Adventures of a Lifetime

By Richard Brook-Hart

“Adventures of a Lifetime” is a memoir of the fifty years of my life after leaving school and comprises an anthology of my exploits and experiences. Over that period my travels took me all over the world. I visited over one hundred countries and sailed the seven seas. I had many thrilling, and sometimes scary adventures ranging from encounters with wild animals in the game parks of Africa to wild and dramatic weather at sea. My journeys ranged from sailing in the Caribbean and Indian Ocean to crossing the Australian desert and climbing Mount Kilimanjaro. My business trips took me to North and South America, Asia, Europe, Australia and Africa, where I encountered many interesting people and made lifelong friends. On many occasions I had to negotiate with corrupt officialdom at the many border posts in third world countries. My career was one of frequent excitement and challenges. This memoir is a record of my life and the many adventures that I have experienced on the way.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse UK
• Release date: Jan 4, 2022
• ISBN: 9781665595568

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© 2022 Richard Brook-Hart. 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 01/04/2021

ISBN: 978-1-6655-9557-5 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-6655-9558-2 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-6655-9556-8 (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.

Note: some names have been changed to protect the owner’s identity. They are marked with an asterisk*

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

Author’s Note

PART I

Adventures At Sea & Other Parts Of The World

My First Ship

Voyage Two On The Strathardle

Two Voyages To Australia

Warsash

My First Passenger Ship

Pando Gulf

Second Mate’s

Uganda

First Mates

A Rescue In Rotterdam

A Stranding

Return To Australia

Caribbean Cruising

The Sail Training Association

Triumph

Leaving P&O

PART II

East Africa

African Safaris

Author’s note

Arrival At Dar Es Salaam

Pilotage For The Tanzania Harbours

Shopping In East Africa

Ron*

Driving In Tanzania

Domestic Workers

Electricty In Tanzania

Mtwara

Water In Tanzania

Telephones In Tanzania

Tropical Diseases

Eating Out In Tanzania

Crime In Tanzania

Steve

Clubs

A Gift From Canada

A Death In France

White Mischief

Love At First Sight

A Storm In The Berg

A Visa Application

A Voyage To Tanga

Gold Mountain

Some African Safaris

A Close Encounter In Mikumi

Climbing Kilimanjaro

An Adventure On Mafia Island

Safari In The Selous

A Safari In Ruaha

Safari At Mikumi

A Fight In The Serengeti

Safari To Mombasa

Njombe

A Flight To Lindi

A Safari To The Usumbara Mountains

Sailing In East Africa

Dira Reef

An Embarrasing Incident In Zanzibar

Theft On The High Seas

Stowaways

Selling A Car In Africa

Departure From Dar Es Salaam

PART III

South Africa

Author’s Note

Our First Home In South Africa

My First Job In South Africa

My Second Job In South Africa

Diamond Shipping

A Wedding In Taiwan

Alpha Shipping

Domestic Workers

Moving House

Driving In Southern Africa

Sailing In Durban

Safaris In South Africa

The Southern Night Sky

The Beaches

Institute Of Chartered Shipbrokers

Adventures In South Africa

In The Washing Machine

The Annual Sardine Run

Night Sounds In The City

Departure

Afterword

Glossary

Acknowledgements

AUTHOR’S NOTE

According to my parents I first went sailing as a baby of one year, when I was in a carry cot, and put in my father’s clinker built dayboat Starlight. Years later, when sailing had become a passion, my mother teased me that I would cry we are going to fall in the water as the boat heeled over. I strongly suspect now that it may have been my mother’s own nervousness that provoked my reaction. She confessed after my father died, that she had always hated sailing, and only pretended to enjoy it because of her loyalty to him. We kept Starlight at Bosham in West Sussex, and I have many happy childhood memories of sailing in Chichester harbour. I am sure that my favourite destinations were Easthead and Hayling Island with their sandy beaches. My parents used to rent a cottage right on the shore of Bosham Creek each summer, and we would go sailing almost every day. On one infamous occasion when I was about four years old, my parents decided to sail to the Isle of Wight leaving my brother Guy and I with Helga, our German au pair girl. About an hour later they returned. They had overloaded the dinghy with provisions leaving very little freeboard. While rowing out to the mooring, the waves slopped in over the gunwales and the boat sank. They, and all their belongings were soaking wet and, at my mother’s instigation, I am sure, had abandoned the voyage.

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The author at Bosham aged three years

In 1956, my father sold Starlight and bought a thirty-two-foot Bermuda rigged ocean racer. Corrine was built of elm and was over sixty years old. She had previously been owned by Admiral Geoffrey Cowland and his wife Isobel. We had many adventures in Corrine which included sailing in Chichester Harbour. My brothers and I have vivid recollections of regularly running aground in the many channels. Corrine had a deep keel and inevitably we always seemed to ground on a falling tide. This meant that we would often have to wait for many hours for the tide to rise, as we heeled over at an ever-increasing angle. Sometimes we were stuck in the mud, most of, or all night. Perhaps this was one of the reasons my mother disliked sailing. Additionally, there may have been the fear factor, because in their first voyage to France, when my parents were halfway across the English Channel, my mother got out of her bunk to find water sloshing around above the cabin sole. There was frantic bailing. They reduced the water level, and safely reached Le Havre. However, apart from the alarm caused by the leak, the water had washed all the labels off the tinned food which had been stored in the bilges. For the next two weeks, they took potluck when eating, as they could not distinguish the contents of each can. In 1957 my parents, Guy and I sailed to France, on our first voyage to Cherbourg. It was during these formative years after watching the great ocean liners steaming in and out of Southampton that I made up my mind at the tender age of six that I wanted to go to sea. It is probably quite rare to have such a strong and definitive idea of what one wants to do in life at such an early stage but messing about in boats and sailing to foreign shores created a wanderlust. I am sure that those early adventures on the sea gave me the inspiration to travel and venture into the unknown.

In 1961, my father sold Corrine , and bought Jayzell. This yacht was a yawl, and we travelled to Dordrecht in Holland to collect her. She was more spacious and had five berths, which enabled our au-pair girls to join us, provided I slept on the cockpit floor. We sailed her back through the canals and across the English Channel to Dover. It was at that point that I first started writing a log of our annual family sailing holidays that also took us to France and down to the West Country. A habit I kept up for most of my life.

At the age of thirteen, my father, honouring my wish to go to sea, sent me to the Nautical College Pangbourne. With its nautical background and reputation for strict discipline, the school shaped my character and cemented my desire to join the Merchant Navy. I was subsequently interviewed and accepted by P&O in 1969.

I spent over twelve years at sea with P&O, reaching the rank of Chief Officer. During that time, I visited many varied and interesting places worldwide. I met and worked with lots of different nationalities and cultures. I sailed across all the oceans and the seven seas, but in the latter years of my seagoing career, I began to develop a feeling that I should do something different. If I remained where I was, I reckoned, and if my record remained unblemished, and with some luck, I might expect to become Captain of a passenger ship, in perhaps fifteen or twenty years. Maybe my career seemed too predictable. I decided in the nautical context that I needed to alter course. Looking back this was akin to Robert Frost’s Taking the road less travelled.

In September 1981 I applied and was accepted for the position of harbour pilot in Dar es Salaam. My application for the post had been precipitated and prompted by my first marriage a few months earlier. I had figured and had plenty of anecdotal and tangible evidence that long periods at sea would probably not be conducive to a successful marriage. Not surprisingly and paradoxically, life in East Africa was also not always easy, and ironically it led to a divorce. Still, I enjoyed the many adventures that came with it. Far more importantly it gave me the opportunity to find true love when I met Claire during a visit to South Africa in 1986. Many people have said that Africa gets into your blood. After living there for nearly forty years, in my case, that has certainly been true.

PART I

ADVENTURES AT

SEA & OTHER PARTS

OF THE WORLD

MY FIRST SHIP

I joined my first ship P&O’s MV Strathardle as a deck cadet on 8th October 1969. The ship was one of three sisters, on a liner service that went around the world. I was excited, as until that time, my travel experience had been limited to a few countries in Europe.

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MV Strathardle

I had finished school at Pangbourne two months earlier and had been awarded a three-year cadetship. In the meanwhile my father had sent me on an Outward-Bound Course in Devon for four weeks, ostensibly to toughen me up, though after the strict discipline and outdoor ethos of Pangbourne, I revelled in all the challenges of the course, including a one-hundred mile hike over three days across Dartmoor. As I said goodbye to my mother outside the front door of our home, Beckley Cottage in Lymington, she shed a few tears knowing that I was about to go around the world and that she would not see me for at least three months. My father drove me to the station at Brockenhurst with my trunk containing my uniform. This had been purchased at great expense from Miller & Rayner in Southampton one month earlier. We drove in awkward silence, until a few minutes before we got there my father, clearly embarrassed, handed me a packet of condoms, stating: ‘you may go ashore with some of the officers and you may need these’. We both felt uncomfortable because such things had never been discussed and much less referred to when we were growing up. Any reference to sex or the use of bad language at home had always been strictly forbidden. I hastily put the packet in my pocket and nothing more was said. In my youthful ignorance and naivety at the time, I thought he was giving these to me, as a precaution to prevent my getting girls pregnant, but it later dawned on me that my father was warning me against the dangers of sexual diseases. In retrospect I suppose this was my father’s way of lecturing me on the birds and the bees.

A trunk was a nuisance to carry, and I had to get a cab from Waterloo to the docks. After paying the cabbie, I looked up at Strathardle, a seven-hatch general cargo ship. She was berthed in King George V dock in the port of London, and with her cranes and derricks, her white livery and buff funnel, looked impressive. I didn’t know how to get my trunk on board after the taxi left me on the quayside, but I climbed the gangway and after reporting to the Chief officer, he instructed the senior cadet to assist me.

I was shown to my cabin and ordered to change into a boiler suit. To my consternation I had a trunk full of winter and tropical uniforms, but no boiler suit. It had not been listed on the inventory sent by P&O, but I was told it was a standard rig for cadets when in port. As it turned out my parents had unknowingly and quite innocently bought lots of superfluous items, which had all been listed on the inventory sent to me by P&O. This included a raincoat which I had managed to leave at home. My mother, with the best of intentions, posted it to me, but I don’t think I ever used it.

I shared a cabin with an engineering cadet, Greg Allen*, who had already done one voyage on the ship. We were the same age and he was very friendly. Initially we got on well together. He was full of enthusiasm and wanted to show me and teach me all that he had learnt in the past three months, which I really appreciated. He was not always the easiest person to share a cabin with though, as he was rather untidy. I soon realised why the other cadets did not want to share with him, and why they often played practical jokes on him.

The ship was loading a cargo of Scotch whiskey, cigarettes and confectionery. I was intrigued at the skill and subterfuge of the stevedores. This was shortly before the days of containerisation, and the whiskey would be loaded on open pallets holding more than twenty cases. As the crane lowered the pallet into the hold, the crane driver at the precise moment would deftly swing the pallet against the side of the hatch coaming, in the process strategically breaking one or two bottles in one of the cases. As the pallet reached the hatch square, the case containing the broken bottles would be put to one side, and the remaining intact cases stowed in the hold. The damaged case with the ten or eleven unbroken bottles would somehow disappear with the stevedores when they changed shifts. It was our duty to report any cargo damage or pilfering, but I never recall anything resulting from it. An urban legend held that one stevedore was seen every day, leaving the docks with an empty wheelbarrow. The police were suspicious but could see nothing in the barrow, so let him pass without question. Ten days later the stevedore went out of the gate without the wheelbarrow. The police were curious and became horrified when they learnt that the ship had sailed. It had been discharging a cargo of wheelbarrows. The introduction of containers, which was taking place in those days, prevented the petty pilfering on board, but led to much greater theft, when gangs devised ways to steal the whole container.

One of my jobs in the first week, while we were loading cargo, was to buy newspapers for the officers each morning before I started work. I would take their orders the previous day and then walk to the far length of the docks to the nearest newsagent about three quarters of a mile away. Trying to get some of the officers to pay for the papers they ordered was the hardest part. On my meagre salary, I could not afford to be charitable, and it took me nearly a month to recover my expenses.

A week later, we left London docks bound non-stop for Hong Kong. The adventure had begun, and I was very excited to be steaming south into the Tropics. There were two other deck cadets and we were each assigned a watch at night-time. I was allocated the 8-12 watch (2000 to 2400) with the fourth officer, who was very helpful in teaching me how to navigate. I learnt how to take azimuth bearings and check the compass error. During the day we reported to the Chief Officer and were given tasks around the ship, which ranged from painting, overhauling the cargo gear, maintaining the lifeboats and many others. Cadets had a record book, which listed over one thousand tasks that we were expected to accomplish satisfactorily, each would be signed off by an officer during one’s three-year cadetship. There was never any shortage of work, and for much of the time we worked closely with the Chinese deck crew. The general maintenance and seamanship that one learnt and experienced in the process was invaluable. On Saturdays and Sundays at sea, the deck cadets had to take sights with a sextant and work out the ship’s position. We would assemble on the bridge at eight o’clock, after breakfast and use the ship’s sextant. In those days there was no GPS or calculators. It was all done by longhand; the spherical trigonometry calculation for each sight would take up the full page of an A4 workbook. When I first started taking sights, this would take several hours, inevitably with the wrong result, much to the amusement of the other deck officers, when my position lines showed that we were somewhere in the middle of Africa. But with practice and over the next few months, I got better at it, and in the end could work out a position line within minutes.

After steaming south through the Atlantic Ocean, we passed close to Cape Town and Table Mountain. It had taken three weeks. Approaching from the sea, the view is awesome. This was my first sight of South Africa, and I had no inkling at the time that this beautiful country was one day to become my home. We slowed down as we came into Table Bay, and a launch came out carrying the ship’s mail from London. This was anxiously awaited by the whole ship’s company. I was very happy to receive a letter from my parents, the first of many. In exchange the ship dispatched a bag with our mail back with the launch. I had written to my parents, and my mother treasured and kept each letter I sent for the next twelve years I was at sea. I never kept a diary, so the cherished letters have been a valuable substitute and a record of my seagoing career.

After rounding the Cape of Good Hope, we set off across the Indian Ocean. I was then allocated the 12-4 watch, commonly known as the graveyard watch, as from midnight to four o’clock in the morning most of the officers and crew were asleep. The bridge watch consisted of three people: the officer of the watch, a bridge seaman and me. Among my duties were, to check the compass error by azimuth, plot the ship’s position and keep a lookout for other vessels. One night we were about midway across the Indian Ocean on route for the Sunda Strait between Java and Sumatra when at 0200 hours, the third officer informed the Indian seaman, that he could go for ‘smoko’, a term meaning that he could take an informal routine break and go to his quarters for twenty minutes to have some tea and a cigarette. The third officer was behind the wheelhouse, in the chartroom updating the charts with the latest corrections from the Admiralty Hydrographer. I was ordered to keep a lookout. It was a beautiful tropical night. There were no other ships in sight, but the sky was clear, the moon had not yet risen, and millions of stars were visible. I was already learning the names of the bigger stars and some of the constellations, and on this voyage, I had seen the Southern Cross for the first time in my life. There was a gentle swell, and the ship cut a smooth passage through the waves. Despite the unsocial hour, keeping lookout was a pleasure. Every few minutes I would see a shooting star, they would last just a few seconds before burning up in the earth’s atmosphere.

I was gazing in wonderment at the heavens, when suddenly the whole sky lit up. Night turned into day in an instant. In those few seconds I stood transfixed.

A giant fireball was heading for the ship.

It was as though the sun had unexpectedly risen, but the light was blinding. Thoughts raced through my mind: was this the third world war? Or Armageddon? It looked as though it would hit the ship, but it happened so fast, and in less than five seconds the asteroid struck the sea just over the horizon ahead of us. Immediately day turned back to night. It had happened so quickly that it was perceivable that I had only imagined the spectacle. I raced to the chartroom, and said to the third officer Wow, did you see that? He looked up ‘What?’. ‘That meteorite’ I replied, incredulous that he had missed it. It transpired that I was the only person who had seen it. The bridge seaman had not seen it as he was down below in his quarters. There were no other ships in the vicinity. Perhaps I was the only witness.

I have seen thousands of shooting stars since but have never seen anything like that again. To this day I sometimes wonder whether I imagined it, but I know I didn’t.

As we crossed to the eastern shores of the Indian Ocean, our first sight of Indonesia was the smoke rising from the island of Krakatoa, the dormant volcano in the Sunda Strait, that had erupted in 1883 and had caused widespread devastation and was arguably the greatest destructive explosion in human times. In that year, dust and debris had blocked out the sun for two days all over the world. The resulting tsunami caused the death of over 35 000 people. As we approached the smoke could be seen more than fifty miles away. That was before the volcano was even detected on the radar screen, and we watched expectantly to see whether we would first sight the mountain visually or by radar. Our transit through the strait was quite dramatic. We passed close to the islands of Java and Sumatra where there were many treacherous rocks and wrecks and entered the South China Sea on the last leg of our voyage to Hong Kong.

It had taken six weeks to reach Hong Kong. As we approached the entrance, we were confronted by Chinese gunboats, presumably because we had inadvertently entered their territorial waters. We hastily altered course and were permitted to proceed into the harbour.

In those days Hong Kong was a shopper’s paradise: everything was so cheap compared with England. My first pay cheque for October amounted to a meagre sixteen pounds, but the low prices were irresistible, and I spent my first month’s salary in two days. While we were berthed alongside, a Chinese tailor came on board and measured me for a suit (my first ever), which was delivered the next morning. It had cost me a mere three pounds!

Our stay was too short to do much sightseeing, though I did take the ferry across from Kowloon where we were berthed to Hong Kong Island and took a walk along Nathan Road. After completing cargo operations in less than sixty hours, we set sail through the Formosa Strait for Japan. The passage between mainland China and Taiwan was not without incident. The strait was full of small fishing boats, which were difficult to spot at night. As we neared the Japanese coast, the main engines stopped. Without any power, the ship lost way and started drifting. The Captain ordered me to switch on the ‘not-under command’ lights, two vertical all round red lights on the masthead, which meant that other ships needed to keep clear of us. The waters were busy with other shipping and for an hour we felt quite vulnerable, until the engineers solved the problem, and restarted the engines.

Our first port of call in Japan was Kobe. Like Hong Kong it was fascinating and cheap, even though by now I had very little money to spend. We spent three weeks on the Japanese coast, where we also loaded general cargo at three other ports: Yokohama, Shimizu and Nagoya. In Kobe I got my first Japanese haircut, a novel experience, as it included a head massage. I also got a chance to visit Kyoto, the ancient and cultural capital of Japan. The company had generously arranged a tour for the cadets, and we boarded a coach in Kobe and drove some sixty kilometres inland. The city was fascinating; we visited Buddhist temples, Shinto shrines, Palaces and Japanese gardens.

From Shimizu, one could see Mount Fuji in the distance, and with a few hours off watch in the afternoon, I went for a long walk and reached some foothills where there was a tangerine orchard. Being thirsty I picked a couple of the fruits, which were very tasty and quenched my thirst, but I was spotted by the farmer, who shouted something unintelligible at me and chased me off. I didn’t argue with him, as I saw he was carrying a gun. Fortunately, he didn’t use it.

Leaving Shimizu, I got my first experience of a typhoon.

The ship was pitching and rolling violently which created an uncomfortable corkscrew motion. Green seas were surging over the foredeck as the bow plunged into the sea, and the upper deck was awash as the vessel rolled sometimes as much as thirty degrees each way. The wind strength was over sixty knots blowing the tops off the waves with spindrift flying continuously over the bridge, from where the Captain looked on anxiously, wondering if the weather would worsen and what damage would be inflicted to his ship.

Twelve hours earlier the ship had left the Japanese port of Shimizu after loading two thousand Suzuki motor bikes in Number 3 hold, and three fifty ton Komatsu caterpillars in Number 4 hold. It should have been a short coastal passage round to the next loading port of Nagoya; the weather on departure the previous evening had been calm and with just a few hours at sea the predicted strong winds were not expected to pose a problem. Instead, within two hours of reaching the open sea, the wind strengthened and continued to intensify during the night, and as the ship left the lee of the land, the swell rose. Dawn revealed an angry sea and overcast skies with driving rain and limited visibility. A glance at the radar screen revealed dozens of other vessels facing the same predicament.

The original passage plan had long been abandoned. The Captain had taken the decision to face the sea head on, at reduced speed. This was a seamanlike decision based on a lifetime’s experience. Steering any other course would have further increased the violent rolling and could have caused damage to the ship and her cargo. Even at slow speed ahead the pitching was extreme, and it was hard to keep one’ s balance even when holding onto the bridge rail, let alone trying to move about. Within two hours of daybreak the wind had reached hurricane strength. The sea was relentless and was cascading in full force along the deck. Steering by autopilot was no longer possible; to maintain control the ship had to be steered by hand, and it required all the skill of the helmsman to anticipate the movement of the waves as they struck the ship and hold a steady course.

But the sea is unpredictable and occasionally a large wave would catch the ship causing her to roll heavily. The bridge team watched as the inclinometer sometimes hit thirty degrees and hovered there momentarily before rolling back. This was no fun fair roller coaster ride; this was for real, and there was nervous anticipation each time before the ship rolled back retaining her stability.

At noon the weather showed no sign of letting up. By now the Captain had been on the bridge for over twelve hours and his ship had been blown many miles from its intended track. At the change of watch there was a cry of alarm from the lookout. A rogue wave was bearing down, its crest being blown in streaks across the sea by the intensifying wind. There was no time or opportunity to avoid the massive wave. It crashed over the foredeck submerging the windlass before roiling across the hatch covers. The helmsman was helpless to this onslaught; the wave caught the ship and she began to roll; this time further than ever before. The Captain and officers watched as the inclinometer hit forty degrees, but the ship continued to list further. Looking down to the port side, there was a view of a turbulent sea, and looking up to the starboard side a view of scurrying clouds only. Everyone held their breath, as the ship heeled further to port. The inclinometer hit fifty degrees and by now I reckon we were all praying. Please dear God let her come upright. There was an agonizing few seconds as the ship lingered at this absurd angle and then to the immense relief of all the crew, the list began to reduce, but then to everyone’s alarm the ship began to roll rapidly through the vertical to starboard accompanied by a shuddering crash and screeching metal. The cargo had shifted, but the damage could not be ascertained. It was too dangerous to venture on deck, let alone to check the state of the cargo in the hatches.

During the day the typhoon gradually abated and by late evening the vessel was able to resume her course to Nagoya. We had been blown over one hundred nautical miles off course. We were not alone. The Japanese coast had one of the highest densities of shipping in the world. There were many other vessels that had been caught in the typhoon.

Twenty-four hours later the ship was safely berthed, and the damage could be inspected.

When the hatch covers to number three hold were opened, a scene of destruction was evident: a twisted mess of motorbikes. The stow had broken loose and it looked like a scrapyard; not a single vehicle looked unscathed. There were twisted frames, smashed petrol tanks and broken wheels everywhere.

Worse was to follow. On opening number four hold, one of the three caterpillars had broken loose from its tracks and run through the bulkhead adjoining number five hold.

By some miracle it had jammed itself in the bulkhead and