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SERVICE IN THE WAR YEARS
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The recollections of a young man's first trip in 1942
My
name is Jack Higgins and served with the New Zealand Shipping
Company from December 1942 until January 1947. That is, other than
special ops May 1944 to August 1944. The ships I sailed on were
Rangitiki, Empire Castle, Durham, Paparoa, Ruahine, Empire Abercorn,
and last of all Samkey. I was given a lap-top computer last
year for my eightieth birthday, so am still quite a novice at
operating it. I have just found your articles on the web site and
found them very interesting. I don't remember too many of the names
I sailed with, but have a group photograph of some of the lads on
the Samkey in Newfoundland, February 1946 and the Empire
Abercorn in Australia 1943. If anyone is interested I can send
off copies; and who knows? Someone may even remember me.
When
I talk about the Rangitiki, please remember it was 65 years
ago that I joined her as a Deck Boy fresh from the training ship
Vindcatrix. First of all I was sent to the NZSCo. offices at the
Royal Albert docks, London to register with the company. From
there, and within a couple of days, I found myself on a train to
Liverpool to join the ship. That journey alone, which of course was
during the war, was catastrophic enough,. I think that journey was
about ten hours. I will always remember the greyness and bleakness
of the ship and the dockside so early in the morning. Of course, I
was still excited as a young lad to be there. After all, this is
what I volunteered for.
I shared a cabin in the forecastle with
seven other lads and immediately was sorted out to be the "peggy",
looking after the deck hands. Having loaded both male and female
troops we left the quayside and anchored in the River Mersey for a
couple of days. As the ship did not have a self stowing anchor
cable, I was assigned with three other AB's to the cable locker.
The cable as it came out of the river was hosed down by the ships
carpenter, but this did not remove all of the slime, etc .To a young
lad those cables looked huge and had to be stowed in a circular
fashion in the confines of the locker.
We
left Liverpool and joined a convoy which was to take us to
Freetown. During this time I learned how to use the ration of lime
juice diluted in water to scrub the mess tables. It brought them up
snow white.
Twice per week we were given a ration of TABNABS. These were really
pastries of a sort and I do believe their consumption was made
mandatory by the then Board of Trade. Between Liverpool and
Freetown one of the R.N. sailors died, and so I witnessed my first
burial at sea.
Whilst at anchor in the harbour at Freetown some of the R.N. escort
vessels were given booze towards their Christmas dinner, etc. After
two or three days we left for Durban where the troops disembarked
and the ship left for Cape Town. We were there for about a week and
took on German prisoners of war. From Cape Town we left for
Montevideo (Uruguay). During our journey up the River Plate we
passed ,what was left of the superstructure of the Graff Spee.
The German prisoners were lined up on deck to see what was left of
their famous battleship. Not too many of them gave the Nazi
salute. Whilst in Montevideo, we had to anchor off due to us having
the prisoners on board and, of course, Uruguay being a neutral
country. We left South America and headed back to Liverpool via
Freetown where we picked up another convoy home. I cannot remember
anything further about the Rangitiki other than I only did
this one voyage on her.
Jack
Higgins
October 2007
Photos to be uploaded
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