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Edwin neal fish bar1/6/2024 ![]() ![]() ![]() I had had no previous experience or real idea of what a career at sea entailed. The closest thing had been sailing my Dads dinghy on a lake and sometimes the sea on holiday…oh and a Ferry trip from Portsmouth to Tangier, Lisbon and back….I was as sick as a dog crossing the Bay of Biscay! Some of the lads had come from Trinity House a school that taught navigation and seamanship skills as part of the curriculum. They knew each other and had a massive head start and levels of experience over those of us who didn’t have a clue…įrom the comfort and privacy of sleeping in my own bedroom in a four bed detached house, we slept in dormitories in bunk beds. Regular dorm raids took place between rival classes…these bothered me because if the offending dorm was caught by the night watchman, weekend leave would get cancelled. It was only getting home at weekends that got me through the three months training. I could not wait to go home every weekend and did so at every opportunity. At times I was terrified. It was the only time I felt the urge to start smoking. What the fuck was I doing there? I was extremely uncomfortable there. I didn’t know anyone else, the subjects being taught were completely alien to me and the place was like a borstal. I was like a fish out of water and fucking hated the place. With little forethought I decided I’d go to Sea, so on the 30th November 1980 I got on a train and travelled to the National Sea Training College in Gravesend and joined 18 other lads for three months of pre sea training. I left innocently, naively and completely ignorant of what I was letting myself in for or getting myself into. I had acted on a whim that had been triggered by something a fellow student had said in Sixth form.Īt the time, I had had no plans or ambitions to follow a particular career path. I just wanted and needed a job and felt that impulsive inexplicable urge a young man gets to leave home. 40 years ago today I left home at the age of 17. ![]()
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