Doodlebugger Days

By Roger Morgan

Covers excepts from the early life, both at sea and on land, in North Sea, Libya,
Nigeria, Taiwan, Indonesia,(Sumatra, Borneo, Taracan, Aceh & Bunju), and the Canadian Arctic
There is also a motorcycle ride starting from Singapore, through Australia to New Zealand, done
during this period 1973-74 when free of work committments.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse UK
• Release date: Sep 29, 2021
• ISBN: 9781665592369

Roger Morgan

ROGER MORGAN has degrees in Engineering and the Arts. He started his career as an apprentice at the Royal Naval Dockyard, Portsmouth, England. He journeyed to Australian in 1967 and spent a year on Macquarie Island with an Australian Antarctic Research Expedition. Since then he has held positions in Research, Corporate Strategy and Operations with a National TELCO. His interest in photography grew out of a passion for pelagic birds and their habitat. But it’s the human face that intrigues him, in that expressions can be both generic and universal and thus culturally neutral. He attempts to show this in his images; to illustrate yet again how small the world is. Photo by Susan Love

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© 2021 Roger Morgan. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 08/16/2021

ISBN: 978-1-6655-9237-6 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-6655-9236-9 (e)

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

CONTENTS

Thor.

Hamattan

Benin City

Nigeria 1970

Vietnam

Borneo and GSI Navy Again

The Ride Across Australia & New Zealand

By Motorcycle Across Australia to New Zealand

Tanzania

The Sahara Desert

The Arctic 1

Indonesia- Borneo & Sumatra

Borneo

Jordan

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THOR.

The Old Man moved the Thor alongside the solitary railway-wagon containing 30 tons of ammonium-nitrate from ICI, better known as fertilizer, but when packed into 50 lbs. or 33 lbs. containers becomes an effective explosive, in this case for geophysical exploration. It was also used by terrorists for destructive purposes.

The geophysical-crew made a chain between wagon and ship and began to unload the explosive in their tin-plate containers with a pocket made for a detonator, protected by an individual cardboard carton, and into the hold of Thor. It would be about 3 hours of work before the wagon was empty and the crew could relax with a coffee, but it served to work-off the previous night’s beer which in any case was limited by the high cost of Norway’s beer.

The wagon was deliberately placed in an out-of-the-way part of the dock because of the contents, even though the ammonium-nitrate was just fertilizer. It was not unknown for this cargo to be refused to be handled in a port by dockers, and so was a lot easier to be unloaded/loaded by the people who used it.

With cargo stowed, Thor was a bit lower by the aft where the bombs would be more accessible to the crew when working. The bombs would be armed and thrown into the water at roughly 65 second intervals attached to an orange air-filled bag, and a floating firing-line, terminated with a brass-hook swaged to the firing-line. Depending whether shooting Off-end or Splits, the line was short or long, reaching down the length of the sensitive streamer, which would also be deployed when working.

Thor was about 600 tons, and about 70 metres in length, and was alleged to be ex-Icelandic in ownership. Whatever her original ownership, she was now owned by Norwegian interests and the crew, all four of them, were Norwegian, from Old Man, the skipper, Ulf the motorman, Sten the deckie and Fred the cook. Since we were only going to be working day-light hours, this might have sufficed in the Southern North Sea and early Summer, but was going to be difficult later as the daylight hours lengthened with northern latitudes.

The Thor was quite interesting. She was an Aberdeen-built side-trawler originally, now with no fishing-gear, and steam-powered, (very unusual and possibly always oil-fired also.) She was deep and narrow with un-cluttered decks and low to the water in the middle, but with a high fore-castle and bow used to pierce waves. She proved a great sea-boat, but the four double cabins in the foc’sle, where the geophysical staff were berthed, also had the largest motion, as the bow rose up on waves before plunging down in the trough. When you had been away from the sea for a few months as I had, this tested your stomach for the first few days! I also lost my hat to a capricious wind the first day at sea! Shooting speed was 5 knots roughly, and this equalled propeller revolutions of 60 rpm, very quiet for geophysical work.

Getting used to the ship, and getting the crew used to geophysical work, was part of the aclimatising process. The instrument room where I would normally work when shooting was placed aft of the funnel, accessed by a ladder down the side of the bridge-cabin rear. I could stand under the foc’sle shelter deck and time my run for the ladder as the bridge rose from the waters pouring off the deck, like the conning-tower of a submarine emerging from the briny. With no significant water on the wood-planks of the deck, I would reach the safety of the ladder and haul myself clear of the next wave over the deck, and continue to the Instrument room. This held the DFS 1, and my employer’s reason for training me in America for 3 months, the Digital Field System.

We were shooting with 24 active traces in DFS, and this matched the streamer which was made in Middlesbrough, each 100 metre section having a series of piezo-electric sensors making up it’s length producing a current or voltage when squeezed by a pressure wave or reflection. There were also dead-sections which acted as spacers at either end to reduce noise. The streamer was controlled by birds, a form of hydrostatic-depth controller which maintained the streamer at a depth below the surface of about 30 feet / 10 metres. The sections were held together both electrically and physically by machined steel connectors conforming to the contours of the streamer which were plumped out by a form of kerosene, later purified, when it was seen that the kerosene affected wire insulation detrimentally. The length of the towed streamer was about 2.5 kms. and represented a hazard to shipping so avoiding others was mutually desirable! Being on the radio and alerting others was standard operating procedure for any geophysical survey vessel.

Shooting, using the bombs was carried out by the Shooter who chose the direction of Port or Starboard firing-line to use when looking at how the sea/wind affected ship, cable and firing-line. It was important that the Shooter could maintain consistency or shots would be missed by not being on the hook when the firing current was discharged at the position for the Shotpoint, and that was decided automatically by the Navigation System, which at this time in the North Sea, was either by SEA-SEARCH Chain run by Decca, or by SHORAN run by Offshore Navigation, with discrete beacons set up to cover the area that was going to be surveyed. Both were a Radio Navigation System from beacons, where the signals crossing point indicated a Shotpoint, and this was sequential every 100 meters in this case. A mobile receiver operated by a dedicated Operator from either company would be part of the geophysical crew on the ship. The firing circuit was sea-water return by allowing one end of the detonator wire to dangle free into the water whilst the other was connected to the detonator. It worked reliably in the salt water.

The speed of the ship would be adjusted to allow the shooter sufficient time to do his job, which also time chosen to allow the charge to sink about 6-7 feet below the surface: too deep and the explosion made a bubble that produced two wavefronts, etc, and too shallow was an air-shot ie too weak. So the sea-state was important, as was the length of cord used between bomb and air-bag to limit the depth. So, a tricky balance to be maintained.

The actual firing process was controlled by a series of clock-relays that controlled a largely automatic process that could be adjusted manually as required, and these were in the Instrument Room, together with the Navigator and others momentarily not required helping the Shooter, pulling out bomb boxes from the hold, or checking the Streamer, which was mounted on a large reel mounted forward of the stern, to give some working-space for repairs, etc, to the streamer. The reel held the streamer when not in the water, but the streamer was towed from a yoke clamped to a connector as the least damaging method. The weight of the streamer when under tow was about 5-6 tons, and the skin plasticity varied according to where in the world it was deployed with water-temperature varying from a North Sea 9 deg C to a Bahrain 25 deg C!

Wally was the Party Manager, was a new experience to most of the crew, and he had not worked the previous year in the North Sea. He was American and had worked there, or in Latin America, for a number of years. He occupied a cabin in the upper part normally used by a Mate, but since Thor was operated just with the Old Man, assisted by Sten when required, the cabin was free. This was OK in the early part of Summer when working days were short, but would become harder when working days became longer as daylight hours lengthened and signal-stability increased accordingly. This was due to the upper-layer of the ionosphere, the radio-signal reflecting layer, becoming disturbed at around the time of sunrise and sunset. It was possible to know the exact minute for these, and stop-or-start work in good time to avoid uncertainty of the fix. This was so important to the work because it placed a position for the work when there was no other way to easily assign an interesting event a position.

We left Stavanger, Norway into a dying storm, with the hope of it becoming calm enough for cable-laying when we arrived somewhere close to the Prospect. Life in the foc’sle was disturbed, and there was a distinctive sour smell in the toilet that evening.! Stomachs were protesting.

The next day was as forecast: not good but improving, and we started by putting the Tail-buoy in the water and gradually building-up the streamer on the surface before completing assembly and going for a controlled submersion. With all 24-traces present-and-correct, and the streamer in good working order, we set about laying out both firing-lines and marking both lines for a correct extension when we launched the RIB and checked for position of the split: it would not be good to damage the streamer by NOT getting the distance right.(The other way is by trial and error using test shots. The RIB’s use is fool-proof.)

The SHORAN was up and running, signal was strong & stable. We ran-in on the first line: I had done my Daily Tests on the DFS: we took a Noise test which was Fair-mainly breaking waves- and we started the first line of the new Prospect. Running In at the start of any line is a tense time: and a time to make sure that you had not forgotten something critical! This continued with results on the camera being satisfactory. The camera was nothing except a series of fibre-suspended galvanometers with a mirror each on the fibre, with a light source and a magnetic block to hold all 30 galvos. Each trace in the streamer, 24 -traces, was connected to a galvanometer that twisted the reflected light, producing an image on the sensitised paper which could be processed either wet automatically by being passed through a series of chemical baths, or with special paper, fixed and used for monitoring purposes, as the signal from each trace was also recorded on magnetic tape as a series of noughts or ones after each shot was processed by the DFS. This was the manner in which we progressed to acquire data through a Prospect, with each magnetic tape being swiftly changed for another as line-data was acquired. The only interuption would likely be a faulty streamer of too many dead traces becoming out-of-spec., or having to turn-off a line to avoid shipping that continued on a collision-course despite warnings.

In this way, the Prospect was sequentially recorded, with interupted lines being re-started with overlap, ensuring that sufficient overlap and signal strength remained good, until, towards the end of a day, the SHORAN signal was deemed to be too erratic to be reliable, and shooting was terminated with also some haste to make anchor, because this was going to be tomorrow’s starting point: a reliable, known point because there are no signposts in the North Sea. There is also no alternative method to record your position when stopping work because of instability in the signal occurring. Hence, it was also important to stop work BEFORE the signal becomes unstable, and many Party Managers at the time were too gung-ho to get a good reputation for miles-recorded in a month by the crew, and pushed the limits of good signal too far. This resulted in an inability when processing the data acquired to attribute a position for it! As there were a few months between acquiring the data and processing to a completion, mistakes such as not having a stable signal, either at the day’s end,(and hence the next morning’s start) were not seen early enough to inform the crew, and this fault spoiled a lot of otherwise good data. When it was seen later to be consistent, it was regarded as an accident, but it was an avoidable error, and a lot of these errors were due to the habit of largely American Party Managers thinking that a Gulf of Mexico experience could be replicated to another part of the world seamlessly.

It was when thinking about the