Stuff Happens: The Far from Humdrum Life of a Photojournalist

By Tor Eigeland

Photojournalist Tor Eigeland looks back at the most memorable highlights of his remarkable life and travels on assignment for the likes of National Geographic, Time Life and multiple foreign publications.



‘Stuff Happens’ is a catchphrase Tor has used time and again during his 60-year career when something out of the ordinary happened.... his life has certainly never been humdrum. This incredible, unique memoir, with varied tales and anecdotes, the culmination of a life’s work – all wonderfully photographed – is captivating from start to finish.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Brown Dog Books
• Release date: Mar 3, 2022
• ISBN: 9781839524080

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

Off to Sea

Gently, the good ship Tricolor pulled away from the harbor in Oslo on a sunny day in June.

It was 1947, two years after the Second World War ended. The world was still an unsettled place. I was only 16 years old. Dangerous mines still floated in the seas, not to mention all the hazards I might encounter in distant port cities. That was the way my parents saw it. But not me, of course.

German occupation of my hometown of Oslo had lasted five years. It is a little sad that my first intense childhood memories, aged nine, were of running, frightened, into the basement as bombs fell. Fortunately, these small bombs, in the early days, were Hitler’s way of warning the population against doing anything rash.

Apart from the menacing presence of German troops in the streets, my younger brother, Gunnar, and I lived a fairly normal life. We played our games, skied, bicycled and went to school. During the dark nights, behind blackout curtains, we all read a lot.

I was luckier than most. My parents had lined two walls of the living room with leather-bound books, a real treasure trove. Curled up in a cozy chair, I devoured everything from Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky to Hemingway. What attracted me most were the travel adventure books by writers such as John Steinbeck, Samuel Johnson and Joseph Conrad. I traveled and I traveled in that chair.

Nobody knew then, least of all me, that those books would strongly influence the rest of my life. They seriously infected me with the travel bug that has stayed with me to this day.

After the war ended in 1945, more and more ships, foreign and exotic, as well as Norwegian, started calling at Oslo. I lived on the outskirts of the city and frequently, in my spare time, I would take the tram downtown and stroll along the docks.

The sights, sounds and life around the ships fascinated me and fired my imagination. Often I would get talking to foreign sailors in my halting English. I liked those people. I wanted to go to sea, taste the salty life. Perhaps eventually become a captain, sail the seven

seas…

My dreams started to take shape. My plan was to take most of the school year off and work as a deckhand on a ship traveling as far as possible to tropical, exotic lands. Part of the deal agreed with my parents was not to lose a school year but to take my schoolbooks, study on board and sit my end-of-school exams when I returned.

The pressure I put on my parents was truly severe. We had just safely got through the difficult war years together and now they were probably wondering what might happen to me if I journeyed so far off into the unknown. No wonder they weren’t keen on my idea.

Scheming, I had talked to a slightly older friend of mine and asked if he would like to join me on the adventure, thinking that my parents would be more likely to agree if he came along.

Bobo, as my friend was called, eventually agreed to the same terms and this turned the tide with our very traditional parents. In the end my father said, and I shall never forget his exact words:

In God’s name – go!

To this day I don’t really know, other than sadness and some fear for my safety, what he meant by those words. It hurt me then and a twinge still remains even after all these years.

Another reason why my parents let me go was that a neighbor whose garden adjoined ours was an executive in Norway’s then biggest shipping company, the Wilhelm Wilhelmsen Line.

f0013-01

Off to sea aboard the freighter MV Tricolor.

This kind gentleman managed to get us a job on one of the finest ships in the Norwegian merchant navy, the 10,000 ton MV Tricolor, which carried freight and up to 12 passengers in reasonably luxurious cabins. Our captain, Harald Andersen, was renowned as a benevolent dictator who ran a neat, clean efficient ship where every spot of dirt or rust was ruthlessly attacked and eliminated.

The Tricolor was leaving Oslo harbor shortly after my year-end exams in early summer. She was to call at more than 20 ports between Oslo and Shanghai – and about the same number on the way back – picking up and dropping off the occasional passenger, but mostly freight carried in the ship’s huge, deep hulls. The voyage was to take around eight months, the better part of the school year.

For me it was an irresistibly tempting itinerary. Of course it was daunting as well, and some of the ports I had never heard of. On the Oslo–Shanghai round trip we would stop at Drammen, Gothenburg, Rotterdam, Antwerp, Bordeaux, Lisbon, Barcelona, Marseille, Port Said, Suez Canal, Suez, Port Sudan (Suakin), Djibouti, Aden, Karachi, Mumbai, Goa, Colombo, Singapore, Manila, Cebu, Davao, Hong Kong, Macau and up the Yangtze River to Shanghai.

Bobo and I boarded the ship with our little suitcases three days before departure, forming part of a crew of some 30 men. The accommodation corresponded to rank. Ours was, needless to say, at the very rear end of the ship. Tight quarters but impeccably clean, and my bunk had a good reading lamp.

* * * * *

f0014-01

1947. Map of my voyage from Oslo to Shanghai and back.

We were on our way. My heart was thumping away somewhere up around my throat and I had to force back tears. Shanghai seemed a very, very long way away and I would seriously miss my parents and my brother. We were all very close. Would I ever see them again? I felt moments of panic then and I feel that sense of panic even now, a lifetime later, when I recall standing on the ship waving them goodbye at their lookout point further down the Oslo fjord.

We had only reached the first port when disaster struck. As we were pulling away to leave the dock, the bos’n (boatswain, in charge of the deck crew) shouted at me to let go of that goddamned tugboat, pointing towards a rope that was wound up, snake-like, on the side of the ship. Nervous and eager to please, I quickly let go of the rope – and dropped the ship’s gangway onto the tugboat. Very wrong rope! Needless to say there was a good deal of shouting and I was roundly cursed in sailors’ language for the first time in my life. From then on my name was ‘Gangwaydekken’ (Gangway deckhand).

The voyage became more and more lively and interesting the further south we sailed. We visited some northern ports that were quite gray, grim and tired looking, definitely not having recovered from the war years.

At times we didn’t dock long enough to explore away from the port itself, where there was usually nothing to entertain a sailor except perhaps some rough little bars, often hang-outs for prostitutes who attempted to cash in on visiting sailors.

Age limits didn’t exist in those days. I was 16 – and looked 16. I avoided these places. Some were frightening to me, but occasionally I would enter with a shipmate, have a soft drink or a beer, and then leave my mate to sort himself out. I wandered off to explore, mostly alone. My friend Bobo usually stayed on the ship. He said he wanted to save his money and thus, in my mind, missed the whole point of the trip. Coming from solid middle-class Norwegian families, we had no need to save the few pennies – kroners – we made.

Daily life was one of learning the workings of the ship, and quite hard physical labor. Our working day was eight hours. In port we worked eight hours straight. At sea we worked in shifts, four hours on, eight hours off, around the clock. Manual labor included endless de-rusting and repainting the ship and hours of scrubbing and mopping of cabin floors, showers and toilets. Hard physical graft, which made school seem like a picnic. When the mess-hall assistant had a day off we did all the dishes too – by hand – for a deck crew of 18. Dishwashers were mostly people in those days.

Food was unimaginative but adequate. The atmosphere among the all-Norwegian crew was harmonious and cheerful, except on a few occasions when someone had gone ashore, got hammered and out-of-control with too much booze.

Other than missing my family, I don’t remember being unhappy during that long and adventurous voyage. Scared at times, yes, but only miserable when I made a stupid mistake. And I made quite a few of those. Fortunately I excelled in one thing and that was steering that big ship. Part of any deckhand’s shift routine was to take the helm, with an officer supervising and giving orders. After a few weeks of learning, intuitively I felt which way the winds, the currents and the waves were carrying her.

It was during a violent storm that I found out how good I was at keeping Tricolor on course, following the commands called out by the officer in charge on the bridge. The captain had dismissed the able seaman, two ranks above me, and called ME to the helm. I felt very privileged – and proud – that the captain allowed me this opportunity not usually given to a humble deckhand.

Two hours out from Bordeaux, the steady breeze abruptly changed to a violently powerful wind. We were heading into the dreaded Bay of Biscay, infamous for its storms and rough seas. The gusts were enough to blow you off your feet. Waves increased in size, a white spray blowing off their tops. For the first time in my life I felt the scary, exciting power of the sea.

Water-filled bucket at my side, a lesson I’d learned early on from a couple of embarrassing bouts of sea sickness, it was my turn to handle the helm of the ship with the third mate at my side. The captain had appeared, as he always did when something even slightly unusual was happening.

The atmosphere on the bridge was quiet and professional, no sense of any kind of crisis. It was just a storm to them, but my first, and a few hours later the crashing waves subsided and thankfully it had passed.

It was from the city of Bordeaux onwards that things took on a more southern and exotic aspect. People dressed differently, looked a little darker, some men wore berets, the longshoremen (locals who loaded and unloaded the freight) smelled of garlic and wine – and they even drank wine on the job at mealtimes. But nobody got drunk, I observed. All of it so un-Norwegian.

And on to Lisbon. Truly EXOTIC. Warm and sunny, palm trees, beautiful white buildings, and people who looked really different and multicolored, from olive-skinned to brownish to really black, reflecting Portugal’s colonial history.

Our big twin diesel engines were soon powering Tricolor out on her way to the next port of call: Barcelona.

Just a few hours ashore here – and it was evening. No guide-book was ever available and the advice of most of the sailors was dubious. It was hot and steamy – something I have always liked.

With a few Spanish pesetas in my pocket, I walked towards the center of the city. Dodging a few prostitutes, who didn’t seem to care I was a minor, I came to a colossal statue of a medieval-looking nobleman, pointing commandingly towards where my ship was at anchor – and towards the west. As it turned out, it was and still is Barcelona’s most famous statue, that of Christopher Columbus.

f0016-01

Barcelona. Christopher Columbus atop his 60m monument pointing west to the Americas.

From monumental Columbus rises the equally famous wide avenue, Las Ramblas. Walking up a couple of blocks, I saw the entrance to a well-lit square and walked into the Plaza Real. Huge palm trees reached for the skies, Spanish colonial-style buildings lined the square and at the ground level there were bars and restaurants occupying every bit of space. My mouth dropped open at the sight.

I’ll never be certain whether this voyage of mine had anything to do with it, but a long time later I was to live very happily just outside Barcelona for some 20 years.

Onwards to Marseille, about which I remember little except seeing some big, real live sharks cruising around the ship where we were anchored. Some of the sailors threw in bits of meat that were instantly devoured by these elegant, built-for-speed creatures.

All this of course was stuff out of story and travel books to me. Life seemed quite unreal – as if I were living a dream. And I often wondered what my would-be classmates and my family were doing back in Oslo.

Down the west coast of Italy through the Tyrrhenian Sea and the Strait of Messina, which separates Sicily from the Italian mainland. I took pleasure in watching the porpoises which often swam along the sides of the ship. From there we sailed across the Mediterranean to Port Said, the Egyptian port at the northern entrance to the Suez Canal.

Port Said, Egypt. Just the name ‘Port Said’ excited me. It still does. But my first encounter with this port was a disappointment. As we arrived and anchored, the ship’s Egyptian agent came onboard and told us that there was an outbreak of cholera in Egypt and, for our own safety, we should not go ashore here or in Suez at the southern end of the canal. As we could not put our feet on Egyptian soil, Egypt came to us in the form of a flotilla of bumboats, little supply boats, that service ships at anchor.

When it was time to up anchor and get on our way, a smartly white-uniformed English pilot came on board to guide us, customary in those days when the Suez Canal was operated by the British. We started on our way through the nearly 200 kilometer-long waterway. Fascinated, we observed all kinds of life along the banks: camels carrying goods, peasants bobbing along on the backs of donkeys, a tribe of Bedouin women moving slowly with a herd of grazing goats. There were villages with small mosques, farmers in the fields. Egypt was another country that would play a major role in my life, but of course I didn’t know that then.

All ships are insured under strict rules. One of them is that in certain passages, like the Suez Canal, the ship must be steered by an able seaman, someone older and more experienced than a first-time deckhand like me.

So it was to my amazement when, passing through a narrow, difficult stretch of the canal with especially heavy currents, the captain called me to the helm, dismissing temporarily the middle-aged able seaman who was there. I never forgot that sense of disbelief – and pride – as well as fear of some kind of reprisal, should I encounter that dismissed sailor in a drunken state (which did happen some weeks later, but fortunately other crew members pulled him off me before any harm was done).

f0017-01

Harald Andersen, our great and highly respected Captain, with his wife.

It took two days to get through the canal. We exited at Suez, and then headed south into the Red Sea towards Port Sudan. It got far hotter than anything I had imagined, but for some reason the heat did not bother me.

The longshoremen here had fine, sharp features and did not look at all like the local Arabs or Black people in that part of the world. They totally fascinated me. Many years after I was to spend time in the deserts of Egypt and Sudan with these people, who belong to an ancient nomadic tribe called the Bishari or Beja. But that story is for later.

Tricolor sailed on south, the big diesel engines always reassuringly audible as they turned the twin propellers. We passed out of the Red Sea, briefly visited the French colonial port of Djibouti, and then crossed over west to bunker diesel fuel at the port of Aden, then a British colony, and the hottest place so far at 45°C.

I didn’t know then that Aden too, and the war zone it was to become in the 1960s, would feature again in my life.

We all welcomed the breezes of the Gulf of Aden as we steadily cruised our way east, then northeast into the Arabian Sea towards Karachi, which was still, on the day we arrived, an Indian city in a British colony.

I was disappointed here. There was no time for shore leave for me. I spent my time in Karachi sitting on a plank lowered down the outside hull of the ship, painting alongside one of my shipmates. We whistled, sang, waved at the locals who passed by in little boats, waving back. The whole time I kept an eye on the sea below for any sharks. Of course in my young mind ANY shark was deadly – and would surely eat

me…

Once again we pulled out of port, and steered south towards Bombay, or Mumbai as it is now, which would turn out to be momentously more interesting. But before we arrived there – way out at sea in the middle of the night while on watch at the bow – I noticed an intriguing, exotic smell. It was like a mixture of different kinds of spice, unlike any smell I had ever known. When, after an hour at the look-out, it was my turn at the helm up on the bridge, I asked our captain what that strange waft might be. He laughed and said:

That’s Bombay, young man, and we’re still about eight hours away. That big city is full of interesting smells, mostly good and some very bad!

By pure chance, I was there to experience the major turning point in India’s history on August 15, 1947, the day of our ship’s arrival. On that very day, Karachi, which we had just visited, became part of newly created Pakistan. It was Independence Day. The British colony of India split into two countries, Pakistan and India.

From the ship I saw thousands of people waiting on a huge, shallow beach. I noticed the captain on deck, observing the same thing.

What are they all doing, sir? I asked him.

I think they are Muslims, and they are worried and praying about their future.

Thoughtfully he added: They now find themselves in a country that is mostly Hindu, whereas Pakistan is basically Muslim. Many will now probably head for Pakistan. I hope they get there.

As we spoke we saw a big, troop transport ship leaving the harbor. These were some of the British troops leaving for home.

Well, the Indians are on their own now, the captain said.

History later tells us that many Muslims never made it to their new country. A troubled, bloody period known as Partition followed, when thousands of Muslims and Hindus lost their lives.

Later that day I walked into the city center and, completely by accident, came across a magnificent parade. British soldiers in white dress uniform were on horseback, and in the center of the parade was a horse-drawn carriage in which a man, even more splendidly dressed, stood waving to bystanders. This was the British Viceroy of India, Lord Louis Mountbatten of Burma, waving farewell.

My historical day in Mumbai got to be a very long one. It was dark by the time I got back to the docks where Tricolor was moored. As I neared the ship, it started to rain. No, it didn’t rain. It was a tropical downpour, a total deluge, which instantly drenched me. No sense in seeking shelter.

We pulled out of Mumbai at night and headed south down the west coast of India to Goa, a tiny Portuguese colony that was not affected by the liberation of the rest of the subcontinent. We docked in what seemed like the middle of nowhere. There was only the quay, a couple of cranes and nothing else but jungle all around. A railroad track led into the main town.

I had the evening free and decided to walk into town alone. Very soon that got spooky and it was getting dark. I walked and walked on the track itself, jungle on both sides, and there was no sign of human life or habitation.

Suddenly, a large brown pig, wild or domestic I shall never know, shot across the tracks right in front of me. I was already nervous and jumped with fright. A short distance further on lay a very skinny little man, seemingly lifeless and sort of curled up on a low, brick wall.

That did it. About turn! I half ran and stumbled back along those

tracks… In

short, I never saw Goa. I’m told there is now a fine tourist resort where I walked along those dusty tracks.

Next stop: Singapore. It was a British colony then. Great sights and smells! Tropical, with rickety buildings, canals, lots of life, all very exciting. Everything totally unfamiliar. Unfortunately, I was only allowed one afternoon ashore.

Here I quote a letter written to my parents from Singapore:

"When we had finished working last night, the ship’s carpenter and I took a four-hour walk round the city. Just about the first thing we noticed were some big signs saying something like ‘WARNING! When asked by police or soldiers to STOP please do so immediately. Failure to do so may get you shot.’ We had been told that there was some kind of communist insurgency going on, which the British were fighting. Fortunately, we encountered no problem at all.

Just about everyone is Chinese in this city, I told my parents, but also some Malays. The street-life is phenomenal! At times it was difficult to move because of the throngs of people, bicycle taxis and little shops. The shops were right out in the streets. You can buy anything your heart desires, but we didn’t have any money.

The few hours spent in Singapore made a lasting impression on me and I have managed to get back there a number of times since. Although the physical change from the honky-tonk-looking city then to one of the world’s most modern cities today is vast, Singapore has managed to maintain some of the bustling, dynamic atmosphere and at least a measure of the exotic charm it had for me then.

Up through the South and then East China Seas, it was a long voyage from Singapore onwards to the mighty Yangtze River, sometimes with me at the helm, on to the big port of Shanghai. We docked in a very central place, within easy walking distance of Nanjing Road, a busy shopping street then and perhaps the world’s most bustling shopping street now. But more than anything else, what first struck me was a stream of airplanes that headed north overhead – and there was another stream returning from the same direction.

f0019-01

Unrecognizable today, Singapore’s Marina Bay as I first saw it in 1947.

The captain told me:

You probably know there is a big war going on in China. Mao’s communist troops are heading this way from the north. They are trying to oust the capitalist regime of Chiang Kai-Shek. Those are American planes heading to bomb at the front.

My hours of leave in Shanghai were in the evening. Dressed in clean clothes and my best jacket, I strode ashore and headed back to Nanjing Road, at the suggestion of my mates. On the way I stopped at a reasonable looking bar and drank a Coke. There was a very cute, very young, very decent-looking Chinese girl sitting there.

I was astounded when the man behind the bar, who must have been the owner of the establishment as well as the girl, proposed:

You can have her till tomorrow morning for 10 dollars.

More than a little flustered, I replied:

Thank you very much. She’s very pretty but I don’t have any money. The girl smiled shyly at me.

The owner countered:

If you give me that nice new jacket, you can have her till tomorrow afternoon!

This was an uncomfortable situation that I got out of by overpaying for my Coke, saying a hasty good-bye and clumsily exiting through the door. This was one of a number of episodes that never got into the weekly letters home to my parents.

Street life on Nanjing Road was so hectic it made my head spin. The riches of goods from all over the world in the shops were more than I could take in, especially coming from war-weary Norway, where everything had been in short supply for years. The purchases I had in my pocket amounted to some 10 dollars’ worth, a lot of money in those days. Tired out, I went to a cinema and watched an American Western.

f0020-01

Written weekly, a few of many letters to my parents.

It was after midnight by the time I got out and headed back in what I thought was the direction of the harbor. I got totally lost in a poor quarter of the city, where nobody seemed to speak English or have any idea where the harbor was. Being keenly aware of the fact that my ship was leaving early in the morning, a slight sense of panic came over me. Very fortunately I didn’t have to worry for too long as suddenly, a block away up the narrow street from where I was, I saw a military jeep with two helmeted soldiers heading my way. Somewhat nervously, I stood in the middle of the street and flagged them down. It was an American military patrol. One of the GIs leaned out and said:

Hey buddy, are you lost? Thank heavens for the American military presence in Shanghai in 1947.

Hop in, he said. We’ll find your ship.

About three o’clock in the morning I was safely back on board. This was actually the turnaround point of the voyage and at 6am the Tricolor left to head back to Hong Kong. Close call!

But there would soon be another close call.

Our next port was Manila. Sailing was smooth as we headed due south towards the South China Sea, but this was not to last very long. I was about to learn what a real typhoon was.

On duty at the helm about 10 o’clock at night, I heard the third mate mutter:

I don’t like this weather. It is too calm, heavy and humid.

We knew there were typhoons in the area, but weather forecasts then were never very exact. Within the hour, I was on lookout at the bow of the ship. The wind rose from gusts to gale force and the waves rose with it. Soon the sea was spraying across the front deck between me and the bridge. My duty was to stay very wide awake and report to the bridge about everything I saw, which at night could be a light from the shore or from another ship.

The strength of the wind rose, the waves too, and the ship’s bow plowed scarily deep down into the waves, and then was forced up again, before the whole hull dropped on to the surface with a tremendous thud, rocking the whole ship.

I was becoming seriously worried about making my way back to the bridge as the waves started to crash across the deck. This was when I saw a distinct light blinking on the port side of the ship. This I signaled to the bridge by clanging the ship’s bell twice, very hard, as the wind was howling.

The reaction from the third mate was instant. Using a megaphone he shouted:

Get up here while you still can!

While dodging waves crashing across the deck, I just barely made it. A few minutes later it would have been too late.

Are you sure you saw a light? Where did you see it?

According to our charted course there was not supposed to be a light. A startling sight appeared – the totally stark naked Captain Andersen. The third mate had called him about the lights on the wrong side of the ship and he wanted to check the situation instantly. No time for clothes. We all looked with binoculars but the lights had vanished. It was probably from another ship, not a lighthouse, which would have been very serious, with the rocky shore much too near for comfort. For a few hours it was a ‘fingers crossed’ situation.

We battled that storm all night long. At times the ship leaned over so far I didn’t think it could possibly right itself. Everything that was loose crashed about. In the mess-hall, where six men sat on a wooden bench trying to drink some coffee, the whole bench, men and all, slid and crashed into the wall. On deck it was impossible to stand up straight without holding on to something. Sleep? Forget it! Frightened? Absolutely.

At the next stop, Manila, I only got to visit a cemetery, with the captain, a priest and a corpse, the result of a tragic accident – an incident I would just as soon forget. The reason it happened was probably that one of our able seamen (the one who had tried to attack me when I was called to replace him at the helm) got roaring drunk the previous night and had a thundering hangover. In fact I think he was still quite drunk when it happened.

We were about to unload the last bits of cargo from the bottom of one of the holds, when the seaman leaned out over the hull to grab the crane’s hook to steer it down. I was