I was lying in my bunk fully awake and making a Movie! I had all sorts of things going on, collisions and hijacks, the Captain trying to smash down the door of the Chiefs cabin with a fire axe and the drunken mate throwing the logbooks over the side! I even took it as far as the Second Engineer trying to get the oiler to sleep with him, the second officer deserting with the Captains wife and a suicidal electrician who saw giant ants turning into human beings (they were coming out of the Sea to eat him).
It was a fantastic film, a blockbuster to be sure but instead of the cameras rolling, a frustrated Director and a crew of thousands it was all in my head and I was not getting any sleep because of it. So here I am, writing something down in the hope that once my over active imagination has been placed onto paper I can switch off and get some much needed rest before the new day kicks off!
There are many films set at Sea, many featuring submarines and large bearde d Russians discussing mutiny behind wafer thin doors and those completely removed Titanic-style dramas that true Seafarers cannot watch because of the countless mistakes and impossibilities inherent in the plot. Then there are those cheap and nasty productions designed for the horror flick lovers: the Sea snakes and giant whales that attack at dawn or of lunatics on yachts tying woman up for no apparent reason. All of these films barely resemble reality at Sea, part to do with the fact that half of them are filmed on a set where the actors sway from one foot to the other and the backdrop lifts up and down behind them and partly a result of the Directors belief that nobody will notice! Sad really as Seafarers cannot watch these Movies because of the poor direction and sets and even sadder because landlubbers are given the completely wrong impression of what the life is all about.
I did once see a good Movie set at Sea! It is a black and white film with the lead role played by Humphrey Bogart! In fact, it was an excellent insight into what life can be like onboard, and what life is still like; I just cannot remember what it was called. To put it bluntly, the Movies around that are filmed on or about the Sea and life therein are utter garbage and from where I am sitting unworthy of being watched. No wonder all landlubbers think that Seafarers are always covered from head to foot in tattoos, spit and swear allot and have a brai n the size of a peanut (or in their pants). While this fact maybe true to a certain extent we are not all tarred with the same brush!
Life at Sea is not all about sailing from one port to another with a cargo, there are people onboard Ships, individuals who may or may not interact well with their shipmates and who may or may not live in harmony day in day out! Every Seafarer is a character and each could write a novel filled with amazing experiences. We were not all trying to hide in a cardboard box on London docks when the press gang came along; our backgrounds are as diverse from each other as say a Russian ballet dancers is from a Portuguese coal miner. Yet we all jog along and keep the ship in motion whilst taking the unexpected expectedly and expecting the unexpected at every turn.
Here though is the underlying problem. To talk about the Sea and the life is only possible with a like-minded person! A Seafarer can converse easily with another Seafarer about his last trip and the muddle of crazy occurrences that came his way. He certainly cannot do so with a landlubber. I recall many a time when having come home from a trip to Sea my old school mates would ask me so, how was it, tell us all about it and so I used to start off with a typical day in the life of me.
Well, this chief arrived onboard to relieve me. We were up the Fly River in Papua New Guinea, stuck on a sandbank and having a party on our top deck. The top deck has this plastic grass on it and all the other Ships used to stop on their way past and come on over to join in the fun. Crocodile Dundee was with us, he lived on this small island in the outback and made money catching crocodiles and making alcohol from coconuts, he was Australian and a total weirdo. Well, I was sitting their having had a few to many toddies (coconut juice) and smoking this large homemade cigarette (a wad of Irish tobacco rolled in newspaper) when my relief just keeled over and fell flat on the floor. Turned out he had gangrene on his toes! He was to be shipped out and as we were in the swamp and stuck on a sandbank, my second engineer disappeared into the jungle with him in his arms! We heard he got to the hospital a week or so later but by then we had other things to keep us occupied! Anyway, the next day we had to make a mad dash for the mouth of the river as we heard that the Indonesians were moving large guns to the border of Papua New Gu inea, something they do quite frequently but it always causes panic. The only way we could get off the sand bank was to tie our winch wire around a tree on the opposite bank and pull ourselves off. The tree bent so far down under the strain that it touched our back deck but it worked. Yeah, I remember that night well, especially when I used to slap my hand onto my thigh and kill twenty mosquitoes every time still amazed I never caught malaria!
Anyway, did I tell you about the girl I met there and how I was chased out of the country with a machete-wielding engineer who was extremely drunk?
I must admit that I never really got past the first sentence of any tale of the Sea! I would usually have been interrupted by somebody uttering pull the other one or are you on drugs. If for some miraculous reason I succeeded in starting another sentence I would find my listeners concentration rapidly receding, a glazed look would slide down over their eyes and I knew that the y were not taking anything that I was saying in (or if it was going in it was rapidly falling out of the other ear without pause in-between). I lost all my friends from school within one short years of being at Sea (or did I lose them after the first trip?). I have never met any of them again. I mean realistically, what does a painter or a plumber or for that matter a high-flying lawyer or a doctor who has never left Edinburgh, have in common with a Seafarer!
Today, any friends that I have (who are not sailors) no longer ask me about my trips! They get all confused if I describe the life, they turn weird and scrape around in their chairs as if I am discussing quantum physics in Chinese and they typically try to change the subject or suggest that, a drink would be nice. There are certain people ou t there who understand and appreciate the life involved. Nurses strangely enough seem to have empathy with the Seafarer (a high proportion of marriages resulting) maybe because both jobs are stressful and often quick change and adaptability are an inherent feature! Journalists who travel frequently whose middle names are danger and who live on the edge as if it was just another mundane day in an otherwise scheduled existence, also seem to have some understanding.
Therefore, I do not talk about the life at Sea anymore! I go home and I talk about the mundane, I discuss football and politics. I reach out to the environment and makes waves about the over reaching power of Americans and I discuss my landlubbers friends lives which makes me yawn (if I cannot talk about my life then what choice do we ha ve to keep a friendship alive except talk about theirs). I know that my landlubber friends all regard me with some trepidation; they know that I have another life but they have not a clue or even a picture to base this life upon and are too frightened to ask.
Very recently, a Seafarer said to me I must write a book about my life at Sea. Looking back my response was rather harsh! In fact, I bit at him, what on earth for, nobodies going to read it. I suppose I would be wrong about nobody reading it. There are for starters about 60,000 British Seafarers hanging around the world today. Unfortunately some of them do not often read books, 10% would not want to read a book about the Sea, 10% might not see the book as they live in Thailand, Brazil or the South Pole and a few thousand more might not be interested because they are too busy enjoying a life-at-Sea! So what would be the point?
As with films, many novels available are set at Sea! Moby Dick for starters (I cannot comment on this large and cumbersome look-a-like telephone Directory, as I never got past the first page). Then there are the Dirk Pitt series, the adventures set on reSearch vessels belonging to a US Government branch called NUMA. Although Sea-appropriate words like ship, waves and ahoy, me old mate crop up on nearly every page, the factual information within those pages reminds me of the times when I used to pretend to girls that I was a Plastic Surgeon (I used to believe that this occupational white lie gave forth greater rapport than simply a sailor). If they had asked me, anything more than what they should take for a heada che, I would have been clueless but they never did, thankfully.
The situation that exists is that the world is filled with two types of people. Those who know absolutely nothing about the Sea and the life on the ocean waves, who frequently think they know about it and who write and make films based on Ships and the Sea, which are very incorrect as to reality and fact. Then we have on the other side of the coin the Seafarers, those who know exactly what goes down upon the ocean waves, who knows the life inside out but who cannot talk about it.
It was with this logic in mind that I lay there in bed making my Movie. If I could perhaps film a blockbuster set at Sea, were the direction and information within are replicated from the real McCoy, I could perhaps start giving to landlubbers some real ity. The hero could be Arnold Swarznegger, the damsel in distress Kate Holmes. I could have Sea snakes and wormholes, sinking Ships and murder, my Movie is my oyster.
Now though, having written the above, something more down to earth would be appropriate. A series might be apt, a fictional setting but based upon reality. Adventurous, were everything has happened before at Sea! I could have a couple of lead characters, the Captain and a Chief Engineer would be a good start, some women, wives perhaps or girls met in a bar. I could have anger and hatred, madness and hysterical laughter. Maybe some quiet moments of heart rendering reflection and then some disaster as the hurricane hits! Thinking further this could be a comedy, one of the worlds best means to portray a lifestyle.
Episode 1: The introduction to the characters and life onboard with a barbecue on the back deck!
Episode 2: The day the sailors get very drunk and attempt to bring some bar girls back to the ship in Vietnam. Meanwhile the Captain of ample girth gets himself stuck in his toilet and has to be rescued.
Episode 3: The day some pirates try to board the ship disguised as the Indonesian Navy and the chief engineer gives a speech that sets everybody laughing hysterically.
Episode 4: The day the engine room floods with water and the ship prepares to abandon. But nobody can find the second mate and the wife of the second engineer.
Episode 5: The day the storm struck hard, the oiler cant get out of bed and the gay cook tries to pull out his back tooth with a pair of pliers donated by the chief.
Episode 6: The day that the owner of the ship comes onboard to find a blue-Movie on and everybody watching it. He also finds the washing machine full of live fish, a dead body in the meat room and a pair of women underpants as a dinner place mat.
Episode 7: The day the mate accidentally falls asleep in the bridge toilet whilst on watch, when the oiler blows a strong chemical into the accommodation AC inlet and when somebody puts glue into the boots of the third engineer.
Episode 8: The day when Christmas comes and the chief gives another speech, when the Christmas dinner ends up on the floor and when the Captain decides that the Cadet should be in-charge for the day.
It does not have to be a comedy all those things happen as part of everyday life! Some of them were not laughable at the time!
Ieuan Dolby is the Author and Webmaster of SeaDolby.com. As a Chief Engineer in the Merchant Navy he has sailed the world for twenty years on a variety of rust buckets and state of the art vessels. Now living in Taiwan with his wife and son he writes about cultures across the globe and life as he sees it; a Seafarers escapades with a few tall tales thrown in!
Author:: Ieuan Dolby
Keywords:: Movie, Maritime, Sea, Ships, Produce, Director,
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