by Captain Michael Fragkias, Senior Marine Consultant / Foremer DPA & HSQE Manager at Sun Enterprises Ltd
I am Captain Michalis! Not “Captain Michalis”, the legendary character of the great Greek author Nikos Kazantzakis, as I have jokingly said on several occasions, but Captain Michalis of the Stavros G. Livanos Company!
I believe I am entitled to call myself that because, at this great school of shipping, I had the immense good fortune and blessing to study about ships and the sea, and to work with loyalty and dedication for 58 uninterrupted years.
Before I tell you about my first voyage, with which I began my Livanos journey, I would like to start with a brief introduction.
About 15 years ago, a senior executive of the company from the New York office said to me: “Michalis, you should write a book about the company. I replied that I did not want to write such a book. “But why don’t you want to write a book about the company?” he asked. “Because I would have to write about 97% of truly remarkable and important events and achievements. But there is also that remaining 3% involving some unpleasant incidents or occurrences. I do not want to write about the causes, consequences, or circumstances under which those events took place!”
Later on, some other people have said to me: “If you don’t want to write a book about the company you worked for, then write a book about yourself, about your own presence and journey in the shipping industry!”
Honestly, I have thought about it many times, and perhaps I am still thinking about it. To recount my own journey of more than sixty years across the seas of the world, aboard ships, and through the various meetings and special assignments to which the company’s leadership sent me!
There are, however, many reasons why a person may decide not to write a book about his own accomplishments and experiences.
And although I already have written three books and published dozens of articles, I have not yet decided to write my own autobiography, mainly because some of the things I have experienced, endured, witnessed, and accomplished seem so incredible even to me that I wonder how they could possibly be believed by others.
In the articles I have posted so far, readers may have noticed that I never write about what I personally have done, either as a Captain or during the years I spent working in the company’s offices. Instead, I write about events and situations I experienced, and about the things and lessons they taught me that contributed enormously to my personal development in this complex and constantly changing maritime environment.
I was born and raised in Chios, in Bella Vista, in a house just 30 meters from the sea. When the southerly wind was raging, the sea would spray salt onto the windows, just as I would later see it happen aboard ships. Coincidentally, the house was 200 meters from the famous villa of Stavros Livanos, which stood beside the sea and looked like the accommodation block of a ship!
In early July 1962, I graduated from the classical section of the Boys’ High School. About a week later, my stepfather said to me: – Michalis, a ship belonging to Livanos, will be passing through Chios in two days. Come to Martakis office tomorrow morning and ask for a job. (Mr. Georgios Martakis’s office represented Stavros Livanos’s ships. Later, it became the office of S. Livanos – Hellas, which is still operating today.)
The next morning, at 8 o’clock, I was standing outside that office. When Mr. Martakis opened it, I went in a few minutes later. Without even saying good morning, the elderly gentleman sitting in the shadows at the back of the office said to me…- What do you want here? – I heard that one of Mr. Livanos’s ships is passing through Chios, and I came to ask for a job as a cadet, I said. He leaned over a large open ledger, ran his finger down the page from top to bottom, looked at me, and said: – I already have 18 cadets listed here. Why should I take you? – What’s wrong with me? I asked, puzzled.- If I send you aboard that ship, the wind will blow you away, he said emphatically. (It should be noted here that, at 1.88 meters tall and weighing just 67 kilos, I did indeed look like a walking stick.) – Thank you very much, I said, and turned to leave because I thought he was sending me away. – Where are you going? he called after me. – But you said the wind would blow me away…He cut me off! – Forget what I said. Tomorrow morning at six, you’re to be here with your suitcase. He wrote down my name, and that is exactly how I got hired!!!
The following morning, July 18, 1962, I, 17 other people, and the wife of the Chief Engineer boarded Malantis’s small boat (which was used by the Port Authority both as a launch and for pursuit) and went aboard the beautiful ship which, to me, looked magnificent, gently rocking in the calm waters outside the harbor. At her stern flew the Greek flag! The Atlantic Sunlight!
We gathered on deck, the newcomers mixed in with the crew who were signing off, surrounded by their countless pieces of luggage. And as the men who were leaving began to disembark, a booming voice suddenly rang out from the sky: Hey! Take off the gravantas ( neck ties)! I looked up and, high above us on a little balcony, saw a portly man wearing a white shirt, gold stripes, and a naval-style cap. I looked around. It was the middle of July, and everyone was wearing T-shirts or short-sleeved shirts. I turned to the man next to me and asked: – Who is he, and what is he saying? And came the reply: – Where did they bring you from? (I was to hear that same phrase many times over the following days, every time I asked a question.) – He is the Captain. He’s telling us to change the clothes we’re wearing and get to work. And so, the message was delivered, along with the appropriate translation of what he meant by “neck ties.
That afternoon, I was told to go up to the bow, where we were going to weigh anchor. There, they showed me how to count the “keys – shackles” of the anchor chain (shackle, the link that joins sections of a ship’s anchor chain. Each section is 27.5 metres long) and to strike the corresponding number on a bell! We set sail for the Dardanelles, bound for Novorossiysk, in what was then the Soviet Union, where we would load wheat for Fidel Castro’s Cuba.
They put me in the cadet’s cabin, on the officers’ deck. The crew , Able Seamen (A.B), oilers, firemen, and so on , shared cabins, two to a room. At five-thirty the next morning, they woke me up for “training,” as they called it. I went to the Bosun, and the training began, which basically meant preparing the day’s work for the deck crew!
The deck crew, hanging over the open cargo holds, were making “bulmedes”, wooden boxes or partitions fitted in the upper part of the hold, whose purpose was to prevent the grain cargo from shifting. The A.Bs were giving me orders in a completely incomprehensible language. For example: “Go to the mirror and tell the Bossy to send us tsites.” I knew “mirror” as the thing I looked into when I combed my hair. I knew “tsites” as the word for monkeys, from Tarzan’s Cheetah. And “Bossy”, well, I hadn’t the faintest idea. So, I kept asking for clarification, and eventually, after the standard phrase, “Where did you get that from?”, I learned that the Bosun was what they called the Boatswain, that the “mirror” was the front of the ship’s accommodation block, and that “tsites” were thin wooden strips used by Able Seamen, hanging from rope ladders, to nail burlap sheets onto the wooden partitions.
At eight o’clock, I was told to go and have breakfast. In the crew mess, there were three tables, with chairs for four people each. They showed me where to sit. Breakfast was a plate with a white cream-like substance they called porridge (oats – Quaker)! Then an A.B sitting opposite me asked: – Where did they bring you from, mate? Who sent you on the ship? I understood that he wanted to know what connections or means I had used to get myself a job on the ship, since at that time there was a certain crisis in the shipping industry. – Nobody! I spoke. I went to the company’s office and asked for a job. – And where are you going, barefoot, into the thorns? he said, dipping his spoon into the porridge. – Well… I’ll get somewhere eventually, I replied.
And, although I don’t want to tire you of this, I’ll make a brief digression: On July 18, 2012, that is, exactly 50 years after that exchange, we had 65 officers at the company’s office in Piraeus, as part of the forums we held (and still hold) every three months. – As usual, I went in first, since I was in the DPA, and greeted everyone present. On the screen was a black-and-white photograph of a cargo ship. – Do you see that ship? This is Atlantic Sunlight, owned by the Livanos shipping company. Exactly 50 years ago today, she passed through the port of Chios, and that was the ship on which I first went to sea. I mentioned the sailor’s words: “Who brought you here, mate, and where are you going barefoot into the thorns?” Then, pointing to myself, I said: – I am that barefoot man, 50 years later. That is not to say that I didn’t walk through some thorns along the way, as everyone does in life! End of digression.
The Dardanelles, the Bosphorus, and then we arrived at the port of destination, where we stayed for about a week. I will not mention what I saw happening in Novorossiysk! I will only say that I thanked God that, at Yalta, they had sent Greece into the arms of the West!
The loading was completed, and shortly before sailing I saw for the first time the procedure known as “spatsamento”, that is, how the ship was secured and made ready to go out to sea. The MacGregor doors of the five holds were secured, the derricks were lowered, the mooring lines were gathered on the forecastle and at the poop, etc. They had connected a hose to wash the deck clean of the wheat dust. The “dockers” trousers I was wearing (this was what jeans were called at the time) became soaked, stuck to me, and later I had to cut them off with scissors.
During the voyage I would go up to the bridge, that is, to the sheltered wheelhouse wing. I only went inside to learn how to steer the ship. I entered the chartroom only to sweep it. Once, secretly, the Second Officer who, for obvious reasons, I will not name, although I remember the names of almost the entire crew, which consisted of 35 men—showed me the nautical chart and, very quickly, the compass rose and the course we had plotted. During the night watch, this Second Officer taught me, in English, the terminology of the ship and the International Regulations for Preventing Collisions at Sea. It should be noted here that I knew almost no English at all, apart from what we had been taught in the high school, “this is a book,” “this is a blackboard,” and so on. I appreciated this very much, because the other Second Officer never told me or taught me the slightest thing!
When we reached the Atlantic, after I had bravely endured three days of seasickness, I tried to learn the various jobs carried out on deck. At noon, I would watch the ship’s Chief Mate and the two Second Officers use a strange instrument and sight the sun with it, shouting, “TOP!” They told me that the instrument was called a sextant and that with it they “brought the sun-down to the horizon.” At the shout of “top,” they recorded the ship’s Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) from the chronometer. Then they did a “lesson”, a calculation and in this way determined the ship’s geographical latitude! I saw the same thing being done at dusk with stars, which they used to determine the ship’s position (lines of position).
However, I was faced with a major problem. At exactly five o’clock in the afternoon, the Boatswain would shout, “Dinner!” Immediately, the ABs would put down the tools they were using, go to the paint locker, clean their hands, and then head to the mess for dinner. I, on the other hand, had to gather up the tools, scrapers, wire brushes, paints, rollers, brushes, etc., take them to the paint locker, clean them, and only after I had finished could I go and eat. But I would end up going hungry because the cook, at exactly twenty minutes to six… bang!—would shut the galley door. I told the Clerk Chief Officer: – Captain… I don’t have enough time to eat dinner! – Why?” he asked.
– Because by the time I finish putting the tools away, the kitchen is closed! – You’re a deck boy he replied. – Well, don’t deck boys eat too? I said. – If you want to eat, you have to organize yourself so that you get to the galley while it’s still open, he answered.
I think that was the first time I ever practiced time management! In other words, before five o’clock I would go around and see what each A.B was working on and what tools he was using. That way, I managed both to get done what I was supposed to do and to make it in time for meals.
We arrived in Castro’s Cuba shortly after Khrushchev’s missile crisis and the near outbreak of nuclear war. But even so, I won’t comment on the grandeur of the Revolution that I witnessed there. We unloaded the wheat in Havana and Santiago, then sailed up the Mississippi River to New Orleans, where we loaded grain for Japan. We then passed through the Panama Canal and finally headed out into the Pacific Ocean.
Most of the crew had served on many of the company’s ships, and in the afternoons, after eating, in No. 4 cargo hold, or in the evenings in the smoking room, I would listen to various stories about seamen’s life at sea.
So, almost immediately, I caught this chronic and incurable disease that was spreading through this company—the so-called “Livaniasis”! Most of the stories were about Japan and the port of Yokohama, where we were heading. Before we reached Yokohama, I had learned quite a few Japanese words, that the Japanese were called “Anones,” about the Greek bars on Akemponotcho Street, about Louie’s Sparta, and even the names of the girls who worked there. Later, at that particular place, I saw these Japanese girls speaking flawless Greek and dancing the best hasapiko I have ever seen!
I liked Japan very much, and I traveled there on other years with ships belonging to the company until 1970. I learned not only to speak Japanese quite well, but also Katakana, one of their three writing systems, which consists of 108 characters.
We spent almost a year loading grain for Japan at the ports of Vancouver, Canada, and on the American West Coast—Portland, Oregon, Seattle, Tacoma, etc. In November, in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, I turned 18…years old!!!
And now, a little Risk Assessment: We were unloading soya beans in Nagoya when, all of a sudden, a torrential rainstorm began. “Ame, ame!” (“It’s raining, it’s raining!”) the Japanese shouted as they ran for cover under the sheltered areas. We all rushed into action, the entire deck crew, to close the open hatches. The Captain joined us as well. Starting from No. 5 and working forward, we closed them quickly, but when we reached No. 1 cargo hold, the wire that was pulling the MacGregor hatch covers snapped, leaving half the hatch open. – Quickly! Bring me a tarpaulin so we can cover it! the Captain shouted. The Able Seamen brought a tarpaulin from the nearby Cassaro (Forecastle) and covered the opening. But as the rainwater kept falling, the tarpaulin sagged downwards under the weight of the water. – Quick, Michalis, get down onto the tarpaulin and remove the water, the Captain ordered, throwing me an empty paint can.
– But Captain, if I get onto the tarpaulin, won’t it tear under my weight? I’ll fall into the hold, which is almost empty,” I dared to say. – I am the Captain, and you will do what I tell you, he screamed, striking his cap against the hatch coaming. Behind the Captain, the ship’s Chief Officer was shaking both hands from side to side, signaling “No! Fortunately, the tarpaulin gave way under the weight of the water alone, without me having to climb onto it. Just to give you an idea of what safety on ships was like back then.
In May 1963, we were informed that, unfortunately, the owner Stavros Livanos had passed away; that the ship would be taken over by his daughter Eugenia, that is, by the Niarchos company and that we would return from Japan to Greece, except for those who wished to remain under Niarchos management! Only one man stated that he wanted to stay (to give you an idea of what “Livaniasis” meant at the time).
We discharged our cargo at Kawasaki, and on June 7 we were discharged from the ship. We then went to Chiba, a city near Tokyo, where we waited for ten days for Niarchos’s tanker World Inheritance. On that ship, packed in like passenger, in other words, without wages and without being signed on, we went to Ras Tanura, in the Persian Gulf, and loaded cargo for Megara Greece, where we arrived almost 40 days after our discharge.
I will not go into any more detail, although I could write a great deal about my first voyage. Generally speaking, Atlantic Sunlight was the only ship, out of the ten Livanos vessels on which I served as a crew member and officer before becoming a Captain, where I did not have good experience. I was exploited in terms of working conditions and was treated unfairly on several occasions for no reason! I did not let this get me down, however. On the contrary, I tried to cope with the various difficult situations with determination and patience. Perhaps the Captain felt guilty because, one day before my discharge, he signed me on as an Able Seaman, and as a result I received the compensation due to an Able Seaman rather than that of a Cadet.
On the bridge, I didn’t learn much about navigation and so on. What I do remember, however, are the seamen who taught me how to make loops and eye splices in ropes and wires, how to make a gantline and various knots, how to sew tarpaulin covers with my sailmaker’s palm and needle, how to do chipping and painting, and, generally, through the things I saw and the things I was taught, I began taking my first steps in what we call seamanship!
As I mentioned before, I remember almost all of them by name! Most of them were from Chios: the Captain and the Marconi (Radio operator) from Kardamyla, the Chief Mate and the Boatswain from Lagada, the Second Officers, the other cadet with whom I became very good friends, the six A.Bs, the Engineers, the Steward, the Cook, and so on. Most of these men are no longer alive today.
I won’t tire you any further. But that is how my almost sixty-year-long, and as it turned out, fascinating, Livanos maritime journey began!
Note:
ATLANTIC SUNLIGHT, owned by Stavros G. Livanos.
- Shipyard: Sanoyasu Dockyard Co. Ltd.
- Location: Osaka, Japan
- Completed/delivered: August 1958
- Capacity: approximately 14,300 dwt
It was the fourth in the SUN series — Atlantic Sun, Atlantic Sunrise, Atlantic Sunbeam, and Atlantic Sunlight — which followed the construction of the six G-series vessels at the Nagoya Zosen shipyard: Atlantic Glory, Atlantic Gladiator, Atlantic General, Atlantic Guardian, Atlantic Governor, and Atlantic Grace.
