OLNA             19/08/1967 to 16/04/1968

Following on from my 13 months on Tidereach with its mixture of excitement of the Middle and Far East and the absolute boredom of many months on the Beira patrol and all the hot engineering graft that went with it I went home for a well deserved leave on the 19 May 1967. The first question most people asked was “when are you going back”!!!!.

In July I went off to Canada and expo 67 with John Asome (radio officer on Tidereach) for 3 weeks which is another story for another day.

About the first week in August after two and a half months leave I got the letter. It said quite simply to report to RFA Olna in Singapore on the 19 August as Fourth Engineer, flight tickets enclosed. These were made out to my old friend Phil Woodward from my Tidereach days and had been crossed out and my name inserted instead.

I duly reported to Terminal 2 at Heathrow on the 17 August for a late evening flight with British Eagle to Singapore via Ankara and Bombay in a Britannia turbo prop aircraft with all the seats facing backwards. We duly got on the aircraft at about 2100 and it was found that the altimeter was not working. No problem, the sister aircraft next door would have one so an exchange was made. Problem – sister aircraft had a mark 300 altimeter and my aircraft needed a mark 200. No problem, put the good altimeter back in the sister aircraft and then take all the seats out, turn them round and replace and use that one instead. This all took time and we eventually left at about 0100hrs instead of about 2200hrs. Little did I know what difference this would make in Singapore.

Well it was 8 hours to Ankara, stop for 2 hours, 8 hours to Bombay, stop for 2 hours and 8 hours to Singapore. At about 0930hrs (instead of 0600hrs) I was met by a big Sikh navy driver with a sign who said I should hurry as Olna was leaving within the hour. We hustled through the Singapore traffic in a Bedford “tilly” to Sambawang Dockyard, straight onto a small boat and out to Olna which was getting under way. I stepped onto the box at the bottom of the gangway, shook hands with the 4th I was relieving and up the gangway and on board. The ship was really moving by this time. An O Boat at last.

I was shown into the Chief Engineer’s cabin and introduced myself to George Burnett. As he had a junior engineer capable of running the 4th engineers watch he said I could have today off, double up on the 8 – 12 tomorrow and go on my own on Monday morning.

He then took me to the Captain and with the ships Writer I was “signed on” as Fourth Engineer on the 19 August 1967

I was shown an empty cabin, second one in on the starboard side on the engineers deck which was also the same level as the RAS deck. The cabin was reasonable with a bunk running fore and aft out board, a settee running crossways, wardrobe, desk, sink, and bookcase. I found that my steward had put my cases in the cabin so I unpacked and changed into tropical rig and at the due time went down to the bar for a pre lunch drink. I was glad to see some old friends and made some new ones. At about twenty past twelve the junior engineer doing my watch came in and I was introduced to him and the 8 – 12 third engineer. We had a good chat over a few beers and he suggested that I look in the Engineer’s Office aft and read up on the O boat operation. I was very impressed with the documentation and tried to absorb some information so I wouldn’t be a dork the next day.

The next day, following breakfast in the duty mess, I went down to the MCR at about ten minutes to eight to talk to my colleague on the 4 – 8 watch who I was relieving. We were steaming at about 110 rpm which gave an easy 18 kts and this would continue for the next week or so, RASes excepted. We were going with some Navy ships to Freemantle in Australia and leaving them there and we were going on to Bunbury in the south of Western Australia to celebrate their centenary. This would give me time to understand the workings of the controls for the boilers, fans, fuel pumps and heaters, evaporators etc. etc. that I found I was responsible for. The routine was the same as any other steam ship but the detail was very different.

I knew very little about O Boats at the time but by reputation they were the best thing that the RFA had in the way of steamships. They were a later development and an extended version of the new Tides, Tidepool and Tidespring. They were fully automated with two Babcock boilers and two turbines developing 26,500shp ahead and 15,000shp astern and full of good things.

The three O’s were about 2 years old then with Olna being the last to commission. She had a few extras that the other two did not have. The three main ones being, a bow thrust propeller of 2000kw in a compartment forward closed off by water tight doors on each side when not in use, an “impressed current system” to take the place of the sacrificial anodes on the ships side to reduce hull corrosion and a variable height jackstay point forward of the bridge to make RASing solids easier. This later feature resulted in Olna having square section goalpost masts forward instead of the traditional round section – an identification point in any old photo.

The engineering staff consisted of:-

1 x Chief Engineer

1 x Second Engineer

4 x Third Engineers (1 on daywork and RAS)

3 x  Fourth Engineers

3 x Junior Engineers (nominal daywork and RAS)

3 x Engineer Cadets

2 x Electrical Officers

4 x Greasers (1 on daywork)

1 x Donkyman

1 x Engineroom Store Keeper

This gave a total of 23 as against somewhere near 40 for an old / new Tide boat.

Automation had enabled most of these reductions in staff possible with the much better working conditions than the Tidereach which I had just left, motivation and productivity were very high. Automation also allowed the watch keepers to undertake maintenance when the ship was steaming in steady state conditions, although a time based or hours run planned maintenance system was not in operation there were plenty of minor defects to keep everyone busy. The ship was divided up into equipment for each engineer who over time became the expert on his pieces. For example one third engineer was given the Main Engine/Gearbox, another the 4 main alternators and usually the senior the third was given the main boilers to be the guardian of. The Daywork 3rd having the cargo pumps pump rooms and deck machinery.

The fourth engineers had the lesser lumps. The evaporators, Fire and Bilge pumps, sewage system, fuel system and air ejectors were my bits and others had Lube oil pumps and filters, Bilge pumps and main circs whilst the third fourth had air conditioning fans and filters, fresh and salt water services and refrigeration circ pumps.  Refrigeration and the air conditioning compressors were usually the province of the second engineer.

The O boats were unusually well cross connected and/or had more than one major component and any single equipment failure could usually be supplied from elsewhere whilst repairs were undertaken. The ships had huge engineering stores behind the switch boards at MCR level and we always seemed to have the correct spare, a system I was later to learn about.

I had to look after the evaporators which were Vavac units of Caird and Rayner manufacture and were able to make 100 tons (22400 gall) per day each primarily for boiler feed.  On the O boats it was normal to double distil the boiler feed water so that the distilled output from the sea in the first evaporator became the source water for the second evaporator thus giving exceptional quality feed water for the boilers. As the normal boiler water consumption was well under 25 tons/day, at least 75 tons/day was available for either the ships own domestic use or put into the water cargo tanks for transferring to other ships during RAS.

Steam for heating the evaporators came from the LP steam ring main at about 30psig fed from the desuperheated steam system via a reducing valve over the MCR. At sea, and above about 70 rpm, bled steam was used instead taken from the HP ahead turbine exhaust. Each day the sea water evap. was “shocked” by draining out the hot sea water and spraying cold fresh water onto the accordion type heating coil which would then contract flaking off any scale which fell to the bottom and was raked out.  Later on chemicals were injected to stop scale forming and shocking was only necessary once per month.

We RASed our Navy ships several times on the way to Freemantle but the weather was not great. We duly arrived in Bunbury, a nice little town with board walks and hitching rails outside the local Woolworths store and a busy harbour that exported Illmanite which is a paint pigment.

We anchored off with about a 10 minute ride by boat to the docks and town.  The first evening there was a civic dinner in the town hall to which all the senior officers were invited. In retaliation, some of the lesser lights of the town were invited onboard for a cocktail party. At about 2200hrs an unexpected violent storm blew up trapping those ashore where they were. The storm got worse and it was decided by the First officer that we must go to sea as we seemed to be dragging our anchor. This we did and steamed round the coast to Albany to get out of the weather which was quite rough in the shallow seas. We arrived about mid day the next day and were reunited with the Captain, Chief Officer, Chief Engineer and Doctor. The lesser lights trapped on board seemed to have had a good time as when they left us lots of us got invites to visit ashore.

But time was against us and we headed off to Gan Island to meet with and RAS with HMS Hermes which was struggling home from Sydney on only one engine. Needless to say the Southern Ocean was up to its usual tricks and we usually went along side to RAS Hermes every three days or so as she found it difficult to manoeuvre with only one engine.

Bit tricky working on the tank deck with a southern ocean goffer heading toward you

We escorted her to just off Durban where we picked up HMS Eagle and went back to Gan Island with her and RFA Stromness (fitted for aircraft spares), we topped up the hulk RFA Wave Victor with Dieso and Avcat and then finished up back in Singapore.

The table below gives some of our trips and destinations and there is a column for where the rumours said we were going.

We reached Singapore on October 8 and were able to shut down and undertake an assisted maintenance period. During this time it was found that we had impending feed pump problems with excessive clearances caused by wear of the “ferrobestos “washer in the middle of the pump. The other O boats reportedly had the same or similar problems and it took until the 23 of October to resolve ours and get spares. During the forced shutdown period we undertook all sorts of other maintenance. One particular piece of work was to coat the inside of our air receivers with a special varnish to stop corrosion.  No problem, the dockyard came and did a wonderful job of painting the insides and then boxing up the air receivers a day later.

We sailed on the 28 for Aden for the pull out by British forces. We reached Aden on the 5 November and found that we could not stop. The varnish that had been painted onto the inside of the air receivers had not completely dried and had found its way into all the pneumatic controllers and because they had all been in a steady state for about a week they had set in one position.  A lot of running around followed and then when we were at anchor we had to strip and clean dozens of controllers to remove the varnish.

Luckily, one of the third engineers was a controls expert and he quickly built a testing rig on the rear of the access door behind the boiler control panel in the MCR. The rig allowed us to bring in controllers and test, reset and clean controls and check them out and quickly replace them with a minimum of trouble.

We were in Aden with a huge fleet of RFAs and HM ships and they mainly came to us for fuel and water although we also ran a small water barge around the ships at anchor.

Fort Sandusky, red band and full of ammunition

Empire Gull approaches for fuel.

Empire Gull – closer and closer

Empire Gull – bump!

Dewdale gave us 6000 tons FFO

and a bump!

At least 10 RFAs in this picture

Just leaving a three ship stationary RAS with Dewdale and Tidespring

Gan (again) some of the exercise ships, note submarine behind elbow of officer on the left

Navy playing boarding games – HMS Ajax – note gun pointing at us!

Almost there

Long way up isn’t it.

Painted ship on a painted sea, our old friend of many months, HMS Barrosa, every inch a destroyer

We finally left the Aden area about mid December and escorted several ships back to Singapore via Gan (again) arriving about the 3 January to a navy base that was absolutely full. We did not get along side and shore power until 12 Jan. Anchor and Harbour watches were (and are) a bugbear of most steam ships as no one wants to shut down the main boilers and unlike modern UMS (unmanned machinery spaces) ships, no alarms were connected to the engineers cabins so harbour watch keeping ( 6hrs on, 12hrs off) had to continue. This is normal when at sea but dreadfully dull and boring when alongside for weeks when the navy is trying to save fuel.

Part of the Christmas Dinner put on between Aden, Gan and Singapore

We flashed up on the 19th and sailed on the 20 Jan. with Eagle et al to Gan Island where we exercised with the Australian and NZ navies before setting off for Sydney, arriving on the 19 February. We had to anchor off all the time we were there, just under the bridge.

At anchor, Sydney harbour

Opera house being built

We sailed at the end of Feb RASing RN and US Navy ships in really heavy weather off south Australia and got back to Singapore on the 17 March.

USS Glennon (DD840) RAsing off South Australia

We sailed again on the 20 March with Bulwark to Mauritius to celebrate their independence day.

Port Louis Mauritius

We then steamed through the Suez Canal and reached Gibraltar by the 2 of March to load FFO to off load on the 6 April and tank clean in Portsmouth prior to refit on the Tyne commencing on the 12 April.

I paid off with 75 days of leave due prior to Joining Olwen in Newcastle on the 17 July 1968

Peter Maddison