🪆The Russian Odyssey - Part 1

From Biswajit Basu:

Today I intend to tell you all how I got banned from Russia.

In was the very cold winter of 1970-71. I was posted on the Jalavijaya, a rickety ship built in early fifties (and then renovated in a French Shipyard with a complete midsection added-in without noticeable loss of speed).

_{(Jalavijaya, pic from ShipSpotting.com)}

So here I was, on this painted spinster, chugging along at 10 knots, southbound to Colombo (in Ceylon in those days) to bunker (which is the word for refuelling). We never got there. Off Vizag, in a storm, we broke our camshaft.  We did some temporary repairs at sea and limped into Colombo.  We ended up staying in Colombo for nearly 20 days instead of 20 hours!

We knew our next leg would be the longest, our next bunkering station being in Las Palmas in the Canary Islands. So we started off again and we had entered the Straits of Madagascar and I heard our Capt Dhondy (a Parsi) say we were lucky to be behind a violent tropical cyclone but sometimes, these cyclones returned. 

_{(Cyclone Idai, 2019)}

As luck would have it, we were deep into the Straits and the barometer plunged and we braced ourselves for a roller-coaster ride on an 18 year old tub.

The storm picked us up and threw us around like a rag doll in a dog's mouth. In order to prevent the seawater from entering the starboard side (right when looking towards the bow), we rigged up a 4 inch thick wooden wall. I could practically hear the sea laugh at us as it smashed the wooden girders  into toothpick. 

I was all of 20 years old and I got a taste of what a violent sea can do. Our boiler failed (the tubes were leaking) and we had to go through a 5 ft long 4ft diameter furnace to put in plugs in the leaky pipes. Nobody was exempt and everyone had to go into boiler. The Chief Engineer, Girish Pratap, a gold medallist and my senior, went in first and established the rules - no more than 90 seconds in the furnace. In the process of doing this the second time, my foot fell into boiling water and I screamed in pain. I was asked to come out and a tall gangly old telwala bathed my foot in "cylinder oil" and it was miraculous. The pain eased and it healed very quickly. That darn "cylinder oil" should be marketed as a medicine for burns and scalds!

Then we stopped for a few minutes out at sea at Port Elizabeth to drop a sick sailor and continued on our way over mountainous seas around Cape of Good Hope (no stop).  Then over somewhat more benign seas to Las Palmas.  It had been 40 days from Colombo to Las Palmas de Gran Canarias! It was in a direction opposite Vasco da Gama's on his maiden voyage to India.

The crew told me conspiratorially that I ought to buy a good stock of Wrigley's Chewing Gum and a couple of raincoats. Deepak Malhotra, now settled in Bangalore, and the Third Officer then, told me that these were not for me at all but for barter-sale to Russians!

We sailed through the Straits of Gibraltar from  the grey Atlantic into tlhe calm blue sunny seas of thel Mediterranean.  On our left we sailed passed many countries that do not exist today like Yugoslavia. Then, as land closed in from 2 ends we sailed from the Sea of Marmara into the Black Sea. 

_{(Pictures from Turkish Strait Vessel Traffic Service)}

On the left bank, we watched creation of Turkish (Istanbul) gastronomy.  It seemed so close to the ladies that if they threw their ladles at us, it would hit our ship for sure!

We pressed on into milky whiteness as Odessa was our first destination.  It was slow and ponderous going through the thick fog. 

The Russian Odyssey continues here.

🚢 Embarking on a Shipping Career

Blogger Note: When I was a child, I called him Mama Ship! So, where did his journey begin?

From Biswajit Basu:

I cannot remember my first ship as we had to go regularly for training on them from college.

My first ship as a designated Junior Engineer and the first ship of my professional career was the Jalavijaya of Scindia Steam Navigation Ltd which was a blatant misnomer because when I joined, Scindia had no steamships - only motor vessels (ie diesel driven and not steam driven).  

(Picture from ShipSpotting.com)

There was no interview but all good companies made a pitch for the boys as the institution was elite. But my mind was already made up. I would join Scindia's because 

- a) when I went on board doing our college days, we had access to the menus (issued everyday for the officers for  each of the 3 meals) and they sounded the best. (we were not even entitled to the leftovers). Especially intriguing was a dish called "Bubble & Squeak" which turned up in the menu once in a while. (Very disappointingly, it turned out to be a kind of vegetable mish mash-my first disappointment after joining ship)

 - b) During the war years Daddy was posted on Scindia ships as Medical Officer during the evacuation of Singapore before it was overrun by the Japanese Imperial Army.  (Later Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose started the INA here-there is a memorial on Marina Beach now; very reluctantly allowed by the Singapore Government after the British had razed the original INA  memorial there - Mimi (Swati Basu) has our photos at the new memorial).

My first trip was to Russia in the end of 1970.  We were carrying a cargo mainly of half inch round steel bars, hides and canned mango juice and slices).  Our carriage of hides was most fortunate (as it turned out after arrival).

I will describe our voyage in another blog post as it was pretty eventful and deserves a more detailed description by itself and also our stays at Odessa & Illyichevsk before our return, again round the Cape. Egypt & Britain decided to fight again as the Ottomans and Britain had done earlier in the mid fifties. 

But that is a story for another day. 

Post Script from Monisha Choudhury:

The first thing Dada made when he was gifted a huge expensive gift from our rich neighbour Mr Kejriwal in Bangalore. It was a metal Meccano set in green and red, like the Lego now a days. What he built completely was a ship. I guess that was in in Subconscious mind since 1959! Anyway that was the only completed piece he ever made as far as I remember. He dismantled everything and never got to put them back including Mas prized button operated sewing machine many years later in Hauz Khas. I remember because by then I used it too!

Biswajit Basu response to the above postscript: 

I never dismantled it. It simply vanished!