Untitled Document

MV. “Shota Rustaveli” (Palma)

Pre-Glasnost Days

MV. “Saga Rose”

(Lisbon)

MV. “Funchal”

(Mid Atlantic)

“Shota

Rustaveli”

The first few cruise ships I worked on all belonged to the "Black Sea Shipping" company based in Odessa Ukraine. This was in the days before glasnost. These were very interesting ships yes they were bugged. It was quite good fun knowing this and using this to our advantage when well away from the ship with other western crew (if there were any western crew) we would make up little stories for the dinner table and watch the reaction. Great fun or go to the cabin and do the same sort of thing. So much of life on board was interesting 2 and 2 did not make four in them days. One day I was called out to a two-man ship where the number two had been airlifted to hospital on joining the ship in Germany the number 1 was huffing and puffing about getting off. A few days later we docked in Lerwick Scotland and he left. I walked to the phone with him to phone the office. On my return to the ship the main question repeated by many of the crew was how long will he serve in prison for jumping of the ship.

MV. “Kazachstan”

(Magdalena Bay Spitsbergen)

Mv. “Taras Shevchenko” Pre-Glasnost Days

(Aden, Hong Kong, Moorea Nr. Tahiti)

On joining another ship, at the top on the gangway a crew member started asking about my number two from a previous ship. These questions became very deep so I asked where had we met before. The answer was we had not but Urie the tass officer from the other ship, and he had desks next to each other in Moscow.

One day we docked in Yokohama (Japan) the ship arrived with two tass officers and left with two different officers with the same names. I believe this often happened.

It is said that these ships had three roles for the Soviets: collecting hard currency, spying, and also a way of keeping their tank transports busy as they all had car decks often used as the disco or for storage.

MV. “Cunard Caronia”

(Transiting The Panama Canal)

MV. “Arion”

(Santotini Greece)

MV. “Silja Symphony”

(Helsinki)

MV. Silja Serenade

(Stockholm)

These were the good old days where you did your work as a photographers and that was that but steadily this has become the very reverse with shipping lines thinking of concessions as a form of free labour. To the point where there are so many jobs to do for the ship without payment that it is often hard to do your own job. And very difficult to go ashore altogether With the very low pay I often wonder why anyone now goes to sea as photographers. But that is another story

Diana In Dry Dock

(Nr. Helsinki)

MV. “Back Prince”

(Agadir Morocco)

Lifeboat Drill

On An Unknown Soviet Ship

MV. “Braemar”

(Norway)

Spitsbergen

I met Diana on a cruise ferry, called The ”Silja Symphony" each night we would change from Helsinki to Stockholm or the other way round. We then worked on a ship called the “Black Prince” before we returned to the "Symphony"s sister ship "Silja Seranade" later we returned back to the “Black Prince” again. followed by a couple of more ships before leaving the sea for good. After that we worked on a Haven site on the south coast. Followed by two seasons on a Pontin’s site before we started our business.