The
houseflag of E and A taken from
a Company menu.
Eastern
and Australian
Steamship Co.Ltd.,
(E and A)
Sea Stories
from Former E and A Pursers
E
and A Line - Cargo Ships' Pursers.
by Malcolm Longstaff
I joined Macdonald, Hamilton & Co. (then located in Union House, 247 George Street in Sydney) as a junior clerk in March 1951 and initially worked in the Interstate and Overseas Freight Departments.
About the middle of 1955, I was asked by the company if I would be interested in going to sea as an E and A purser for three years and accepted. MH and Co staff occasionally were seconded to E and A to gain experience in ship operations. Thus at the age of 22, I signed on NELLORE (Captain J L G Plant) in Sydney as Assistant Purser and on 12 September 1955 sailed on my first voyage (Voyage 26 North) to Asia. The Purser was Tony Ward, a very experienced ex-BI purser who had migrated to Australia and had then transferred to E and A. I succeeded him as Purser when we returned to Sydney on the Southbound voyage in early December 1955 (Tony had applied for a shore posting).
When I first went to sea, my wages in those pre-decimal currency times were £52 per month, the equivalent of A$104.00, with 30 days leave per year. An E and A purser's wages then were based purely on age, with an increment at each birthday.
The main duties of the Purser were to maintain records of officers and crew's pay, to keep the ship's accounts, to prepare all forms and documents required to comply with the quarantine, customs and immigration requirements at the ports visited, to attend to 'shipping office' work involving signing crew on and off at ports, to act as captain's secretary and to type heads of departments' reports, correspondence, etc. Also, where passengers were carried, to be immediately responsible for their wellbeing. A Chief Steward took care of storing and catering matters and was responsible for the saloon crew.
The total crew was 84 - comprising 22 Australian deck officers and engineer officers, 26 deck crew, 14 engine room crew and 22 saloon crew.The crew, except for one Malay quartermaster and one Pakistani quartermaster, were all Chinese and most lived in Hong Kong. (I was eventually able to address each of the Chinese crew by his own name.)
NELLORE had accommodation for 12 passengers (accommodated in eight single-berth cabins and two twin-berth cabins, none with private facilities). Without the benefit of airconditioning, it could become quite hot on board, especially if the ship was swinging round an anchor off a logging port in North Borneo for two or three days. Despite the general informality there were some officers' dress formalities to be observed in cargo ships that carried passengers. When white uniform was being worn, those officers who dined in the saloon with the passengers had to change into naval-style long white uniforms (number 10s) for dinner - in a non-airconditioned ship not always the most comfortable rig!
The Chinese crew in all departments invariably were very loyal and hardworking men with many years of service and most had family links with E and A going back many generations. This - along with the fact that throughout its history the Company had never been large in terms of the size of its fleet - contributed to the 'family atmosphere' which prevailed generally.
The route of each round voyage usually started in Adelaide, thence Melbourne (sometimes also Geelong), Sydney, Brisbane, (sometimes Port Alma, North Queensland for meat loading). Ports of call in Asia included Tarakan in Indonesia (for bunkers), Manila, Hongkong, then the Japanese ports of Yokkaichi, Nagoya, Yokohama, Osaka, Kobe (sometimes Kure, then a military port run by the British Commonwealth occupation forces), then back to Yokohama and finally Kobe. The Southbound itinerary was Hongkong, then the North Borneo ports of Labuan, Sandakan, Bohayan Island, Wallace Bay to load logs and sawn timber, then Tarakan again (for bunkers), Rabaul, Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide, where the voyage ended. Occasional calls in Japan were also made at ports such as Shimizu, Muroran, Moji, Sasebo and Tokuyama. Most voyages northbound and southbound were made via Torres Strait and inside the Great Barrier Reef, which entailed employment of a Queensland Coast & Torres Strait pilot. Many ex-masters of E and A eventually found their way into the pilot service.
From about early 1957 onwards the ships recommenced regular calls at Chinese ports - Shanghai and sometimes Tsingtao - an interesting experience in those early post-revolution days.
Other E and A vessels operating at that time were EASTERN, NANKIN and ARAFURA. EASTERN was a sister ship to NELLORE and they were 'Empire' Class vessels built in UK during World War 2. NANKIN was originally a US 'Victory' ship, while ARAFURA was then a new vessel specifically built for E and A by Barclay, Curle in Glasgow and delivered only at the end of 1953. (The company had lost all three of its passenger ships during World War 2.)
The main cargoes carried Northbound comprised wool, scrap metal, frozen meat and other general cargo. Southbound loads included manufactured goods from Japan and Hongkong and logs and sawn timber from British North Borneo (now known as the State of Sabah, East Malaysia). Port facilities in Borneo at that time were fairly basic so ships would often have to anchor off the port. NELLORE (and EASTERN) had originally been designed to carry army tanks and heavy equipment. The clear space on their weather decks between the hatch coamings and ship's side, along with their heavy lift derricks fore and aft, made them ideal for self-handling of the logs which would be floated out in rafts to the ship's side. The same uncluttered open deck space also made these vessels suitable for the carriage of livestock and shipments of cattle and horses from Australia were common place.
Preparation of port papers occupied a great deal of the Purser's time and there were always numerous forms to be completed. The documentation for a call at Shanghai or other mainland Chinese port such as Tsingtao was prodigious and many papers, e.g. the crew list, had to be submitted in Chinese as well as English. The other main requirement was that cargo manifests (one for discharge cargo and one for transit cargo) had to be submitted in metric tonnes, not imperial tonnage, also each page of each copy had to be personally signed by the Master. Other customs regulations covered the security of foreign currency, while on the approach to a port the use of the ship's radar and depth sounder as well as cameras and binoculars was forbidden, presumably to restrict any intelligence-gathering activities by a visiting vessel. Armed personnel would usually come aboard with the pilot.
One of the major tasks each voyage was the change of Articles in Hongkong on the Northbound call, in effect the renewal of the employment 'contract' between the Master and the crew. All officers and crew had to be 'paid off' and then re-sign the new Articles for the next voyage. A good deal of preparatory work had to be completed, including the closing off of the 'portage bill' so that the wages due to the crew could be calculated and converted into Hong Kong dollars. On the day set down for the change of Articles, the Shipping Master from the Department of Marine, Hongkong would attend on board and supervise the formalities, which included his reading out in Chinese for the benefit of the crew the clauses in the new Articles.
My recollection of life at sea was of a generally ordered lifestyle of normal working days interspersed with periods of extended working hours. The workload would increase when we were nearing Hongkong northbound, around the Japanese coast (where ports of call were often very close together) and also on the mainland China coast. It was important to be aware of and to comply exactly with the local regulations and formalities so as to avoid risk of any delay to the ship's operations.
Except for brief periods of annual leave, I remained in NELLORE for the allotted three years and came ashore at Sydney at the end of Voyage 34 in August 1958, having by then made nine consecutive round trips. However, I was asked to do a short Australian coastal relieving voyage in NANKIN, which I completed before finally 'swallowing the anchor' in September 1958.
I resumed shore-based duties at Macdonald, Hamilton and Co., Sydney just a few months before the merger of P and O's and Orient Line's Australian operations which came into effect on 1 July, 1960.
January 2004