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Chapter 6 - page 3

The boy from Hackney had come a long way.   But it was almost certainly his background that gave my father that instinctive ability to negotiate with the dock labour.   I think back to the many times he (I often went down to dad’s office after school or accompanied him to the docks at weekends.) walked through the sheds with me trailing after.   A word there another here with the men, dad seemed to know them all, even who’s wife was unwell or such like.   It was the same on board the ship, he would walk through every department, greeting all and stopping for a chat.   His quick eye was the first to spot anything not as it should be, and woe betide the offender but he would be the first to learn of a possible problem.   He had two loyalties, the first to the Company, the Union-Castle Mail Steamship Company and secondly to the men who worked under him or under his influence.   With these he was known for his fairness and honest dealing.   As far as I am aware my father in his entire time as Marine Superintendent never had a prolonged strike against the Company.
But beneath all lay his pride in ‘his’ Mail Service, to my father this was the finest liner service in the world, he may I think have been correct but it was the service to which he dedicated his life.   As we will soon see nobody, no organisation would cause its disruption, the Union-Castle mail ship sailed for South Africa every Thursday afternoon at 4.00 pm.   You could set your watch to it.  (Indeed you could, the last rope was cast off to a junior officers count down on the ship’s chronometer!)
To anyone today reading this story of my father’s life and familiar with modern container ships and cargo handling dad’s account of getting started again t at Southampton must sound positively archaic, as indeed it is!   But Geff was in fact light years ahead of his time, few of his concepts were ever adopted for, in the Chairman’s words (when Geff wanted cranes instead of derricks to be fitted to the new Mail ships being built), it is too advanced.   Having said this I must also say my father was a staunch traditionalist.   When as a cadet I suggested that the heavy teak accommodation ladders, so heavy they required the entire crew to rig them be changed for light mechanically operated aluminium ones, I was told that the trouble with young seaman today was that we were lazy!   On another occasion as a brand new Fourth Officer I became very tired of counting into the ship cases of whisky.   It seemed pointless and my presence I had soon found did nothing to counter the stevedores helping themselves.   I came home one day and asked my father why we didn’t just have the whisky distillers load all the cases into one huge box or boxes.   Much more secure and very much simpler to count, my dad hardly heard his comment simply being ‘it would never work’.  This was in 1958 and many years before containers were even thought of, it was left to an American James Sherwood to get the idea going and revolutionise the shipping industry.   I am glad my father never lived to see the giant ‘box boats’ of today because the were the death sentence of his beloved Mail Service and its ships.

1947

"The ‘Capetown Castle’ which had been reconditioning at Belfast came to Southampton to re-open the Mail Service to South Africa.   The sailing of the ship had a great meaning for this Country and South Africa.   There were few that remembered the Mail Boat organisation, of all the things that went into getting the ship ready to sail.   When the crew should sign on (the ship’s articles) when to join.   The fire, emergency and boat drills.   Loading of mail, embarkation of passengers and baggage and sailing day routine.   The whole of the organisation and routine had to be written out in detail and duly promulgated, so all concerned would know what they had to do.
A problem suddenly facing us was that of passengers baggage.   At the time there were restrictions of taking out of the country money valuables and other articles.   I was told that all baggage would have to be put onto the floor of the shed for Customs search.   This would have been an impossible business and would have resulted in endless delay.   This was overcome by a visit to the Collector of Customs, a man of much common sense.   Over-riding all objections from the Waterguard he agreed to sample searching, with the result passengers embarked in the pre-war fashion without inconvenience, except for the odd few that were chosen for sample.   To that Collector of Customs we owed much.   He was a man of decision and red tape was not allowed to hamper.
The ‘Capetown Castle’ sailed on time and returned full up with cargo and passengers.   Now the testing time, could she be turned round in 13 1/2 days?   She was, the piece work and bonus scheme provided the incentive and by spending a lot of time at the sheds No’s 38 and 39, then the homeward and outward Mail Ship berths, to ensure everything ran smoothly.   The pessimists warned that such an achievement could not be repeated week by week when the full service was under way.   That we did, meant not only anxious times with stevedore labour (on account of shortages) but also with other business connected with ships such as repairs, dry dockings, getting crews for the ships and of course the old enemy, the weather.   The resumption of the Mail Service, besides the work connected with all the other vessels belonging to the Company and others for which we acted as agents was in my opinion a great achievement that was quietly and most efficiently carried out and has been much admired."

They were very busy years for Geff for not only was he having to set up the Southampton organisation but now the ships one by one were being sent to Harland & Wolff at Belfast for reconditioning and returning to passenger service.   For six years only minimal maintenance had been done to the ships, they never really recovered from this neglect but there was now much to do.   Passenger fittings had to be restored, gun emplacements and Carley raft fittings removed and so forth.   One of the Intermediate passenger ships, the ‘Warwick Castle’ had actually been converted into an aircraft carrier, she now had to have flight decks etc. removed.   And in addition to all this there were the two new Mail Ships, the ‘Edinburgh Castle’ and ‘Pretoria Castle’ being built to replace war losses.   My father was forever away from home and usually over at Belfast.

In 1949, in June my mother Ruth took Penelope and myself to South Africa for a holiday, spent mostly in the Transkei.   We sailed in the new ‘Edinburgh Castle’ and returned in the ‘Stirling Castle’.   In the meanwhile my father took himself off to Dinard in France for a few days, I don’t think he enjoyed himself very much.

The following years were to be unhappy ones for my father, beginning with tragedy and ending with ill health.   We had had the holiday in South Africa the year before, it had been hopped that it would be beneficial for my mother’s health but the opposite was the case.   By early spring in 1950 Ruth was very ill but she recovered well enough for us to spend a holiday in Normandy.   We stayed in a seaside village right on one of the landing beaches, there was still plenty of evidence to be seen of the invasion, remains of the ‘Mulberry’ harbour, huge concrete caissons fabricated in their hundreds on the English south coast then towed across the Channel and sunk to form harbours for the invasion supply ships.   The beach itself was overlooked by the remains of the German defences, large concrete gun embrasures.   I seem to remember it rained rather a lot.   Why my parents chose to have it taken here I could not possibly say but here we had a family portrait taken, it was the last photograph ever taken of my mother.   Penelope was not with us because in January she had begun her B.A. (Arts) course at Rhodes University in Grahamstown, South Africa, arrangements had been made the previous year.
Ruth returned to England from our French holiday with a burst of energy, every day she was busy arranging for new curtains, buying sheets and generally going over the home, sprucing everything up.   And not only the home, my father was sent off to the tailors to have new suits made, I did not escape either.   It was the Indian summer of my mother’s life.
The beginning of December and my mother was very ill, she refused to go to hospital.   Now that I have experienced life I know that Ruth must have known for many months that she was close to the end of her life.   Her family meant everything to Ruth, my father was devoted to her and neither would be separated in these precious last days.   Early on the morning of the 17th my mother died.   Dad never got over her death, he never spoke of her in the past tense and from that day I saw dad as an old man.

"‘My wife’s health had been slowly deteriorating, but the end came with devastating suddenness and just before Christmas she died.   A very gallant lady.   A South African who had endured all the hazards and hardships of the war, and years of rationing and shortages which followed afterwards.   She never complained.   It is a strange thought to think that her sisters and relatives in South Africa are now rated as foreigners.’"