on board the RA Leigh we were running out of fuel. Steam pressure was dropping, and I was sent by John Davis, one of the owners and chief engineer on the voyage, to look into the bunkers to see how much oil we had left in them. They were tanks of about one and a half metres square and three metres deep, on either side of the vessel. Pumps in the engine room drew oil from strainers located about 500mm from their bottoms - I would guess to avoid sucking up the muck which collected at the bottom. The oil was heated and then fired into the furnaces (4 in total if I remember correctly) through injector jets which were about the size of a soda stream gas bottle and which blocked up constantly and needed cleaning and changing on a regular basis. We had sourced our fuel oil from a variety of sources in Cape Town harbour - I&J's fish factory, the railways vehicle workshops old engine oil, used hydraulic oil from the harbour cranes workshop, even 20 litre plastic cans of used cooking oil from the old Harbour Cafe!
Anyway, I went back to John Davis in the engine room and told him I could see the pickup strainers in the tanks exposed and sucking air as the vessel rolled on the swells, and plainly this was why the fires kept spitting and going out. Luckily at that stage the furnaces were so hot that when the oil feed was restored, they re-lit themselves immediately. John asked me to grab a stick and dip the tanks to see if there was good oil and no solid matter all the way to their bottoms. After crawling in and nearly getting drowned in oil as the boat rolled, I reported back to him that, yes, it seemed there was plenty of good oil left in the tanks, but it was all below the level of the pickups. We both went up to the wheelhouse to see Ted Hall, the skipper, and after a brief discussion it was decided that we should pump some seawater into the tanks to raise the level of the oil up to the point whereby the pickups would be able to suck it. Well, this would have been a fine idea had the sea been calm, but we were rolling terribly in some fairly large swells and all that we effectively achieved was to fire hot water into the furnaces, putting out the fires.
Another conference in the wheelhouse. This time it was all hands on deck. They were told to find every piece of timber they could, and throw it down into the stokehold so we could put it into the boiler furnaces. I still remember watching in horror as one after the other sections of solid teak gratings, SAR&H monogrammed furniture from the aft officers cabin and even the chart table from the wheelhouse were thrown onto the fires. We were desperate at this stage. We could see Port Elizabeth harbour, but I recall it was getting late in the day, it was overcast and windy, and we were still some way from the breakwater and the safety of the harbour. I was told to fetch the used cooking oil in 20 litre drums that we'd stored in the paint locker forward of the wheelhouse: the 'emergency' fuel supply! There were about 20 or so drums. I ripped off the lids, and one by one, poured the contents of used cooking oil into the bunker tanks, tossing the empties behind me - I didn't care where at that stage. We were losing speed and steam pressure all the time, and the rhythmn of the engines we'd all gotten so used to over the days and nights of sailing from Cape Town was slowing down. The breakwater and harbour entrance were getting closer, but ever so slowly. I'd finished emptying all the drums and looked up to see a trail of them like buoys on a net strung out behind us, bobbing up and down in all their bright yellow glory on the swells. It was then I saw the Navy from Port Elizabeth following us! (SAS Donkin?). My first thought was that they'd arrest us for littering! We discovered later they couldn't believe what they were seeing, and were desperately trying to raise us on the radio to offer assistance.
I went down into the engine room to discover John had cut the steam to one of the engines, and we were only running on the one. Ted was shouting down the voice pipe from the wheelhouse:
"How the hell do you expect me to steer this thing if you can only give me one engine?"
-to which John replied quietly to me, 'sotto voce' and not back up the voice pipe:
"it's either you come in on one engine and no steering or you don't come in at all"
We were at the breakwater at last. I was so busy in the stokehold smashing furniture and hacking into teak gratings from the wheelhouse floor with a little emergency fire hatchet that I didn't really notice we'd stopped rolling. All I remember was watching the boiler pressure gauge falling constantly whilst burning my hands on the furnace doors trying to stuff pieces of teak into the boiler through little doors which weren't designed for the purpose.
We drifted up alongside the quay with the help of the Harrison and all breathed a huge sigh of relief. It was dusk. The steam pressure was almost zero, the generator had long ago stopped and it was getting dark. That was the last time the RA Leigh turned her propellers.
We spent a couple of weeks tied up in Port Elizabeth, but it didn't take long for us all to realise that this was the end of the voyage. The plan to sail two antiquated steam-powered harbour tugs ten thousand miles across open oceans now looked foolhardy in the extreme. We'd had a taste of the danger and difficulties involved, and it wasn't pleasant. This was to be the end of the line.
John Davis, Ted Hall and Stan Martin briefly entertained the idea of finding someone who would take them on a ship, 'piggy-back' style, but even their optimism was floundering. I remember John coming back from a meeting saying if we renamed the tugs "Kreepy" and "Krauly" we might have ourselves a sponsor, but nothing came of that plan either.
We had a few visitors - mainly curious local folks who'd heard there was a bunch of Australians down in the harbour living on a couple of old SAR&H steam tugs and were soon setting sail for their homeland. Well, we knew otherwise. One day, we started removing fittings from both the boats and taking them to a store loaned to us by the harbourmaster. The ships' wheels, compass binnacles, navigation lights and various other bits and pieces were unbolted and locked away. I'm quite sure they are decorating a few pubs in Port Elizabeth today. I remember the shunting drivers on the steam trains moving freight around the harbour took a liking to us, and we spent one evening doing wheelspins with a SAR&H steam locomotive up and down the quayside, chatting with the drivers and drinking beer together. They were nice guys.
I left Port Elizabeth and went to Cape Town, meeting up with some new-found friends and celebrating Alan Bond and the crew of Australia II taking the America's Cup from Dennis Connor and the New York Yacht Club. I went back to Australia soon after, but soon missed South Africa. I came back in 1984 and was working in Johannesburg when, on my Christmas holidays I decided to drive down to Cape Town via Port Elizabeth. I stopped in at the harbour and there, some 14 months later, still lay the SJ Harrison and the RA Leigh, exactly where we'd left them tied alongside the quay. I went aboard and took a look into the engine rooms. They were both flooded about a metre deep in water. It was a very sad sight. I heard much later that the RA Leigh had gone to Durban - I can only guess she must have been towed. Apparently her wheelhouse ended up doing service as a bar in a restaurant there. Very sad. I only found out that the Harrison had been converted to a workboat after visiting the ST Alwyn Vintcent website.
I have never seen or heard from anyone who was on that voyage with me ever again. Myself? I stayed in South Africa, met my wife, and we live here in Sedgefield.
So there's my story. I have tried to keep it brief - I have a reputation for verbosity (so my wife says...!) ".
From Martin - Sedgefield, SA
"About ten of us flew into South Africa from Australia in June of 1983, and came down from Johannesburg (by steam train!) and boarded the RA Leigh in Cape Town harbour - she was moored where the V & A hotel is now. Some of our party left for Luderitz (Namibia) and returned with the SJ Harrison. We stayed a few more weeks in Cape Town, eventually getting around the bureaucracy by registering both vessels as British yachts, thereby exempting them from survey & safety requirements!
We were given a terrific sendoff by the port authorities: the 'full monty': water jets from a firetug and a procession escort of pilot boats, tugs and workboats to the breakwater. Only once we were outside the harbour in these little things and they started to roll in the swells, whilst we all knuckled down to our various duties, did we realise what a task we'd taken on!
I can't remember how long we were at sea, but I do remember the rolling! The decks were constantly awash, and getting anywhere on board meant timing your run across the deck perfectly to avoid being soaked. Luckily we'd rigged lifelines before we left Cape Town, or we'd surely have had at least one 'man overboard'.
The one-way outlet flaps for the toilets on the outside of the hull were all seized in the open position, and sitting down for one's constitutional involved timing one's own motions with those of the sea - you had to jump up as the boat rolled to one side and seawater rushed back through the outlet pipe and up and out of the toilet pan like a geyser!
The radios all failed within the first 24 hours, so we brought both vessels close to one another at one stage (about 50 metres) and tried to shoot a rocket line across from our tug, the RA Leigh, to the Harrison in order to get a hand-held radio to them so we could communicate. Well, the rockets were out of date and didn't work, so it was decided to try and throw a line across. I heard all this going on whilst I was on watch in the engine room, and stuck my head out of the aft port door on deck only to be greeted by the sight of the Harrison's enormous propeller churning away, half out of the water as she rose up on a swell not 20 metres away from me! Both skippers frantically steered in opposite directions to avoid a collision, and that was the last communication we had until we dropped anchor in Mossel Bay.
As far as I can remember, we stayed overnight in Mossel Bay, at anchor near Seal Island, as we were not permitted into the harbour - I don't know why. One of our party, the skipper of the Harrison at the time, Stan Martin, had bought the Vintcent for himself, but it seems we left her there in Mossel Bay for the time being, and he continued on as skipper of the Harrison until Port Elizabeth. I had forgotten this until I hauled out all my old photos the other day - the Vintcent doesn't feature in any of the pictures I took in Port Elizabeth. I think Stan must have gone back for her later, taking her to Cape Town and - well, that part I don't know much about, just what I've read on the internet. He did, however, go into the harbour for a few hours accompanied by the harbour master who'd come out to castigate us not only for not answering him on the radio (we had none!) but also because we'd unknowingly dropped our anchors in a restricted area of the bay - on top of the oil / gas offloading pipeline ! This is when Stan took the people / post transhipping wicker basket from the Vintcent and put it on the Harrison (see the picasa pics in this link) Why he did this, I don't know. Perhaps he intended to use it for bunkering at sea later. The original plan to get to Australia involved towing lighters filled with coal (and oil for the Leigh) and bringing them alongside when necessary to bunker at sea. We never actually tried to do this, and I recall that the prospect of trying was another major factor in the decision to abandon the whole voyage in Port Elizabeth.
I recall going up to the wheelhouse once when I was off watch and talking to Ted Hall, our skipper. He showed me our course and waypoints on our chart, and I asked why if we were heading east our current position at the time showed us to be west of our last position. Ted replied that this was because we were heading east at 5 knots in a 7 knot westerly current! I think it was at this point that it dawned on me not only the craziness of the whole venture, but also the danger.
After some days at sea - again, I really can't recall how long it was - we found ourselves off Cape St. Francis and trying to locate the navigation beacons to line up our approach to Port Elizabeth harbour. The SJ Harrison was ahead of us, chiefly because on board the RA Leigh we were running out of fuel. Steam pressure was dropping, and I was sent by John Davis, one of the owners and chief engineer on the voyage, to look into the bunkers to see how much oil we had left in them. They were tanks of about one and a half metres square and three metres deep, on either side of the vessel. Pumps in the engine room drew oil from strainers located about 500mm from their bottoms - I would guess to avoid sucking up the muck which collected at the bottom. The oil was heated and then fired into the furnaces (4 in total if I remember correctly) through injector jets which were about the size of a soda stream gas bottle and which blocked up constantly and needed cleaning and changing on a regular basis. We had sourced our fuel oil from a variety of sources in Cape Town harbour - I&J's fish factory, the railways vehicle workshops old engine oil, used hydraulic oil from the harbour cranes workshop, even 20 litre plastic cans of used cooking oil from the old Harbour Cafe!
Anyway, I went back to John Davis in the engine room and told him I could see the pickup strainers in the tanks exposed and sucking air as the vessel rolled on the swells, and plainly this was why the fires kept spitting and going out. Luckily at that stage the furnaces were so hot that when the oil feed was restored, they re-lit themselves immediately. John asked me to grab a stick and dip the tanks to see if there was good oil and no solid matter all the way to their bottoms. After crawling in and nearly getting drowned in oil as the boat rolled, I reported back to him that, yes, it seemed there was plenty of good oil left in the tanks, but it was all below the level of the pickups. We both went up to the wheelhouse to see Ted Hall, the skipper, and after a brief discussion it was decided that we should pump some seawater into the tanks to raise the level of the oil up to the point whereby the pickups would be able to suck it. Well, this would have been a fine idea had the sea been calm, but we were rolling terribly in some fairly large swells and all that we effectively achieved was to fire hot water into the furnaces, putting out the fires.
Another conference in the wheelhouse. This time it was all hands on deck. They were told to find every piece of timber they could, and throw it down into the stokehold so we could put it into the boiler furnaces. I still remember watching in horror as one after the other sections of solid teak gratings, SAR&H monogrammed furniture from the aft officers cabin and even the chart table from the wheelhouse were thrown onto the fires. We were desperate at this stage. We could see Port Elizabeth harbour, but I recall it was getting late in the day, it was overcast and windy, and we were still some way from the breakwater and the safety of the harbour. I was told to fetch the used cooking oil in 20 litre drums that we'd stored in the paint locker forward of the wheelhouse: the 'emergency' fuel supply! There were about 20 or so drums. I ripped off the lids, and one by one, poured the contents of used cooking oil into the bunker tanks, tossing the empties behind me - I didn't care where at that stage. We were losing speed and steam pressure all the time, and the rhythmn of the engines we'd all gotten so used to over the days and nights of sailing from Cape Town was slowing down. The breakwater and harbour entrance were getting closer, but ever so slowly. I'd finished emptying all the drums and looked up to see a trail of them like buoys on a net strung out behind us, bobbing up and down in all their bright yellow glory on the swells. It was then I saw the Navy from Port Elizabeth following us! (SAS Donkin?). My first thought was that they'd arrest us for littering! We discovered later they couldn't believe what they were seeing, and were desperately trying to raise us on the radio to offer assistance.
I went down into the engine room to discover John had cut the steam to one of the engines, and we were only running on the one. Ted was shouting down the voice pipe from the wheelhouse:
"How the hell do you expect me to steer this thing if you can only give me one engine?"
-to which John replied quietly to me, 'sotto voce' and not back up the voice pipe:
"it's either you come in on one engine and no steering or you don't come in at all"
We were at the breakwater at last. I was so busy in the stokehold smashing furniture and hacking into teak gratings from the wheelhouse floor with a little emergency fire hatchet that I didn't really notice we'd stopped rolling. All I remember was watching the boiler pressure gauge falling constantly whilst burning my hands on the furnace doors trying to stuff pieces of teak into the boiler through little doors which weren't designed for the purpose.
We drifted up alongside the quay with the help of the Harrison and all breathed a huge sigh of relief. It was dusk. The steam pressure was almost zero, the generator had long ago stopped and it was getting dark. That was the last time the RA Leigh turned her propellers.
We spent a couple of weeks tied up in Port Elizabeth, but it didn't take long for us all to realise that this was the end of the voyage. The plan to sail two antiquated steam-powered harbour tugs ten thousand miles across open oceans now looked foolhardy in the extreme. We'd had a taste of the danger and difficulties involved, and it wasn't pleasant. This was to be the end of the line.
John Davis, Ted Hall and Stan Martin briefly entertained the idea of finding someone who would take them on a ship, 'piggy-back' style, but even their optimism was floundering. I remember John coming back from a meeting saying if we renamed the tugs "Kreepy" and "Krauly" we might have ourselves a sponsor, but nothing came of that plan either.
We had a few visitors - mainly curious local folks who'd heard there was a bunch of Australians down in the harbour living on a couple of old SAR&H steam tugs and were soon setting sail for their homeland. Well, we knew otherwise. One day, we started removing fittings from both the boats and taking them to a store loaned to us by the harbourmaster. The ships' wheels, compass binnacles, navigation lights and various other bits and pieces were unbolted and locked away. I'm quite sure they are decorating a few pubs in Port Elizabeth today. I remember the shunting drivers on the steam trains moving freight around the harbour took a liking to us, and we spent one evening doing wheelspins with a SAR&H steam locomotive up and down the quayside, chatting with the drivers and drinking beer together. They were nice guys.
I left Port Elizabeth and went to Cape Town, meeting up with some new-found friends and celebrating Alan Bond and the crew of Australia II taking the America's Cup from Dennis Connor and the New York Yacht Club. I went back to Australia soon after, but soon missed South Africa. I came back in 1984 and was working in Johannesburg when, on my Christmas holidays I decided to drive down to Cape Town via Port Elizabeth. I stopped in at the harbour and there, some 14 months later, still lay the SJ Harrison and the RA Leigh, exactly where we'd left them tied alongside the quay. I went aboard and took a look into the engine rooms. They were both flooded about a metre deep in water. It was a very sad sight. I heard much later that the RA Leigh had gone to Durban - I can only guess she must have been towed. Apparently her wheelhouse ended up doing service as a bar in a restaurant there. Very sad. I only found out that the Harrison had been converted to a workboat after visiting the ST Alwyn Vintcent website.
I have never seen or heard from anyone who was on that voyage with me ever again. Myself? I stayed in South Africa, met my wife, and we live here in Sedgefield.
So there's my story. I have tried to keep it brief - I have a reputation for verbosity (so my wife says...!) ".
Canberra1 |
Latest page update: made by Canberra1
, Oct 18 2008, 12:30 AM EDT
(about this update
About This Update
Edited by Canberra1
2385 words added view changes - complete history) |
|
Keyword tags:
None
More Info: links to this page
|
There are no threads for this page.
Be the first to start a new thread.
