How to Quell a Mutiny

A few blogs back I mentioned a voyage to the eastern end of the Mediterranean in an ex-Dutch navy vessel. She was sixty-five feet long, powered by twin diesels. Aboard were a couple of Dutchmen, two Americans and yours truly.

Because the boat flew the Dutch flag, I considered it expedient to promote one of the Dutch crew members, Conrad, to official captain. He was the one who, in a previous blog, lost his vessel to the Spanish Coast Guard off Gibraltar.

With certain individuals, authority does not sit well. Conrad turned out to be such an individual.

Judy, my girlfriend at the time, came along for the first leg of the voyage. She was to disembark in Italy and fly home.

No sooner had we left Holland than—according to her—Conrad began flexing his captainly muscles whenever I was elsewhere on the vessel. He might be standing in the wheelhouse scowling off into the distance or peering intently at a chart when he’d issue an order for coffee—the implication being that his presence in the wheelhouse was vital to the safety of the ship. This, despite the fact that I was doing the navigation, someone else was steering and we were virtually alone on the ocean.

 

At first and in the interest of maintaining harmony aboard the vessel, Judy grudgingly complied. Her acquiescence however, merely served to heighten Conrad’s air of self-importance. By the third day of the voyage she’d had enough and demanded some kind of intervention on my part.

With mutiny looming on the horizon, I was forced to take drastic action. The situation however was somewhat delicate, and required a degree of diplomacy. My solution was to provide Judy with a bottle of pee. “Whenever Conrad orders a coffee,” I recommended, “Add a little of this should you feel so inclined.”*

From that moment, Judy became our captain’s most willing steward. On we steamed—a happy ship no longer under the dark cloud of an uprising.

Mechanical problems forced us into Lisbon, Portugal, where we spent the best part of a week. Each evening, Captain Conrad led the two younger hands around the various houses of ill-repute. And each morning, chest puffed out like that of a bantam rooster, he would hint shamelessly of his horizontal accomplishments.

Conrad's Steward

Needlessly to say, Judy was not overly impressed.

At first, the two lads followed the older roué around like obedient puppies, but by the time we left Lisbon they were barely speaking to him. I don’t know what caused the rift; maybe they simply came to see him for what he really was—a misogynistic blowhard—or maybe he borrowed money. I never did find out.

Anyway, off we went again, rumbles of discontent now emanating from a different quarter.

Fifty or so miles from the Straights of Gibraltar, Conrad approached me sheepishly. “Errr… I think I might have to see a doctor.”

We were already way behind schedule so I was none too happy. “I guess we’ll have to put into Cadiz,” I sighed.

“Errr…I’m not allowed into Spain,” he said. “Perhaps Gibraltar…” His banishment from Spain was obviously due to the past seizure of his boat and his stint in a Spanish prison.

“Sorry,” I said. I’d had a spot of trouble in Gibraltar and wasn’t welcome there. “You’ll have to wait until we get to France.” Conrad squirmed at the thought of what might be happening to the family jewels during the four days it would take us to reach France. He knew there was no chance of me heading back to Portugal so the idea was not brought up.

Judy, of course, was delighted when I mentioned the plight of the previously strutting Don Juan.

A little later, the two younger members of the crew confessed to similar afflictions. There were concerned looks when I announced that they’d have to wait until we reached France. At this point, one then confessed that he was not allowed into that country.

So it was on to Italy—another day.

Shortly after we passed through the Straights of Gibraltar, the two young crew members approached me once again. “We’d like your permission to throw Conrad over the side,” the Dutchman said.

Hmmm…thinks I... But reason prevailed. “That’s probably not such a good idea,” I told them. “We’ll be weeks filling out forms and answering questions. If you can put up with him for five more days, I’ll dump him off in Italy.”

And that’s what we did. He was put ashore in San Remo.

I know for sure that one of the first places Conrad would have visited there would be a coffee shop. I’ve often wondered if he found that first cup of land-based coffee a trifle bland.

Oh yeuk!! Davina

*For those of you who might be a little squeamish, urine is completely sterile. It has  

  been frequently quaffed by shipwrecked sailors in lifeboats.

Where There's a Will...

Back in the dark ages when I was around fifteen, a couple of mates and I discovered the wonders of the Middle Head fortifications in Sydney, Australia. Middle Head lies right next to the popular Balmoral Beach, and in those days the whole of the headland was a military base with a gatehouse on the single road leading into it. But between the gatehouse and the actual base was a kind of no-man’s-land of wild bush.

Me, Richard

When Richard, Rod and I first decided to explore the place, we snuck past the gatehouse through the bush, half expecting the report of the sentry’s rifle and the whine of a bullet overhead. We later discovered though—somewhat to our disappointment—that the guards couldn’t give a damn about three kids on bikes. From then on we simply rode in past the gatehouse.

All kinds of neat stuff had been discarded in what we came to think of as our territory: cartridge cases; bits and pieces of old military paraphernalia; even some live rifle rounds. But we never did find the pistols and machine guns we were so eagerly seeking.

What we did discover though, was a square aperture in the earth. Unmarked by anything—it was just there…an open mouth in among some shrubs and trees.

Rod

The hole led to a passageway which disappeared off into darkness in both directions. This was the stuff of true adventure—every boy’s dream!

The next day, armed with flashlights, down we went. The floor was some eight feet below the entrance hole and there was no ladder so the first in had to be lowered down. Then the one in the tunnel assisted the other two from beneath.

It was an incredible underground world.  Tunnels intersected and led off in all directions with rooms of varying sizes branching from them. The plastered walls were covered in peeling cream paint—some of it daubed with ancient graffiti. There’d once been electric lighting down there but that had long since ceased to function. The rusting fixtures looked to be of World War One vintage.

It seemed we were the first humans to have set foot in the place for some time as there was a heavy coating of dust on the ground and no sign of recent footprints.

One of the tunnels led to a huge room at the very end of the headland. From here, three nineteenth-century cannon, pointing seaward through holes cut into the rock, had once guarded the entrance to Sydney Harbour. The guns were long gone but the mounts remained. Directly above this cavern—we discovered later—a huge World War One gun had been mounted on a circular rail. The gun was gone but the track was still there.

It still astounds me that we roamed freely throughout this wonderful place without ever encountering another soul. We didn’t go near the actual barracks and it seemed that no one residing there had any interest in ‘our’ territory. We had it entirely to ourselves.

A few weeks after our discovery of the place, we decided to allow a fourth member into our group. We also decided that he’d have to prove himself by undergoing an initiation test.

The plan was this: I was to guide our new recruit, Gordon, to the place of his testing while the other two gleefully awaited his appearance.

Gordon

When Gordon and I arrived at the hole in the ground, he lowered me down then I helped him with a shoulder and a hand stirrup. Off we went down the passageway. I had him walk in front of me while I directed the beam of my light forward to illuminate our way. We’d neglected to mention to Gordon that he bring his own flashlight.

When we passed a particular side passage, I slipped into it and turned out the light. At the same time, I emitted a strangled gurgling as if something had got me. Panic edged Gordon’s voice as he called out to me in the darkness—softly at first, then beginning to build in volume with his fear. On cue, from a little further down the passage, Rod popped out of a doorway draped in a white bed-sheet, his flashlight within its folds shining up at his face, giving it a surreal ghostly pallor. “Wooooooooo,” he moaned.

Gordon let out a shriek and went racing toward where a vague hint of light showed from the hole above the tunnel. But before he got there, Richard appeared at another doorway in the same regalia as Rod and gave another ghostly, “Woooooooooo.”

Well, Gordon let out another terrified howl and fairly flew toward that speck of light.

Normally, when we exited the tunnels, one of us would make a step with his hands and the first two would climb up, onto his shoulders, then out. Once two were topside, they’d hoist the last out. It was virtually impossible to get out alone.

But Gordon managed it in a single leap!

I don’t think he even touched the sides.

Idiots! Poor Gordon could easily have succumbed to a heart attack at the tender age of fifteen.  Davina

Link to Middle Head:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_Head_Fortifications