RFA TIDEREACH
11th February 1965 to 15th April 1965 as a Deck Apprentice with British Crew.
After just a few hours home, having just paid off from “Tideflow” at Rosyth, I was away on my travels yet again, this time to the Naval Base at Portland in Dorset, where I was to join one of the sister-ships of my previous appointment. This time it was to be the “Tidereach”, which was lying out at a buoy in the harbour, along with several other warships. My first impressions of this place were that it was a wild open anchorage, with a few lucky smaller frigates and harbour craft sheltering from the wind and rain, at jetties lying under the lee of the Portland peninsular. A small MFV took me and my baggage on the short wind lashed journey out to the ship.
After a brief ‘work-up’ period for the ship, which had just come out of refit, we sailed from the cold, damp weather of the U.K. to the tropics of the Far East. After transiting the Suez Canal and the Red Sea, our first port of call was to load at the Little Aden oil refinery. Here we took on a part cargo of diesel fuel and Avcat, (aircraft fuel). Whilst off-watch from loading duties I went ashore with a couple of other lads to the nearby swimming pool within the refinery complex. The water was rather murky but we were desperate for a nice cooling swim. I dived into what I thought was the deep end and grazed the bottom of the pool with my outstretched hands. This stupid act made quite a mess of my left hand, which bled profusely. Fortunately we had a doctor on board who patched me up without any lasting effect, leaving just a small scar as a reminder! On completion of loading we moved across the bay to Aden for fresh water and stores, before proceeding eastward.
Sailing from Aden we headed into the Persian Gulf, which was noticeably even hotter than Aden. There was little comfort to be gained from the poor air-conditioning system. At Bahrain we loaded FFO, (furnace fuel oil), and sailed to join a group of British and American warships on exercise. When finally detached, we returned again to Bahrain to top up our cargo and then to set a course for the Maldive island of Gan, in the Indian Ocean.
Gan is a small flat island, part of Addu Atoll, at the southern end of the Maldive chain of islands and located just forty one nautical miles south of the equator. This island was used as an important RAF air staging base, with the runway taking up virtually all of the available land space. I believe that there was only one woman on this island at the time, a formidable female civil servant connected to the Air Force who stood no nonsense from the hundred or so airmen! We had called in there to top up the RAF diesel and avcat reserves in the old “Wave Victor”, which was then leased to the Air Ministry as a fuel storage hulk and anchored within the atoll reef.
After just a few hours alongside the hulk and with no shore leave, we sailed again, this time to join a group in support of Special Forces that were operating in the jungle of North Borneo. At this time there was quite a high state of tension, a “confrontation”, between Indonesia and Great Britain. On board “Tidereach” we were all issued with gas masks and steel helmets. Our involvement took us into the Sulu Sea to support British warships there. I remember that on one occasion we moved close inshore to Darvel Bay, to pick up some soldiers who had been fighting terrorists in that region. As an eighteen year old apprentice this seemed quite exciting stuff!
We later sailed for Singapore and I recall standing watches with the engineers down below in the engine and boiler rooms, as we approached the island and manoeuvred up the Jahore Straits. I was stunned by the stiflingly hot conditions that they regularly worked in. The heat in these spaces was intense, especially so in the tropics. The only relief was to stand beneath one of the ventilator trunkings for a while before moving off again into the maze of pipe-work and deafening machinery.
In the boiler-room of this inferno, the firemen controlled the steam pressure by lighting or extinguishing a series of oil burners. These were high-pressure jet nozzles, which atomised the oil spurting into the boiler furnace area. Protected by a steel wall with a small glass window, the firemen lit the burners by opening a small door and thrusting in a lighted rag on a stick!
It was on this ship that I acquired a parchment ‘Master’s Certificate’, dated 1881 which I found behind a bureau drawer in an empty officer’s cabin that I had been told to clean out. Just occasionally, some of the less pleasant jobs have surprisingly rich rewards!
Not long after arriving at Singapore I was paid off the ship and flew home to the U.K. The flight was in a ‘British Eagle Airways’ Britannia, a turbo-prop airliner. It was a very long flight, with no alcohol on board. However, on the plus side you could have as many boiled sweets as you could manage! We eventually landed at RAF Lynham, near Swindon, where I was able to catch a series of trains, hauling my heavy suitcases back to Hastings and home.