It was Fifty Years Ago Today

It was Fifty Years Ago Today.........

If you will please excuse a contribution from an expatriate Audlemite who dwells in nostalgia I would like to share with you a story about a memory of my formative years and Beatle music.

It was 1967 when I joined a ship in Sunderland for what was to become one of the most bizarre voyages of my ten years in the Merchant Navy.
I was twenty years of age and was the junior of two Third Mates on the MV Tekoa, a brand new freezer ship run by The New Zealand Shipping Company.

The charter that we were to undertake was quite exceptional......sail to Georges Bank...the most westward of the great Atlantic fishing banks and anchor there for six weeks. During that time, one by one, stern trawlers each one weighing two and a half thousand ton would pull up alongside us and discharge their cargo of herrings. filleted and frozen, into our cavernous holds.

The complication was that we were under charter to the East German Government and therefore were dealing with Communists at a time when the Iron Curtain was firmly drawn!

The people that we encountered, however, didn't fit with the stereotype. For example we had a few of the fishing fleet crew billeted on our ship and as I was on the midnight to four anchor watch some of these chaps visited the bridge. I particularly remember the fleet Doctor who would whisper to me his hatred of the regime whilst animatedly pretending he was passing the time of day. This and other encounters reinforced my opinion of the dreadful oppressed lives that they lived.

Anyway, after we had loaded 2,500tons of frozen fish we prepared to leave for Rostock which was to be our port of unloading.

However we were told before leaving that we were to have a passenger back to that port. This was the Commissar of the fleet who was being repatriated to East Germany.

Now....as far as us young free and English lads knew... this guy was a left-wing, politically biased nasty piece of work dedicated to destroying fun and happiness and so we decided, in our wisdom, to give him a hard time for the voyage home. He came aboard and off we set across the Atlantic, but this is where our prejudices started to unravel.

First night at sea he came into our bar with his guitar and asked for a pint. Duly served he asked what music we had. Grudgingly we put our most daring and latest LP on.... Sergeant Pepper. He loved it!

During the course of the next few days he became a friend to each of us. All centered around our music and in particular Sergeant Pepper's Lonley Hearts Club Band. He learned to play and sing each track and it obviously meant a lot to him.

Just before reaching Rostock he asked if we would be prepared to smuggle him and his family back to the UK. This was never going to be possible but what a massive leap from Communist enforcer to potential defector.

When he left the ship, in among many simple presents that we gave this really nice guy, was a Sergeant Pepper LP hidden in a classical music sleeve.

One of the most poignant sights that I can ever remember was sailing from this port and, as we passed the pier at the entrance was our "hated" Commissar and his wife and two small children standing by the lighthouse waving to us.

I often wonder what happened to him but pray the with The Beatles help he survived the tyranny that he found himself in.

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