Fred Newman
Fred belongs to: Royal British Legion Seaman's Mess
Fred was born in South Shields and went to Ocean Road School. He worked on the tug boats before going to sea in the merchant navy when he was 17.
Fred was interviewed by Carl Greenwood on 5 December 2005. The interview took place at the Interviewee's living room and lasted 1 hour, 1 minute and 3 seconds.
Icebergs and dangers
"Well, there wasn’t any real dangers apart from floating objects like icebergs and icefields"
Well, there wasn’t any real dangers apart from floating objects like icebergs and ice fields, but I never came across. On a night time, you see, they used to have watch, watch men. In the old days you used to have them in the crow’s nest, with the sail, the sail ships- that’s why they call them the crow’s nest- they were at the top of the highest mast, and the lad used to have to climb up and stand in there. But with the modern ships, you could go to the fore end of the ship, or on the wing of the bridge, port and starboard and you used to have a man standing there. If it was too bad and the weather was rough and it was, the sea coming over the bow of the ship, they used to just let the lad stand on the wings of the ship.
And they used to look for any lights. And if there were any lights at all, they used to let the bridge know, and they used to say to the bridge, “Light on the starboard side,” or, “light on the port side,” and the bridge used to look through and find the light. If there was another ship coming towards you, you could tell by the lights; if you had a main mast light, it was a white one, if you had port light, left hand side of the ship, it was a red light and a green one was on the other side. Well, if you were passing a ship, you went red to red or you went green to green- it all depends on what area you were in. If you were passing red to red, you knew that you would pass. If you saw a green light, you knew that there was some difficulty- the lad, you know, he would be like, crossing in front of them, so it was always passing on the lights, which was- that was the only danger that I have ever come across.
Fred has 14 memories in the memorynet:
Fred's memories with a Roles and Routines theme:
Training and learning the ropesFred's other memories:
Fred's accordion
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