A short introduction.
Chapter 3
⚓ The Vindicatrix - The Sea Training School
As the morning of my departure broke, it wasn’t excitement running through me — it was the raw jolt of escape. I walked to the railway station with the kind of urgency you feel when you know the alternative is a dead end. Clutching my rail warrant, I wasn’t just holding a travel document; I was holding my way out. This route would drag me from the rough streets of North‑West London, through the belly of the city, then west to Gloucester and finally to Sharpness — the place where boys like me either straightened out or disappeared.
I knew exactly what I was walking away from. After the Second World War, too many fifteen‑year‑old boys ended up in London’s jails — poverty pushing them into petty crime, petty crime pushing them into a system that never let them go. Voluntary training wasn’t just a career choice; it was the only clean exit from a future already closing in. I wasn’t heading to sea for adventure. I was heading there because the alternative was a cell.
The train rattled toward Sharpness, and I stared out at the countryside — fields, hedgerows, cottages — a world that looked too soft to be real. It was a brief calm before the storm. When I stepped off the train, an instructor met me with a handshake that steadied my nerves, but only just. I joined the line of boys, all of us marching the three miles to camp, each step taking us further from the lives we’d escaped and closer to the hard truth waiting for us.
The camp looked like a makeshift village built to break boys down and rebuild them into something tougher. Nissen huts packed with thirty or more trainees, the quartermaster’s store, the admin block, the recreation hut buzzing with noise, the guardroom watching everything, classrooms humming with tension. There were places to rest, places to sweat, places to heal, and places to be reminded that weakness had no place here. The Captain Superintendent’s bungalow stood off to the side like a reminder that authority always watched from above.
The Vindicatrix lay moored on the Gloucester & Sharpness Canal — the same spot where Sharpness Marina thrives today. The red‑brick building now serving as a chandlery was once nothing more than a toilet block, but for us it was part of the landscape of survival. Its walls had heard the fears, hopes, and curses of boys trying to claw their way into a future that didn’t involve prison bars.
Leave by the front door — not the back door, where sixty per cent of boys fled in defeat — and you were on your way to a life at sea. The training school was brutal, the kind of place you’d expect in a 1700s punishment camp: iron discipline, no mercy, no softness. The whole point was to break you before you ever stepped aboard your first ship. Because if you couldn’t survive the training, you’d never survive the real thing.
Once that ship sailed, you were 13,000 miles from home with no escape route, no second chances, and no fantasy of swimming back to safety. You were locked into the voyage for its full stretch — six or seven unforgiving months before you saw mother England again. Refer to Vindicatrix: Vindi Boys tell their story of what it was really like!
A STORY I TOLD SOME CREW MEMBERS
One of the many pleasures seamen worldwide experience is telling stories, either at a seamen's mission or out on deck at night. Nestled in a padded bedroll on one of the aft hatches, the darkest part of the ship, a voice is cradled in a warm vacuum. I particularly enjoy the sound of a West African voice telling a voodoo story of sheer magic, where the crisp dialogue holds you captive and then gently releases you.
Soon, it would be my voice captivating the audience. The Congo boys, proud of their moniker, knew the stories came from a seasoned seaman who had no qualms about his cabin mates. "Hey, Alan boy, you tell a good one! Tell us one of your dreams, mate, and put us to sleep with your captivating voice. Go on, mate, we Congo boys won't laugh. We like the way you end your stories, not telling us what happened. Remember how you were handled by a women's Harley-Davidson biker gang in the USA when you were sixteen? No one could manage that many times, not even at sixteen. They should have whored you out as a stallion!"
And so, I began my story, recounting how, when I was on an island trader, the ship sailed between two Pacific islands, so close to the shoreline on both sides, port and starboard. Half-dressed, olive-skinned female islanders... I knew that if I started with this detail, the Congo boys' minds would begin to wander. I could feel the anticipation building. "No, not another Harley-Davidson story. Surely not!" "No," I said, "I'm letting my mind wander just so you can imagine how close the two islands were."
"Yes, mate, yes, mate. Okay, we won't interrupt." And so I began. "Splash! I went, and I was in the water! Oh no, mate, the sharks!" And the story began.
What the Congo boys never saw, what no one ever sees unless they've lived long nights at sea, is how the darkness itself becomes part of the crew. It settles around you like a great breathing animal, warm-backed and patient, listening to every word. On those aft hatches, the night wasn't empty; it was full. Full of old stories, old fears, old laughter, and something else too, something that drifted between the voices like a thin thread of awareness.
It wasn't a ghost, nor a spirit from voodoo tales. It was more like the sea's memory, leaning in to hear what men dared to say when the world was stripped away, and only truth remained. It hummed in the steel beneath us, in the slow roll of the ship, in the breath between sentences. When a man spoke from the heart, it drew people closer. When a man lied, it drifted back, unimpressed.
That night, with the Congo boys egging me on, I felt it settle beside me, quiet, curious, waiting. It understood the weight of my stories, the bruises concealed behind humour, the subtle shift in a man's voice when recounting a survival tale. As I thumped my fist on the hatch, it reverberated through the metal like a heartbeat.
Then came the splash, whether real or imagined, it mattered not. The night absorbed it, cradled it, and the narrative thrived.
I recounted how the water's impact knocked the breath from my lungs. One moment, I sensed the ship's gentle sway beneath me; the next, I was engulfed by the Pacific. The surface sealed over my head, disorienting me momentarily about which way was up. The sting of salt in my eyes, the world a spinning whirl of green and black.
"Oh no, mate, the sharks!" one of the Congo boys whispered, already half-immersed in the tale.
I allowed the fear to mount, deliberate and gradual, like the way the sea builds a wave. I described how I kicked vehemently, breaking through the surface, gasping for air, and the ship loomed above like a metallic cliff. The engines' hum resonated through the hull, unwavering, indifferent, as if the vessel cared not if I stayed aboard or floated away into the abyss.
Beneath me, the water teemed with life.
Not sharks, not yet. But something ancient. A presence that ebbed with the tide, inquisitive and chilling. It grazed my limbs like a query. The same essence that had listened to our tales on the hatch now encircled me in the water, sampling my trepidation, observing what manner of man I was when stripped to nought but breath and instinct.
I recounted to the boys how I yelled, but the wind snatched my voice. How the ship progressed, deliberate yet unhurried, as if deliberately forsaking me. Every shadow beneath the surface resembled a dorsal fin. The water's silence is more deafening than any cacophony.
The Congo boys fell silent, no jests, no interjections. Only widened eyes and the faint rustle of someone adjusting on their bedroll.
And just as the boys held their breath, I narrated how a tangible hand, a deckhand's hand, clasped my wrist. He leaned over the rail, shouting my name, hoisting me up like a floundering fish. The sea relinquished me grudgingly, as if begrudgingly.
Upon conclusion, the Congo boys exhaled collectively, as if a single entity.
"Bloody hell, Alan boy," one murmured softly. "You endured that?"
I nodded. But there was more. I lived that episode in a dream: no one grasping my hands, the ship a couple of nautical miles distant. Alone, the ship's drift had carried me away from the twin islands, marooned in the heart of the Pacific.
And somewhere in the darkness, that quiet presence settled once more. My Congo boys lay stretched out on their padded bedrolls, their eyes glinting. But they were not the only ones listening. There was the African giant, towering at six foot eight, his shoulders broad enough to do twenty-five press-ups with a 25-kilo bag of flour on his back. He would consume four eggs and four strips of bacon for breakfast, yet still search for leftovers. Beside him lounged two Liverpool stokers, men carved from soot and stubbornness, who could drink tea strong enough to salute. Three Danish deckhands leaned in, their blond hair catching the faint light, their laughter ready to burst. And then there was the Malaysian—an ex-Malacca pirate—who, once we removed the wire ring from the dartboard, could work his way from one to twenty with six throwing knives without missing.
This eclectic group was my audience: a floating United Nations of rogues, saints, fighters, dreamers, and men who had witnessed more of the world's underbelly than any map could reveal. All of them were waiting eagerly for the next chapter of the story to unfold.
The presence in the dark seemed to expand, as if it, too, was settling cross-legged among them, resting its elbows on its knees, chin in its hands. It had no face, no shape, but I swear it leaned closer whenever truth brushed against danger's edge. The night itself felt as though it was holding its breath.
I could sense the weight of their anticipation bearing down on me like the warm side of a bulkhead. The African giant scratched his chin. The Liverpool stokers exchanged a knowing glance. The Danish lads nudged each other. The Malaysian pirate twirled one of his knives, the blade catching a sliver of moonlight.
"Go on, Cookie," one of the Congo boys whispered. "We're with you."
At that moment, I felt it: that old, familiar tightening in my chest, the one that arrives just before a man steps into a memory untouched for years. The sea swayed gently beneath us, rocking the ship like a cradle. The air carried scents of salt, sweat, and the faint sweetness of tropical rain awaiting beyond the horizon.
The presence drifted even closer, as if aware that the upcoming part of the story bore the taste of fear, the sting of saltwater, and the peculiar, sharp humour only understood by men who have faced death.
I drew in a breath, and the story unfolded.
The shock was not the fall; it was the silence. The ship's engines, the crew's voices, the clatter of steel—all vanished the moment water closed over my head. Gasping, blinking away salt, I resurfaced to a changed world. The ship glided away, its stern lifting and dipping as though shrugging me off. The sky loomed a hard, bright blue, and the sea, a living, breathing entity, extended in every direction.
I took off my boots, removed my shirt, and tried to stay afloat. However, the current had other plans, tugging and turning me as if inspecting its new acquisition. That's when I saw them: the grey nurses. Not the type that takes your temperature, but the other kind, gliding through the Pacific with the slow, deliberate confidence of creatures that have never known fear.
They circled in wide, lazy arcs. Not hunting, just watching. Their bodies were long shadows beneath the surface, slipping in and out of the light. Occasionally, one would rise enough for me to see the pale underside of its jaw, the faint shimmer of its eye. I knew not to thrash. That would attract barracudas, more savage than a single shark if they tasted blood. Panic is an invitation in the ocean. So, I floated, letting the swell lift me, letting the sharks decide if I was worth the trouble.
Hours might have passed. Time at sea is elastic. The sun moved, the water warmed, and I drifted into a patch of floating kelp, an island torn free. It had wrapped itself around two pieces of driftwood, half a meter wide and two meters long. The outer kelp, bitter and milky, slid across my arms and chest like a loose net. At first, I fought it, thinking it would drag me under. But then I realised it was holding me up — not enough to rest on, not enough to climb out of the water, but just enough to keep my head above the swell and let me breathe.
I couldn't tell whether the half-sunken driftwood was dragging the kelp down or keeping it afloat. So I let it be. My kitchen-hand knife, the one that never left my side, even in the galley, had a Swedish sharpening steel spliced into the sheath. That knife had helped keep me alive on a Panamanian-registered oil tanker running up the Gulf. It was one of the treasures of the galley and one of my bunk companions. I used it now to cut the white, milk-bubbled flesh from the kelp and chewed it for substance.
How long would this driftwood keep the kelp afloat? Was it dragging the whole mess toward the depths, or was it the only reason I was still breathing? I didn't know. All I knew was that the kelp held me, the driftwood shifted beneath me, and the Pacific, patient, endless, waited to see which one of us would give way first.
I became part of the drifting mass, a single eye in a great, sodden tangle of weed. The kelp was alive with sea urchins clinging to thicker stems, small fish darting in and out of shadows, and pale, soft, worm-like creatures wriggling through rotting remains. They didn't care about me; I was just another piece of flotsam.
The sharks stayed close, circling the kelp island like silent sentries—curious yet cautious. Every now and then, one would glide past so near that I could distinguish the scars on its flank and the small parasites clinging to its skin.
As the sun dipped lower, the water transitioned from blue to gold and finally to a deep, bruised purple. The day's heat dissipated, and the initial cool breeze of evening grazed the back of my neck. In that moment, I felt minuscule, more diminutive than I had ever felt on land or aboard any ship. The Pacific, vast as it is, transforms into a world that operates independently when you find yourself afloat in it, supported solely by seaweed and chance, a world that does not require your presence.
Yet, that day, it did not claim me. The kelp held firm, and the sharks maintained their distance.
Gradually, hunger crept in—a dull ache behind my ribs. It was not the civilised, time-regulated hunger of terra firma but rather the body realising it had been forsaken to the elements. The kelp supported me, the swells rocked me, but sustenance eluded me. The sharks lingered, as patient as monks, while the sun beat down until my lips cracked and my tongue resembled a strip of leather.
It was then that I noticed the sea urchins.
Adhering to the kelp-like dark, spiky planets adrift in an alien sea, these creatures were not unfamiliar to me. However, I had never before regarded them as a potential source of sustenance, a lifeline in my current predicament. The ocean has a way of reducing you to your most basic instincts, where the intricate rituals of life are washed away by the need to survive. The brackish water allowed me to envision the woodworms squirming within the weathered driftwood, their lively bodies eager. Recollections of resourceful Islanders in the Philippines, who resorted to driftwood worms and beetle larvae for nourishment, flooded my mind. In this vast and unforgiving expanse, sustenance existed if only I could endure the days and avoid becoming prey to the lurking sharks.
With caution, I reached for a sea urchin, mindful of not impaling my fingers on its sharp spines. Despite my care, the spines pricked me, sharp and insistent reminders that nothing in the sea is freely given. I mimicked how a deckhand once cracked one against another urchin. The shell yielded with a wet crunch, revealing the tender, golden flesh inside.
The taste was peculiar—briny, nearly sweet. My stomach revolted, forcing me to regurgitate half of it. The second mouthful stayed down. By the fourth,
Flavour was the least of my concerns; survival was paramount.
However, saltwater emerged as the true adversary. Each breath, wave, and splash introduced more of it into my mouth. My tongue swelled, my throat burned, and my body yearned for fresh water as a drowning man craves air.
Then, the sky transformed.
It began with a shiver on the horizon, a darkening, a thickening, as though the heavens were gathering for something immense. The wind shifted, cool and electric. The sharks sank deeper, disappearing into the gloom. Even the kelp seemed to tighten around me, bracing.
The first drop hit my cheek like a blessing.
Then another. And another.
Within minutes, the sky opened, and the tropical storm came down in sheets, warm, furious, drenching. I tilted my head back, opened my mouth, and let the rain pour in. It tasted like life: clean, sweet, untainted by salt. I drank until my stomach cramped, until the dryness in my throat eased, until I felt human again.
I lay there with my mouth open, letting the sky feed me. The kelp held me steady, its fronds gripping my arms and waist like the fingers of some ancient sea-mother refusing to let me slip away. The storm raged, but it was a warm rage, tropical, heavy, full of life, the kind of storm that strips the world clean.
When the rain eased, I felt different. Stronger. Sharper. The urchins sat heavily in my gut, but they stayed down. The fresh water had cleared the fog from my mind. I could think again. I could hope again.
The sharks returned, gliding just beneath the surface, their bodies brushing the driftwood, trying to separate it from the kelp. Perhaps the storm had unsettled them. Perhaps they sensed the shift in me, the stubbornness, the refusal to be easy prey.
Night crept in slowly, the sky shifting from bruised purple to inky black. Stars emerged one by one, scattered across the heavens like distant ship lights. I watched, letting the swell rock me, the kelp cradle me, and the memory of fresh water linger on my tongue.
I wasn't safe, not by a long shot. But I was alive.
Night didn't fall; it rose from the depths, swallowing the last vestiges of light, transforming the world into a single, breathing darkness. The storm had passed, leaving the air warm and heavy, yet the sea beneath me felt colder now, as if the sun's absence had given it permission to reveal its true nature.
The kelp still held me, but it no longer felt like a cradle. It felt like a hand, indifferent to whether I lived or died.
The first hallucination arrived quietly.
I saw a lantern, a soft, golden glow drifting across the water. It bobbed gently. I thought it was a ship's light, a lifeboat, or a fisherman. I lifted my head, tried to call out, but my voice was a rasp, swallowed by the swell.
The lantern drew closer. Then, nothing.
The second hallucination was louder.
Voices. Clear as if they were right beside me. Men laughing, the rough, familiar laughter of seafarers. I knew those voices. I'd heard them on deck, in mess rooms, on long watches.
I turned my head, expecting to see them. Expecting to see the ship.
But there was nothing except the swell, the stars, and the long, slow breathing of the ocean.
The voices faded, replaced by a woman calling my name. Soft at first, then sharper and urgent. It was Cathy's voice. Impossible to mistake. It cut through me. I tried to respond, to lift my head, but the kelp tightened around my chest, holding me down.
Her voice drifted away.
When I opened my eyes again, there was only silence.
Yet the night had not finished with me.
The stars above began to move, not drifting but darting, swirling, spiralling like sparks. They twisted into patterns, creating constellations I had never seen before. One resembled a ship, another a great shark.
I stared until my eyes burned, until the stars blurred and merged into a single, shimmering haze.
My mind slipped then. I saw the ship's deck above me, as if looking up through clear water. I saw the crew leaning over the rail, calling my name. I saw myself climbing the ladder, dripping, shivering, alive.
For a moment, I believed it.
Then the vision shattered, and I was back in the water, kelp wrapped around me, sharks circling, the night pressing down like a weight.
I don't know how long the hallucinations lasted. Time had no meaning. The world had narrowed to the rhythm of the swell, the pulse of my own heartbeat, the thin thread of consciousness I clung to.
But somewhere in that long, dark stretch of night, something inside me hardened. A small, stubborn ember, the part of a man that refuses to die quietly. The part that says, "Not yet. Not like this."
The hallucinations faded. The voices quieted. The shapes dissolved back into the sea.
And I floated on, awaiting dawn, awaiting whatever came next.
Was that the horizon, or something else entirely? My eyes were raw, my mind half-broken, but there it was: a familiar shape rising out of the morning haze. Long, white. Too familiar.
I blinked, wiped the salt from my lashes, and stared.
The Princess of Tasmania.
For a moment, I thought I had slipped over the edge of sanity. What was a Tasmanian ferry doing thousands of miles from Bass Strait, gliding through the Marshall Islands? But the shape sharpened, the colours brightened, and the name on her bow burned through the mist.
I yelled. God, I yelled until my throat tore.
"HEY! OVER HERE! PRINCESS! I WAS A COOK ON YOU—TEN YEARS AGO!"
She kept coming, steady as a dream. I could see people on her decks—families, tourists, kids leaning over the rail, all waving as if they were passing a lighthouse. Hundreds of them. Three hundred at least. Arms raised. Smiling. Waving.
Surely one would see me.
I thrashed an arm free of the kelp and waved back, desperate, frantic, half-mad with hope.
"HEY! DOWN HERE! IT'S ME!"
Not a single head turned.
And the Princess of Tasmania, the POT, my old ship, slid past as though I were a ghost.
I felt something inside me crack. Not loudly. Just a small, quiet break, like a shell giving way underfoot.
The ferry moved on, shrinking into the haze, its wake rolling toward me like a sigh. I tried to shout again, but the sound was thin, broken, barely human.
Then exhaustion hit, sudden, absolute. A wave of sleep so heavy it felt like hands pressing down on my eyelids. I fought it, but the fight was gone. The Princess faded. The horizon blurred. And in the space of a minute, I was no longer in the warm Pacific.
I was back in Bass Strait. Back on board the Fritz Ingram, the Canadian supply vessel that serviced Esso oil rigs back in the late 1960s. Our supply vessel was towing a barge in heavy seas when the motor seized, as it did on the Fritz in 1970. We were towing twenty or more iron pipes, forty feet in the old measurement, travelling at least nine knots with the barge heading towards our stern. The barge was at least twenty feet higher than the tug. The bosun yelled towards the bridge, "Start the engines, we are going under!" I looked up, as I did twenty years ago, and said goodbye to the world as I knew it then, and down we went into the heavy seas with the pipe barge engulfing us, pipes breaking the chains that had secured them. Not only was the blackness, but the waters were not as cold as the Bass Strait, where this almost happened, had the vessel not kicked on first throttle.
I was back in the tropics again, the heat wrapping itself around me like an old, half-forgotten lover. The air tasted of salt and rust, thick enough to chew, and the sky hung low and swollen, the colour of tarnished brass. Gone were the freezing waters of my youth, the kind that bit straight through bone and left a man wondering what sins he had committed to deserve such punishment. Here, the sea had a different voice. I heard the slap of waves against steel, the deep, steady thrum of engines pushing through the dark, as if the ship herself were breathing beneath me.
The roar of the sea slowly faded, replaced by a cold that crept in like an unwelcome memory, the same chilling embrace I'd known in the Bass Strait's unforgiving depths.
In that strange borderland between drowning and dreaming, I saw them: two mermaids drifting toward me through the blue, their tails shimmering like hammered silver in the filtered light. They moved with a grace no human could ever mimic, arms open, eyes soft, inviting me into whatever lay beyond breath. I wondered which celestial creature would greet me first in that quiet afterlife, the angel of the deep or the angel of the sky.
But suddenly, two enormous sable hands plunged beneath my arms and pulled me upward without warning, separating me from my beautiful companions. My most cherished treasures, the ones every sailor envisions in his final moments, slipped from my grasp. I felt their loss deeply, like a physical wound. Then, everything went dark, hinting at a treasure far more valuable than any pirate gold hidden in forgotten coves.
When the light returned, it was the grey nurses in their starched uniforms, two of them leaning over me with warm West Indian smiles. Their voices broke through the fog.
"He's awake," one said.
"No more West Indian overproof rum for you, master," the other admonished, shaking her head with a half-laugh. "You were shouting in your dream, claiming the grey nurses were going to consume you! But here we are, honey. And steer clear of that overproof rum; it'll drive you mad."
