Memories of the MV Pontfield
by Dennis M. Crosby
After the ghost ship incident, I was sent on a course to
Liverpool to become
an EDH (Efficient Deck Hand).
After completing the course, I
was dispatched to
Immingham, near
Grimsby, and
signed on a tanker, the MV
Pontfield. We sailed to
Bahrain to load aviation spirit
for Melbourne,
Australia.
While
on passage through
the Red Sea, one night prior
to going on watch 8-12, several
of the guys were
sat yarning in the messroom. One fellow spoke of being
on a tanker in
which one of the crew who had gone mad due to the terrible heat
in the Persian
Gulf and had roamed the ship with a fire axe
threatening to
kill someone.
Later, during my watch at 11 pm I went forward to relieve the
lookout man on
the forecastle
and discovered that he was missing! I thought
that perhaps
MV Pontfield
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we had shipped some water over the bow and maybe he had been
called by the
officer of the watch
to stand his lookout on the wing of the
bridge. I went
to check, but there was no sign of him at all. I did not report
it to the
officer of the watch,
not wishing to cause any trouble for him.
So I returned
to the forecastle to keep my lookout. While doing so, I began
to think about
the tale of the crazy man with the fire axe. Suddenly, I was
aware of a
crackling sound and something black arising from under the
windlass which
lowers or raises the anchor. At first, it scared the hell out
of me! Then
someone asked,"What time is it?" It was the fellow whom I
was to
relieve. He had settled down under the windlass and fallen
asleep. The
crackling sound was from the oilskin which he had wrapped
around
himself.
Later in the voyage as we travelled through the
Indian Ocean to
Australia, each
afternoon around about 2 pm, the ship used to come to a stop
for about two
hours. We were told that there was a problem in the
Engine
Room. Upon our
arrival in Melbourne the newspapers
carried a story
reporting that
there was great
consternation amongst the crew of the tanker Pontfield,
when
for several
afternoons a fire would begin in the number two cylinder.
It stated that had
the fire been in the number one cylinder, the ship would
have blown sky high
due to us carrying over four million gallons of aviation spirit.
But none of us
sailors was aware of this fact at the time.
THE END
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Tales of a "Vindi Boy" is continued in
Part 4
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Dennis' pages are maintained by Maureen Venzi and are part of
The Allied Merchant Navy of WWII.
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