At seven-thirty one bright September morning in 1960 I left home to join the SHELL STEELMAKER at Monk Meadow Dock, Gloucester. Walking down the quay wall I heard the beat of engines, then I saw her, propeller turning, a spring rope holding her to the wall. The skipper, Bill Screech, shouted to me, “Come on lad, we'll miss the first lock at Sharpness”.
Read how a 16 year lad, straight from school, enters a mans world by working on an oil tanker on the Severn.
Taken from notes of 1970. Rewritten in 1994 and published in Sea Breezes in 1998/99.
