Eighty pints of Birthday Beer

It's good to see so many former Caroline Staff writing down their memories of their time on the "boats" over the years. As for me, it's really hard to pinpoint one out of so many I've got. I do remember going out to the MV Mi Amigo for the first time thinking what a great ship it was. It did not look too new, it has to be said, but once on board you always felt it was a very special home away from home. Out of all the radio ships I've been on, this certainly was the smallest, but what a great atmosphere. On my first trip out I was lucky to be working with the likes of Tony Allan and Peter Chicago, who taught me all the ropes in more ways than one. I remember the Mi Amigo in the late 1970's used to leak a wee bit. What sometimes happened was that sometimes, after a bad storm, we would spring leaks in the bottom of the ship, normally only one hole at a time, but they were about the size of a one-euro coin, so water did used to come in a bit fast at times, but nothing the ships pumps could not handle. Sometimes a little water did get into the English studios downstairs, and, if you still have tapes of the programmes, you might well be able to hear this on some of the links.

It was also strange to come aboard the MV Ross Revenge in 1984. I had been on the Mi Amigo and, compared to living on the Lady, the experience was totally different on the Ross Revenge. Now I think the one thing that was lacking on the Ross Revenge at that stage was the wear of time. The Ross Revenge was a very young ship as far as the radio station was concerned. The Mi Amigo had such a history when I did start to work there. Every where you went in, the ship showed its history. You went to the studios and two of the cart machines were from the Radio Nord days. The mixers were from the original Caroline South and North days. The bunks had things like "Tony Blackburn was here 1965" written all over them. Other inscriptions we kept on there since 1972, were written on a door; everybody put down their name when they came on board for their very first stint. So everywhere where you looked on the Mi Amigo there was some history.

And how far would we go with our ships dog Raffles? Peter Chicago saved him out of the harbour of Santander from where he was taken aboard the Ross Revenge to international waters in 1983. At Eastern 1985 we, once again, had one of our famous brewing parties where our own beer had to be tasted at this special day. And like us, Raffles did enjoy himself when everybody had a good time. We didn't leave Raffles out of everything as he was a part of the Caroline family. We actually put home-brew in his water bowl. We thought he wouldn't drink it, but in one good gulp — "shlurpp!" — it was gone! We gave him another lot and it was gone again. He was staggering around as well. And the next day he was a bit subdued though — I think he had a bit of a hangover. I decided to take him out for a walk around the deck. People probably won't believe this, but we actually did take Raffles for a walk on a collar and a lead round the deck and he absolutely loved it. Old Raffles was a great dog. He was very shy, but often he did get in the mess room. When we were watching telly, he often got upon friendly. He was like an Alsatian. I called him "Riff Raff." When dinner was on table in the mess room and he was outside, he knew how to handle and open the door. On one occasion he got on the table, so from that point on when he was coming in, we threw him a few odds and ends to keep him off the table. He had an enormous appetite.

Going back to my notes, I recall the contact we had with the Coast Guards. The same Sunday we did taste the new brew for the first time, the weather became suddenly very bad during the afternoon. On Easter Sunday morning we had Tony come aboard. He was a fisherman from Walton-on-the-Naze and he was putting some of his nets down to do some fishing around the top of the sandbanks when the weather started to blow up. He came alongside and for safety reasons said: "Can I come aboard?" Of course, we weren't going to say "No," because of safety and the weather really did get up. So actually we brought his boat aboard the Ross Revenge. It was only a small boat, although it had an engine and everything and, of course, with our winches we could bring massive things aboard. So we hitched it up and brought it inboard. We informed the Coastguards that he was inboard; they knew him as a local fisherman and he worked on the Walton life-boat as well. And they said: "No problems, thanks for letting us know." That's the thing you do because people got worried and phoned the Coastguard as he wasn't seen for say two days. Tony did enjoy himself a lot and I don't think he wanted to go when the weather came down again, but he had to go back to work. A nice guy, that old Tony, and one wonders, if we hadn't been out there, what would have happened to him.

Then there's the nickname I acquired during my stay at Caroline. It was Wally (Simon Barrett) who baptized me with this new name. He had a list hanging on the studio door, telling what everyone had been doing during their stay on shore — that means in Wally's mind. The list allocated everyone to a part-time job. Barrett himself was into cricket and so he became the cricket inspector at the Kent Cricket Ground, Andy Johnson would never travel on public transport, so he had to be a ticket collector for London Transport and for me after working on farms in the 1970's, I was of course The Herdsman. That's how I got that name, but I won't tell you what they put down as Samantha's other job! Thinking back to the watery days, I also do recall the regular check-ups. We cleaned the decks a lot and checked the fire hoses and all the fire-hydrants around the ship to make sure they were still working properly. All the safety things had to be done regularly. I knew at one stage the fire extinguisher worked, because the engine in the rubber boat had been off to be repaired and came back onboard. I started it up and it caught fire. So I screamed for a fire extinguisher, got a huge great one down, and that put it out just like that. The engine started again, so it didn't do any damage, because we got it out so quickly.

So all of that was working fine. On the life-rings we had light-beacons, so as soon as a life-ring was in the sea it was all illuminated with lights. So if somebody did get over the side at night, they could see where he was. All the life-rings had about two hundred yards of rope. We did have three of the "dome" inflatable life-rafts that you see on most of the ships. What you do is to pull a lever and they literally go over the side. And they got what you do call a taper on them. There was about eighty foot of taper. And you pull that and they'll just inflate on their own. They hold ten people each so we could have thirty in them. They all got radios in them, just emergency distress radios, and they were all full of tins of water and food and things like that and not forgetting the torches. And then there was also the rubber boat, with an outboard and so if one went over the side, we could go after them. It was also used to go out in the night into the Communicator pub, when it was still there.