Tag: Woodside Station

Farewell Birkenhead

I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky

In October 2022 it will be sixty years since I first went to sea.

I had eight days to pack and join my first ship, did I have everything  . . .

I had only been to Woodside station once before when I was a lot younger, and we were visiting relatives in Stafford. Most of my train travel had been from Liverpool Lime Street, so Woodside was a new experience.
The station had been opened in 1878 and thanks to the Beeching Report in 1963 the station would close in 1967.

When I arrived at the station in October 1962 it was it was busy with trains arriving and leaving all the time.

My trunk was packed with my uniform for the tropics and for a European winter, along with civilian clothes if I wished to go ashore.
Mum & Dad took me to the station, and I was glad of Dad’s help to drag my sea chest to the guard’s van. The type of sea chest that I picked was invented before the wheel!
My passport and my brand new red British Seaman’s Card, and my new blue Seaman’s Record Book and Certificate of Discharge were stowed in a safe place in my jacket pocket.
       

Must not forget my collection of International Certificates of Vaccination, which over the next few years I collected details of varies ‘jabs’ starting with HMS Conway when I was about to leave in the summer of 1962 , followed by Liverpool (five times over the following years), Dubai (twice), Singapore, New Zealand (three times), Karachi (at least once, but could be twice – a blunt needle comes to mind) and even received a jab from the doctor on the Dunera, which saved me a trip ashore.
The Company was very strict that our various vaccination records were kept up to date.

Photo thanks to Bevan Price (picture taken in 1967).
In 1962 Woodside was busy and bustling with people travelling.  

       Picture thanks to Alan Murray-Rust ([Picture taken in 1967)
The smell of steam and hot oil remains a memory of happy train journeys because the engine was a living machine unlike the current rolling stock.   

There are many pictures of Woodside Station that were taken just before the station was closed, but little had changed from when I boarded the train to Falmouth in 1962. 

Falmouth Docks Station (the only station in Falmouth at the time) picture taken in 1966 – copyright Patrick English.

A quick phone call to the agent and I was soon in a launch because Ellenga was moored in the Fal River. 

Ellenga – 37,420 dwt

Launched in 1960 and was named after a village in the Tangail district of East Bengal, which at that time was known as East Pakistan and today is Bangladesh.

I was eighteen when I stepped aboard Ellenga and I was paid the grand sum of £16-10-0 a month  (about £200 / month in today’s value).
It was hard work, (we were not paid overtime) but she was a happy ship and I began to learn Hindi as most of the crew were from India.

The book was recommended by the Company, so I purchased The Malim Sahibs Hindustani as a guide to learn Hindi. I still have this book, and even now I can remember certain words and phrases. 

Once we arrived in the Persian Gulf we carried out what was known as the ‘Mina- Aden- ferry’ – which meant that we loaded crude oil in Mina El Hammani in Kuwait and five days later we discharged the cargo at a refinery in Little Aden, which is across the bay  from Aden  (which is now part of Yemen).
Once we had completed our discharge we sailed for Kuwait and the next five days we tank cleaned.
I was one of four cadets and we were worked in pairs – six hour on six hour off – each pair of cadets had three crew members working with them. 
H&S was in the future as we manhandled large flexible hoses with a  three legged Butterworth pump on the end of the hoses to blast the oil from the sides of each tank.
Each tank was just over fifty feet deep, and we blasted sea water at three levels – we had a total of thirty three tanks, but we only used twenty seven for oil, the others were used for sea water as ballast for when we were empty.  

I am second from the left and as you see tank cleaning was a dirty job. At the end of the process for each tank one of us would climb down the fifty-foot ladder into the oil sludge at the bottom. We had a large rubber brush to brush the sludge to the pumps to maximise the amount to be sucked out of the tank. The action of brushing caused fumes to rise, and these fumes made you feel drunk so climbing the fifty foot vertical ladder could be dangerous due to everything, including the ladder, being slippery due to the oil residue. Welcome to life at sea in tankers in 1962.

The ship carried breathing apparatus, and it was available for us to wear, but in the heat of the Persian Gulf wearing it was out of the question, it was far too hot.
Plus it was heavy and trying to climb out of the oil tank via a vertical slippery ladder wearing the full gear was unacceptable.

Tank cleaning went on day and night, and at night when cleaning the forward tanks, we had to use shielded torches so as not to ruin the night vision of the those on the bridge. 

The water used to clean the tanks was pumped overboard when we were more than 100 miles off land – the oil slick followed us for days because we had to have the tanks cleaned before we arrived in Kuwait for a fresh cargo.        

I sailed in Ellenga for just under nine months and besides the Mina -Aden ferry we also carried oil to Europe, and we did do one trip in mid-winter from Kuwait to Philadelphia in the US, 28 days without touching land, after which we sailed to Venezuela for a cargo of oil for Germany.
Our destination was LEFO, but even after checking the ship’s large atlas I could not find where LEFO was, until the 2nd mate mentioned Lands’ End For Orders – in case the oil had been on sold and was not destined for Germany.
In our case we discharged in Wilhelmshaven as planned and sailed in ballast back to the Persian Gulf, tank cleaning of course.  
While I was in Ellenga I was taught how to steer, it was not as easy as it looked, but eventually I mastered how to do it correctly (my certificate below).

Not long after I had started to learn to steer the captain commented to me that as the war was over, I did not have to keep zig zagging to avoid submarines. Steering such a large vessel one gets a ‘feel’ for her, and once this happens you no longer zig zag.

During the Mina-Aden ferry we had a bit of luck – we sailed from Kuwait fully loaded so tank cleaning was not required over Christmas.

Breakfast on Christmas Day 1962, and all cadets were off duty!

Lunch on Christmas Day 1962

Dinner Christmas Day 1962
The one thing about British India Steam Nav. Co, most of the vessels in which I sailed were all good ‘feeders.’ 

It was hard work but it was interesting and after nearly nine months I paid off Ellenga at The Isle of Grain, which is at the mouth of the Thames, and I was given another rail voucher, this time to Birkenhead and sent home on leave.


Black chair Eisteddfod Birkenhead

Flag of Wales

The Eisteddfod can be traced back to Cardigan Castle in 1176, when the House of Dinefwr, which was a royal house of Wales, supported the eisteddfod.

The House of Dinefwr can be traced back to King of Gwynedd in 844. The above is the flag of Dinefwr.

The Eisteddfod had it ups and down over the centuries until the 1789 meeting which was held in Bala under new strict rules. 
Thanks to the Napoleonic wars the Eisteddfods were halted and reactivated after the Battle of Waterloo.  

Between 1819 and 1834 the Eisteddfod grew in popularity and in Denbigh where it was held in 1828 the Duke of Sussex (King George IV’s brother) attended.
At the Beaumaris Eisteddfod in 1832 Princess Victoria and her mother visited the festival.  

It wasn’t always poems and song because in 1858 the English press were ‘outraged’ and one writer in The Times wrote that it was “simply foolish interference with the natural progress of civilization and prosperity – it is a monstrous folly to encourage the Welsh in a loving fondness for their old language.”

Consider that comment appearing in a newspaper in today’s Cancel Culture world.

From the beginning the Eisteddfod had always been held in a Welsh town or city, but in 1866 it was held in Chester and twelve years later in 1878 the Eisteddfod was held in another English town, Birkenhead. The gorsedd (Welsh for Throne) was held at Birkenhead Park on Monday the 23rd of September 1878.

Above is the symbol of the Gorsedd (in Cornwall it is spelt Gorsedh)

On the following day, Tuesday the Eisteddfod began in earnest in a large wooden pavilion that had been erected close to Woodside Ferry. Inside the pavilion was a platform for the orchestra which could seat between 300- 400 people, above which was the Royal Coat of Arms surmounted by the Prince of Wales feathers. 

Something like the above 

In consideration of the locals using the Woodside area for the ferries and the new railway station that had been opened six months earlier in March 1878, the authorities re-routed all excursion trains for the festival to the older station of Monks Ferry. The distance from Monks Ferry to the pavilion was about a kilometre (or half a mile).            

Woodside Station – which was closed in 1967 

Monks Ferry Station, which was opened in 1840 and was closed as a passenger station when the Woodside Station opened in 1878. Monks Ferry remained only as a goods station and was finally closed in 1961.  

Trains from all over the British Isles carried Eisteddfod visitors to Chester to meet with excursion trains from Chester to Monks Ferry station in Birkenhead. On the second day of the Eisteddfod (Tuesday) there were seven special trains from Chester to Birkenhead with an estimated 3,400 passengers keen to visit the Eisteddfod. 

On each day of the festival the Gorsedd would meet at 9.00 am in Birkenhead Park and at 11.00 am the musical competition would begin at the pavilion at Woodside where between 6,000 to 7,000 people were packed into the pavilion and thousands of others were outside.
At that time the honoured guests were MPs, the Mayor of Birkenhead David Laird and members of the Eisteddfod committee.

It would be thirty-three years before the Eisteddfod committee would choose Birkenhead again to host the annual event and this time the Prime Minister would attend and speak.

Lloyd George in Birkenhead

1863-1945
Lloyd George was Prime Minister from 1916-1922

David Lloyd George born in Manchester of Welsh parents and his first language was Welsh. 

As Prime Minister, Lloyd George attended the Eisteddfod in Birkenhead in 1917.

The Eisteddfod was held in Birkenhead Park -the above shows the park as it is today, but the basic layout is as it was in 1847. It is the first publicly funded civic park in the world.

The Eisteddfod is a national stage to celebrate music, poetry, dance and the visual arts, which takes into account friendly competition between artists.  It is a celebration of the Welsh culture via these poets, composers, artists etc who compete.

The winning poet is award the bardic chair, which the poet keeps. 

 Three adjudicators in the chair competition agreed that a poem called Yr Arwr (‘The Hero’) was the best poem that had been submitted in the 1917 competition.
On the 6th September 1917 the poet was called upon to come and accept the chair by sitting in it – three time they called for the poet and at the third call the Archdruid let it be known that the poet, Ellis Humphrey Evans, had been killed in action, just over five weeks earlier.

Ellis Humphrey Evans had been on two weeks leave after basic training in Liverpool, and it was during this time that he wrote the poem Yr Arwr (The Hero) 
When the leave was over he left for overseas in such a hurry that he forgot the poem and re-wrote it in Flanders and signed it Fleur-de-lis, before posting it at the end of June to the Eisteddfod adjudicators.   
He was fatally wounded on the 31st July 1917 at the third battle of Ypres (which later became known as the Battle of Passchendaele).
The poet wrote under the pen name of Hedd Wyn (Blessed Peace ), which he was given by by the bard Bryfdir in 1910. 

The Bardic Chair in Birkenhead was covered with a black sheet and the 1917 Eisteddfod became know as the ‘The Eisteddfod of the Black Chair’.

Ellis Humphrey Evans
  January 1887 – July 1917

There is a memorial to “Hedd Wyn” and the Eisteddfod of 1917 in Birkenhead Park. 

I have a personal link with the National Eisteddfod because my mother was a member of the Birkenhead Welsh Choral Society, and she sang at one of the eisteddfods, but I am not sure which one.

The badge off my mother’s ‘uniform’ for the competition.

This badge was used to pin the cloth badge to her blouse.

The shield and certificates can be seen, but I am unable to read them even after ‘blowing up’ the picture. When I was younger, I am sure I was shown her medal or some commemorative item, but for the life of me I cannot find it, which isn’t surprising after moving to Australia!

My mother is front row, fourth from the left – the badge can be seen on her blouse.

Louie Harris as she was then, and later becoming Louie Woodland (in 1939).

She was born in Caernarvon in 1909 and moved to England when she was twelve. She didn’t speak English until she arrived in England.
In 1925 she would have been sixteen and the competition at that time was held in Pwllheli.
I mention this because of the cost of getting to Pwllheli from Birkenhead, very few people had cars, and there were three older sisters in the family, so money was tight. 
The distance from Birkenhead to Pwllheli is about 100 miles, which in 1925, would have taken about four hours and accommodation would have been required for the choir.

I think the above panoramic photograph was taken at the 1929 Eisteddfod which was held in Sefton Park Liverpool.
It is a ferry ride across the River Mersey from Birkenhead, and a short four-mile bus ride to Sefton Park. The closeness of Sefton Park in Liverpool would allow the contestants from Birkenhead to go home each evening. At that time my mother would have been twenty years old.

As a foot note – when I was about twelve or thirteen, I was in the school choir at Prenton Secondary School in Birkenhead – perhaps my voice at that time was thanks to Mum, and we used to sing in concerts and the occasional international competition.
One year my choir was asked to host a German choir, and my parents agreed to host a German boy, of similar age to me, to stay at our home for about a week.
It was an interesting week because he couldn’t speak English and I couldn’t speak German, and the only other language that we could use was Welsh, which was of little help.

I can remember the German boy now, Andreus was his Christian name, we wrote to each other as pen pals, but at that age writing letters was a pain, and it eventually stopped.
I wonder how his life panned out.

 

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