POLAR BEARS & BEE-KEEPING OUTFITS.

In July 1970 I joined Offshore Marine Ltd. part of Cunard and was sent to Mulgrave, Nova Scotia, to take over the “Island Shore” as Relief Master and other Tug-Supply Vessels based on that port in the Canso Strait. I was appointed with Cunard’s intention for me to take over as Fleet Captain and Tow Master. There were two semi-submersible oil-rigs chartered by Shell Canada looking for oil and gas off Nova Scotia.

After Christmas leave I returned to take over as Fleet Captain & Tow Master. Tina and the boys joined me later and we had an apartment in Port Hawkesbury, Cape Breton Island, and then bought a mobile home and set up home in the little lobster fishing port of Havre Boucher on mainland Nova Scotia. Lots of stories and oh yes Tina taught me to drive!

This story takes up two of the odd challenges that I faced in the early days of being Fleet Manager [and there were many, I can assure you.]

The Fleet consisted of 5 British ships based upon Nova Scotia [all owned by Cunard], 2 smaller French vessels [owned by Feronia, France] based upon Prince Edward Island, and 2 German ships [owned by Hansa VTG, Hamburg] based upon Churchill in Hudson Bay. All of these vessels were supporting oil-rigs and belonged to a European Consortium called OSA. The ships all had good captains, deep-sea masters like me, but did encounter problems that required my particular management support.

One day I received a call from one of the German Captains called Hans, a good bloke, who had two major problems. The first problem was that he had a polar bear on board, yes, you are reading correctly – a polar bear. Now the after-deck of tugs etc have very little freeboard [height of deck above water] and since Canada correctly prevents rubbish being dumped in the sea, the rig had lowered its waste bins to the German ship to take ashore. The ship became slow moving in ice and a large polar bear [they are very very big!] clambered on board to eat all the goodies in the bin. All bears are cantankerous and polar bears are top of the heap in size and anger. Hans was not impressed! And the crew were of a similar thought. It was finally resolved with the help of Wildlife Canada but my German colleagues were very cautious thereafter.

The second problem for the Germans was black-flies and mosquitoes. The Arctic and Sub-Arctic are absolutely crammed with these insects to the extent that you can hardly breathe without inhaling a mouth full of the creatures in late Spring and Summer. It is unbelievable and makes work very difficult. A call to my head office in Great Yarmouth solved this, I spoke to Capt Dennis Watson, a former RN officer, great guy – solution ? He sent out bee-keeping outfits by courier – and that worked a treat.

Those were the days when we were doing novel things that made life very interesting.

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