Review - June 1963

"Clan Maclennan" left London 3rd Dec '66 for South and East Africa.

L-R  G Ravi J/2/E, G Beatram  J/E, R Tedford Chippie, Alan Melia C/O, J Sanderson R/O, R Hobson 3/O, Me, Peter Howard 2/O.

May 1967 sailed on Clan Maclennan as 4th Engineer. A sweat box; steam turbine, steam gennies, all auxiliaries steam, 2 Babcock boilers, 2 Cochran boilers for the auxiliaries.  Watty McClunie was chief, Charlie Aitken was 2nd , Ravi a Indian was Jnr 2nd getting his steam time in, Alan Melia was mate, Peter Howard was 2nd mate and we sailed away under the colours of The East African National Line to East Africa, even the funnel was painted in their colours.

Easy trip passed Gibraltar, through Suez, having a swim in the Bitter Lakes waiting for the northern convoy to pass, then off to Aden for bunkers, then Mombasa, Zanzibar, Tanga andDar es Salaam, each port different but to my Mancunian eyes wonderful. The bars and beaches at Nyali, the people we met on board and ashore were something I had only read about. Then about turn back to Aden again for bunkers then up through the Red Sea to Suez.

I was on deck bronzying listening to the World service on my transistor, when a program was interrupted to say that the Israelis had bombed the Suez Canal. Quickly when down to tell the chief who took us to see the old man, " you must have imagined it, we've heard nothing off sparks”. So thinking I must be mistaken back on deck I went, again it was on the radio and this time I took it to the old man myself. Sure enough it was true and as we approached Suez we could see many ships at anchor, and planes flying all over the skies, smoke and explosions in the distant, so quickly placing a large Union Flag on the deck, as the planes were buzzing us, we anchored waiting for orders from London.

We are at anchor 3 days before the office realised that Suez was completely shut , so from being 10 days from home we had to turn around and sail back home via the Cape. As we weren’t fully loaded it was decided to load again at the Cape. As the South Africans and the Africans were not talking or trading so better to be safe than sorry so all hands turned to to paint out the East African National Lines colours and back to the 2 red bands.

From having a nice 2 1/2 month trip it resulted in it being 4 months, but a trip to remember.