Dec 14, 1948

At Cebu Island, P.I. for 2 days. Although we didn't know it a the time, we were to go from island to island transporting oil. Going to Cebu was an interesting experience. The foliage was sure not like Kansas. The trees almost dripped on our ship as we slipped into dock.

It was almost Christmas time and yet it didn't look like it to us. 

A lot of fighting had gone on in these jungles during the months before we were there. 
 
 

Late Dec,1948

At Tandjong Oeban, Bintang Island. I think the Island is named Bintan, and we were in an out of there many times during our travels.  

During this trip we celebrated Christmas. This was a new adventure for us. A Norwegian Christmas at sea and a south pacific one at that. We noticed that the cook and steward were making many little Christmas cookies and other goodies as the day drew neigh. We took on oil or delivered oil and headed back out to sea and on to Sydney, Australia.. On Christmas Eve the Captain and the Mates who were not on duty assembled in the mess hall. The Captain brought a bottle of Aqua Vit and the first and second Mates brought bottles of beer. The Steward brought a sack of presents. These were gifts which had been hand made by women from Norway. We each got a present of mittens or scarves or bags of cookies. The Captain opened the bottle of Aqua Vit and the Mates opened bottles of beer. We learned some new Skoals and tossed a shot of booze down.

We had a nice dinner of Norwegian delicacies. The main dessert was a pudding.

Everyone got a helping and I noticed a confusion. Our language still wasn't great. But we finally found it was over a nut that was in the pudding. Not knowing it was a prize 

I ate it!..I ate it!!!

Another faux pas

The Norwegians were very easy on us.  We found over the time we
were on board ship that they treated us well.  Other countries did not always see us so kindly.  People in the Philipines seem well disposed toward us.. That may because they saw us as helping getting rid of the Japanese.  Other countries saw the emblems of oil on our masts and recognized us as taking the oil and selling it to other countries.

Jan 2

At Sydney, Australia.  One of the most beautiful ports in our world trip was the Sydney harbor.. Of course we didn't know it at the time.. we had to see some other ports before we could make that judgement. We were anxious to get to Sydney and we hoped to sign off there and our friend Ted McBratney was anxious to see his bride- to-be. I thought there was supposed to be some kind of ceremony when we crossed the equator, but I guess the Norwegians were too professional to fuss with that

The journey is the growth experience and not the destiny.

We found out rather soon we were not going to be sign off in Sydney. It costs money. We had to have so much money saved up and e hadn't had a chance to do that. Obviously the Immigration Service did not want a bunch of deadbeats as we do in the USA at times. I had relatives who came over and took a while to become naturalized.

Coming into a new port was always an experience. We didn't know what to do or how to do it. And we didn't know who to ask. The sailors often didn't know how to tell us in English and we didn't know enough Norwegian to talk to them. We had only been on board for short time. We didn't know the Captain well enough to ask him and we didn't know the Protocols of the Norwegian Merchant Marines well enough and didn't want to appear to be pushy Americans.

Sydney was an interesting place. Instead of McDonalds or Wendys they had sandwich shops. It was the first time I had had a bean sandwich.

We had fun wandering around and were treated nicely. Finally when it became apparent that we were not going to live here for awhile we got back aboard and got ready for the next port.

Jan 9, 1949

At Melbourne, Australia. Navigation strategies over time have taken different forms. At one time old maps were used and still are used to this day but men learned to use the stars

There was a way of traveling the ocean by following the compass for directions to head into. I tried to use the sextant to shoot the stars but I didn't have the patience or the teachings. Another was to "Keep your toe" on the shore and go to the next port. Of course one needs maps to stay away from shoals. Today we have GPS (Global Positioning Systems. By the time we got to Melbourne which was on the southern part of Australia it was cold but we were happy to be there.

Mid Jan, 1949

Traversed uncharted minefield near New Guinea. We were at sea again. I don't think I knew that we were going into an uncharted mine field but I do remember being in New Guinea. Someone told us that there was still cannibalism going on back in the bush. Of course we weren't going there

Jan 21, 1949

At Sorong, New Guinea. A few more days and we docked here to load or unload oil. Ad then we were off to Palembang. Being at sea was a treat for me. There is a certain freedom to traveling between countries. There was no cops to pull you over for speeding and none of the places we were traveling to we had no prior knowledge of what to expect. By and large I think sailors are happy people, partly because we choose to be there..

Jan 30, 1949

At Palembang, Sumatra. With the exception of a short stop in Sydney and another one in Melbourne, one can notice that all of the ports we stopped at were not English speaking.

From the time we left San Francisco until now we were surrounded by ,to us , were foreign speaking persons. WE had no TV to watch or radio to listen to or many others to talk to in our native language.

I will never forget our journey to Palembang. Our ship was narrow enough and short enough to traverse small rivers like the Palembang river. When we did this kind of a journey we took a pilot on to tell us were to go. He essentially took over the ship. During this trip I stood lookout.on the bridge. We went close enough to the bank that the branches brushed against us. The trees were filled with monkeys and periodically the pilot would toot the whistle and we would laugh at the monkeys scrambling through the trees.

As I watched the river I saw a body floating by. I grabbed the Pilot and brought it to his attention and he merely shrugged. So much for the value of human life.

Feb 1, 1949

Feb 14, 1949

At Oeban, Dave and I didn't get acquainted until our senior year in High School. We both moved to Winfield in that year. As kids we both lived in small western Kansas' towns. My dad was a teacher and his dad was a Methodist Minister This was during the dust bowl days. I can remember going from place to place in Lorraine Kansas (Pop circa 100 on Saturday ) with a feeling of no one fencing us in. We moved from state to state without a passport and it never dawned on me that in some counties there was not that freedom. In fact when we headed out for California to sign on a Norwegian tanker we didn't know we should have something to let us back in to the United States. There was no such thing as a wire tap and people listened in on the party line if they were interested.

I think it has taken me fifty years to appreciate our freedoms and to understand why people from other lands kept trying to get into our country. I still think that the youth of

today should travel although I realize that a trip such as we took is no longer an option.

I get very nervous when I hear about our administration wanting to get in to the network of our local computer servers and be able to monitor our email and wanting to listen in our conversations with out our permission. It seems like our freedoms are being slowly eroding and these were the freedoms we fought for in WWII. And this is because of our fear of terrorists. As FDR said , "We have nothing to fear except Fear itself."

Oeban was a place we went to often in our trips. We never were there for long but we could go ashore and have a beer and maybe try to trade with the natives. Once our Oiler went ashore and got loaded and headed back to the ship ----right through a native hut.

He was pursued by a number of the natives until he got back to the ship. They were angry. And the skipper had to talk a length to appease them so they wouldn't put him in the local pokey. And we needed our Oiler to get our ship out to sea. We had a sparse component of crew on our ship. Our mate was probably six foot five and towered over the natives and he was strong. Just a little adventure.

There are days at sea when we did not have external ways to entertain ourselves. There was no TV., nor radio to listen to, no newspapers to read, no movies to go to, no CD's to listen to, Life was different and so we (with active minds) had to figure out something else.

We made little telegraph sets to send Morse code back and forth so we could learn to send messages at sea. For a self taught exercise we got pretty good at it. Fortunately or not, I was on duty with a third mate who knew how to do this but really didn't really like to do it. Since all of the messages are in English he was somewhat of a disadvantage at sea and since I could not speak Norwegian very well it caused a communication gap. I really wasn't ready to handle the Morse code as part of my job but one night when we steaming up the Persian gulf toward Karachi, Pakistan we met a ship coming down from the opposite direction. We started receive signals from them. I guess they recognized our name and determined that we were a Norwegian ship.

They started signaling to us and I couldn't read it. I tried to get the mate to take over but he insisted that I do it. So with the assistance of one of the other sailors on duty I started spelling out the letters. He got excited and realized that it was a message in Norwegian and someone had a friend on out ship from a same town in Norway. With my limited resources I could only signal that we got the message. To this day, I'll bet they thought what a dummy was answering them.

Another thing I can remember learning was to do some rope work. I learned to make a Monkey's Fist knot. It is the knot that goes on a heaving line to make it possible to throw it ashore or to another boat. I don't know whether I could still do it or not.. Sailors have been known to carve things, because a sailor always carried a knife and to make things with rope and string.

Signed off Mosbay in Sydney, Australia. We finally had enough money to sign off in

Sydney. And now what to do?? The customs officials confiscated some of our stuff. I lost a silk smoking jacket. We were told we could get them back when we left the country. I don't know whether we really believed them or not . We might have been able to use them for barter but we never had the chance.

Where to go and what to do!. Sydney was a new place for us. We had our sea bags and some money. We felt a freedom but I imagine if the truth be told we might have felt a little scared.

There is a Kings Cross area in Sydney which is like the Greenwich area in New York City and that drew us like moths to a candle .and we found a room.

Yanks were not an oddity in Australia. Some had been in and out during WWII. They had money so they attractive to the ladies but the male side didn't like them a bit. All of this slowly sunk in to our thick heads. I remember once one of the blokes told us that the US swabies had given the girls chiclets and told them they were birth control pills. Sounds incredible doesn't it?? Of course we learned to tell stories back and forth that weren't always the whole truth.

About a year and a half before this, I was sailing on the Siboney as an Aerographers Mate.

The Siboney was a "Baby flat top" and was a flagship. This means that there was an Admiral aboard. Ours happened to be Admiral Whitehead and he was a navy man who had worked his way up through the ranks. Those of us who were white hats had a a great deal of respect for him. He had a sense of humor and although he had sense of the protocol of the service he had a twinkle in his eye over some of our slippage's. He had some of the same personality traits of Captian Salverson on the Mosbay.

One of the things about being a Aerographers Mate was that a lot of people did not kno what you were supposed to do. We went around a lot without our white hats on and nobody seemed to challenge us. One day I was on the flight deck taking measurements on the winds aloft. We used a piball balloon and sent it up and I looked through a theodolite ,which is an instrument to measure height of the balloon.. . Every minute Shorty Dugan would call " time" and I would read off the coordinates for him to write down. We chattered a little and then I noticed he got quiet. I felt a presence behind me and I figured it was another swabie or a chief. Soon I heard a request, "Can I take a look?" I replied,

"Just a minute. I have to get up to ten minutes" . When I did and turned around and said, "Okay, Chief, Here you go" and it was the admiral. He just grinned and looked. And then

just said, "Thanks" and walked away.

Another day, Shorty and I had to take the weather map up to the Captain, which was a daily occurrence. He was in the wheel house and we passed by the Admiral's cabin and went on up to the bridge. Shorty was full of fun and on the way back down he had the map rolled up and was ahead of me. He passed the Admiral's cabin and ducked around the corner. I was following behind and just before I got to the Admirals Cabin, the Admiral stepped out and got between me and the corner where Shorty was hiding. I was dumbfounded and watched in horror as Shortly jumped around with the rolled up map and pointed at the Admiral and said, "Bang Bang. I got you" and he saw what he had done and straightened up to attention.

The Admiral just smiled and walked on by..

I guess it was a wonder that we didn't get put on report.

Being in Sydney was full of exploration, smelling the smells and seeing the sights. We learned to look right instead of left when we stepped off the curb because the Aussies drove on the wrong side of the street.

We went to Bondi Beach and around Sydney. We even bought "civilian" clothes, since we had left home without them. After awhile we started to run out of money and we had a few optionsÉ.Write home (not really an option for us). Go to the US Embassy and get sent home as an indigent ( but we were told we could never go to sea again if we did). Go to college on the G.I. Bill ( a thought but not a very attractive one) catch another ship

( but we soon found out that ships tended to hire their own nationals and Americans usually had to sign on for tour out and back) so we moved into Surrey Hills which was much cheaper and found jobs at the Ian Marr Iron foundry and now for the rest of the story.

As common laborers we made about 8 pounds a month or about $26 dollars. Our job was shoveling moulding sand and metal.. We needed the job and money.

Wouldn't you know that when we got on the job the Ironworkers union was poised for a strike. The Sun of Sydney for Thursday April 07, 1949 blared that the UNIONS FAILS TO GET ALL IRON MEN OUT. The union had some success and called another meeting. It seemed that most of the workers did not want to go out on strike. It was just before a holiday and the workers would not get paid for the holiday. It was a little complex as to why there was an attempt by "our Leaders" to get us out. It had to do with the "Months Gaol sentence on Mr. L.J.McPhillips, the unions assistant national secretary".

There were, charges, meetings and fights and we were lucky enough or dumb enough to be in the middle of it. Being in pretty good shape from our days at sea we could stand up well in the struggle.

As an aside one of the articles in the paper said "Television is the most marvelous:and greatest thing invented since the wheelbarrow. É. And I were televised at televisions premier at the Australia yesterday" this was on April 7, 1949.

Another paper told of a Vice ring that was Raided in Chicago on the same day. The Australians were very interested in what was going on in the US.

Needless to say the Strike did not last long. Even though there were many Communists in the Iron Workers Union most of the workers were anxious to get back to work and we were among them.

We enjoyed our work with the laborers in the Marr Ironworks, Inc. We soon found out that the workers were a fun loving bunch and wanted to know about America. And we enjoyed swapping stories.. They asked us about Al Capone.. they got a lot of their opinions from the newspapers and the movies. Once they found out we were from Kansas they figured we wore guns and fought the Indians. We did nothing to dispel them of their mistakes. And since we had been in Chicago we must know about the gangsters. We on the other hand fell for their stories about there being kangaroos outside.

We got invited to a home of one of them to try his home made beer. It was so smooth and we almost did make it back without making fools of our selves.. Since I had played tennis and their country were tennis fans we got invited out to one of the homes where there was a tennis court. We had no equipment They loaned us some to participate. We had a lot of interesting experiences.

The EASTER SHOW was going on while we were there and we went out to see the events. It was like our STATE FAIRS with their own events. There were tree and logging events and "football games" which were rugby games. There was a lot of enthusiasm in the foundry about those games and when some player bit a blokes ear off.

Our friend Ted McBratney was to get married and we had a party for him at the Club Sydney. Some place I think I have a picture of it with Ted, Dave, Les Jabara, and I think Ole Olson, and me. If I can find the picture I'll try to scan it in. It was fun and I'm sure we drank too much. I remember one woman announced that with our youth and vigor and her experience we could have a lot of fun. I didn't see anyone taking her up on that but then I had a lot to drink by that time..