The Ient Family: Family History

Oil from an Oil Tanker!

One job we had was in the summer when this great big oil tanker came in. So, typical Japanese, they just bore a hole in the bottom of the ship and caught the oil coming out! As you may know, the bottom of the tanker was full of residue from the oil; it sinks down to the bottom. So the Japs being short of oil were not going to waste anything. This all ran into four gallon tins and we were underneath this ship with a four gallon tin, passing it from hand to hand and tipping it into an iron bucket. The crane was to come along and pick up the bucket. The top of the jib of the crane would reach the area we were under the hull of the ship in in the dry dock. So, typical Japanese, they get a telegraph pole [laughs], and they lash it onto the end of the jib with wire rope. Then they put a block and tackle on the end of the telegraph pole. We’re down here at the bottom of the dry dock They let down the hook and we put it on the great bucket. As it is not a clear vertical drop from the jib it bumps its way up. The crane swings around and the bucket is tipped into a lighter [like a barge].

This went on and on; it was a back breaking job, filthy dirty, we had no soap. Anyway, then the winter comes. By this time the oil has solidified, so it didn’t run, obviously. So they lit fires down there in the hold at the bottom of an oil tanker, lit fires! [Gasps.] You had to put your shovel into the fire to get it warm. Then you cut a cube out of the oil; like that [indicating the size] and put it in a basket. The basket was hauled up by three or four blokes pulling on a rope from down in the hold, up to a bloke sitting astride a girder above. The basket was then tipped into the great iron bucket and off it went. This went on for months. By this time, lighter was right way down flat [meaning low in the water]. As I said, I was with the City of Birmingham Squadron, who normally rarely saw the sea or a dockyard, unlike me coming from a ship building area. The foreman said to me, 'I want the bar to go from there to there.' [Chick pointed.] So we go the men to haul it slowly along the pontoon. I fastened it up with a nice clove hitch knot at this end. I didn’t bother to fasten that end.

We went to work the next day, and the whole of the harbour was covered in bloody oil. [Laughs.] The tide had gone out – my two clove hitches had held and the barge was tipped over like that [demonstrating], 8 or 9 hundred tonnes of oil was all over! [Laughs.] That was my war effort, by the way – that was my big moment! All this oil spilt all over the dockyard, all over the bay, dead fish all over the place. There was absolute pandemonium down there. And the best thing about it, I never saw the foreman anymore – I don’t know what happened to him, but he went. My other war effort was when I got to the ship early one day and on board this ship there was a great big box of tools. I kicked it over the side. Churchill would have been proud of me that day! [Laughs.]


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