Swinging the Lamp

I wish I could go back to sea. I wish I could go down to Hull and get a ship. But I’ve heard they don’t need the Morse code these days – it’s all done with telephone and satellites.
Sometimes I wake up in the early hours and think I’m still there – back on a ship:

Voyage of SS Arcadia
Radio Officer’s Diary

1972. Pounding down the Solent at twenty-five knots.

Right, I’ve just made the sailing, found my cabin, put my gear in the drawers after tipping the cockroach eggs over the side. Funny thing I saw as I came up the gangway – millions of cockroaches streaming ashore, why was that?
Can’t find the other Sparks. I look for the wireless room. There’s this place behind the wheelhouse – it’s locked. Through the porthole, I think I see something move in the gloom. On the desk, I can just make out coffee cups with fungus growing out of them. There’s a CR100 receiver, but the dial is dead. There seems to be a chair at the desk with something slumped in it. Looks withered up as though it’s been there 40 years.

Hey! Maybe I’m on the wrong ship.

It’s a queer sort of night – I haven’t slept much. Go up to the bridge to see if anyone knows where I might find the key to the wireless room. There’s a lot of crashing noises consequent on the fact that we are, at this moment, sliding along the side of an aircraft carrier in the dark.     In the wheelhouse there’s just one chap; he’s at the wheel but seems to be in a trance. I put the wheel down sharp, fortunately the right way, and we come away from the carrier, nicely.
There’s no key to be found so I pick up a fire axe. On the way back I notice, on the boat deck, a long cylinder thing in a cradle, it looks like one of those rockets the Yanks fired at Baghdad. A US marine is sitting on our deck, looking dazed.
I chop down the wireless room door and put the lights on. A steward comes in at this point with cocoa and sandwiches.
‘Hello, Sparks chuck, I’m Daphne; I look after you.’
He is wearing a fluffy, pink angora jumper that goes nicely with the lipstick. He wants to chat but I growl at him, ‘I’ve a lot to do just now. Would you mind doing something about that withered thing in the chair?’
She calls for another steward. Together they take the thing away – it doesn’t seem to weigh much.
The gear springs to life, but I can’t register any power into the aerial so I open the front of the transmitter. It’s a Siemens SB186X, I’m glad to say, a simple and straightforward, ‘tune for maximum smoke and fire’, sort of transmitter.
I know the problem and pull out the power valve – a big beam-tetrode with a top cap. Yes, I thought so, a good old N4Q2. I change it and, straight away, get 120 watts into the aerial.

The crew and passengers have been pestering me, so I’ve finally got the entertainments receiver working. It’s tuned to BBC radio. It’s also fed by the BBC web site – so it’s possible to get the Goon Show and Round the Horn – if you read the handbook that sits among the husks of old cockroaches behind each of the slave receivers.
I’ve contacted Niton Radio, Isle of Wight, and the world now knows we’ve left Southampton and where we are bound. I had some trouble with them; the person on duty seemed to have only a rudimentary grasp of the Morse code. Wanted me to use the radiotelephone – bloody cheek! This is not a trawler!
I am feeling quite isolated up here; the only person I see is Daphne who keeps bringing me tea and toast. He talks about Botox a lot but I haven’t a clue what she’s on about.
I talk to the officer in the chart room sometimes. He keeps rummaging in those very wide drawers looking for something and muttering about plotting a course. He thinks we are in the Channel now on account of the radar not having many echoes. Last night, after we had bounced off the aircraft carrier, there was panic in the wheelhouse owing to the mass of radar echoes all around us. The lookout said it was all right though; it was just some big international yacht race we had steamed through the middle of. He was a bit flushed even so, said he’d never been sworn at like that before.
I got concerned when that huge Greek tanker cut across the bows. The chaps on the bridge were jumping up and down and sounding the horn. All we could see alive on the Greek was a dog on the monkey island. It barked at us as we veered off.
I think I will go to bed now. In my bunk, the Auto Alarm bell is right next to my ear. I wrap a sock around the clapper.

end of part one