Part THREE - ON BOARD SS CHUSAN

1957-1959

By Michael Brady and Ken Beard

Ken Beard's tale is one of happy days at sea and mechanical misadventure. For five years, Ken served diligently in the machinery spaces of some very famous liners of the old P&O line. Today, we pick up his story in 1957 after he had signed off from the small P&O liner Carthage. In the precious few weeks' leave he had got married, and now Ken was set to return to the sea once more for an incredible 19-month tenure aboard one of the Line's most famous and well-loved ships. Gazing up at the gleaming white hull towering over him Ken must have read the big black letters of the ship's name with relish; Chusan. 

At sea it is known that there are two kinds of ship; a 'happy' ship, where the captain oversees a content crew with justice and a good-nature, and an 'unhappy' one. Many things can make a ship unhappy - be it a tyrannical commander, miserable crew conditions or just generally low morale - but Chusan was never burdened with these issues. In fact, she was nicknamed 'THE Happy Ship'. At 24,000 GRT and about 650' long, she was one of the jewels in P&O's crown, one of a series of liners built in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War to replace all those hulls lost in the conflict and to cement P&O's legacy as the most revered Far-East operator of the era.

Stepping aboard, Ken must have been impressed by the ship's modern, comfortable furnishings. His previous charge, Carthage, was a holdover of the pre-war era and showed her age. Chusan, however, was fresh as a daisy by comparison. No more prevalent was the difference than in Ken's 'office', the boiler, engine and generator rooms found deep within the ship's belly. "What a change it was to work on a modern ship!" Ken recalled. In fact, Ken recalls quite a bit; he last set foot on the 'Happy Ship' some sixty years ago but the technical details of the mammoth liner's propulsion system are still every bit as relevant in his mind as they were when he was her Fourth Engineer;

"The boiler room was so roomy with 4 Foster Wheeler water tube boilers. 525lbs square inch at 8oo degrees super-heated temp. A bit dodgy if the steam got loose (if a flange leaked it would burn a groove in the metal and if oil happened to leak on to the main steam pipe it would catch fire.) I could stand by my desk and see all four water gauge glasses, see the sight glasses through the uptakes to see if we were making smoke, check the fuel oil pressures and temperatures."

Above: Views of Chusan’s engine rooms and machinery spaces. Images from: http://www.pandosnco.co.uk/chusan.html

Chusan's engines worked like those of hundreds of other ships of her kind developed since the early 20th century, employing turbines and a system of boilers. The naval turbine had been developed by engineer Charles Parsons in the late 1800s who had struggled to sell his idea to the navy. At that time, big ships used the tried-and-true triple or quadruple-expansion steam engines; clunky beasts standing up to four stories tall which, despite their ungainliness and inefficiency, used brute strength to power great ships across the world's oceans. Parsons developed a new engine, essentially a casing containing a series of wheels covered in fine blades, some free-spinning and some fixed. When high-pressure steam was blasted through the turbine casing the blades would spin - so in turn would the ship's propellers. Parson’s Turbine was first fitted to a small ship, appropriately named the Turbinia, and driven at speed by the inventor himself through the middle of a carefully-choreographed naval review for Queen Victoria. The navy was outraged but Turbinia was just too fast to catch; Parsons proved his point and his engines became an industry standard within 10 years.

For a detailed and highly informative look at the marine turbine, watch this 1946 short film;

By the time Chusan entered service, steam turbines had been brilliantly refined. Long-gone were the days when an engineering crew of 100 or 200 men were required to tend to the engines. Now a team of 20 men or less could oversee the turbines as they pushed ships weighing in excess of 80,000 tons through the ocean at speeds of up to 50 km/h. Chusan was dwarfed in size by transatlantic giants like Queen Mary but her specifications are certainly impressive. Despite her relatively large size and deep draught, Chusan's turbines could power her 24,000 ton bulk crashing through ocean swells at 22 knots - 41 km/h. The two turbines generated up to 42,000 shaft horsepower and powered two huge quadruple-screw manganese bronze propellers. On the far-east run she was a giant - but more than that she was modern and comfortable, ushering in a new era of customer satisfaction for a line which had suffered terribly during the War.

Carthage had proved a handful for Ken and his colleagues; years of service and countless millions of revolutions had put a strain on her machinery that required a deft hand and an engineer's instinct to keep operating. Ken would now have to get used to this new ship's peculiarities;

"The only problem was on standby, having to alter the speed on the F.D. (Forced Draft Fan, provides ideal quantity of air to the boilers for combustion) and I.D. (Induced Draft Fans, extract hot flue gasses for expelling from the funnel) fans for each boiler. Of course it was better to learn Malim Sahibs Hindustani to get the crew shutting the fires on and off - mostly on standby going in and out of port. I can still speak some of the basic words and count up to 12. The only problem with the boilers was that we could not get a perfect combustion, the nearest was a light white smoke issuing from the funnel."

Chusan featured a curious advantage in comparison to her fleet-mates and competitors, as Ken explains;

"Chusan was one of the first ships to have Denny-Brown Stabilisers fitted so in bad weather we would roll at about 5 degrees max. It was a bit frightening to be in the flat when they were working to see the metal bend when the weight of the ship came on with each roll."

Chusan’s ‘secret weapon’; Above left: Denny Brown Stabiliser fin protruding from Chusan’s hull. Right: The Stabiliser machinery. Images from; http://www.pandosnco.co.uk/chusan.html

Daily life at sea resumed its steady tempo, a comfortable routine that saw Ken allotted his 'Watch', a period of time spent in the engine rooms ensuring all was operating smoothly;"As the 4th engineer I was on the senior watch 4-8 am and 4-8 pm in the stokehold (boiler rooms)." Ken elaborated.

"After the change over at 8 am I had to shower quick, get dressed in uniform to go to the restaurant to eat breakfast with the passengers - as most meals except dinner for our watch were taken dining in the first class restaurant (note the temperature in the engine room and stokehold was very seldom below 90 degrees F and could go up to 140 degrees F in the tropics ) - then do the daily water tests in a small lab. When that was done, occasionally the 2nd Engineer would get me to take some passengers around the engine room before I could get my head down for a few hours - having to miss lunch."

Ken's accommodation was up on the ship's starboard Boat Deck, about 8 stories above the stokehold floor, although thankfully Chusan had been fitted with an elevator so that Ken and the rest of the engineers need not have worried about endlessly climbing up and down. Some of his fond memories of days at sea between watches include time spent sunbathing and playing deck tennis. Ken even remembers playing an on-shore football match against the workers of the Dunlop Rubber Co in Yokohama, Japan as organised by the ‘Flying Angel’ (Mission to Seafarers’) Chaplain.

Come night-time, there were other activities too, be it a dance or one of the Captain's cocktail parties. At functions like these, Ken and his colleagues were cautioned not to get drunk or to 'chat-up' the girls;

"I guess we played hard and drank a lot as if you did not, the heat of the engine room would be intolerable ."

Above: Ken, right, with Chusan’s engineering complement at a party. Image supplied by Ken himself.

Although not as advanced in years as some of her running mates, Chusan was still just one big machine and liable to break down on occasion. As such, Ken's time aboard her was not without incident, however minor. On one occasion, the Engine Watch opened a suction valve on the fire main pump that filled the swimming pool up with brackish bilge water - that took three days to clean the pool of oil. Another occasion caused a serious headache for Ken, when having taken over from the previous Watch he found the boilers making smoke;

"The bridge rang down and said that thick oily smoke was issuing from the funnel. The procedure was to shut one fire off at a time to see if it cleared - no luck. Next, take the Burner Bar out and, in checking it, found that it had no Atomizer in."

The red-hot Burner Bars were crucial in the ignition of fuel for the boilers' furnaces and the Atomizer's purpose was to disperse liquid fuel evenly for a more complete combustion. Ken, on closer inspection, found to his dismay that the Boiler had no Atomizers in place whatsoever;

"So much oil was pouring into the furnace floor and not igniting that it was starting to seep out of the back. We had to slow the ship down to let the oil burn off a bit before putting all the fires on again. Needless to say I had a few choice words with the Supernumerary 4th Engineer on the previous watch!"

Above: Chusan dwarfs a Junk and her elegant, modern lines are very evident.

Life at sea became a familiar, yet happy, routine and Ken remembers the adventure of it all. Although conditions in the engineering spaces were hot and uncomfortable, his free time was occupied by lunchtime ‘Rum Parties’, dinners and the occasional cocktail party. Even then, however, the engineering health of the Ship came first;

“The Engineers table was on the starboard side rear of the 1st class restaurant close to the entrance. There was a small red light on the bulkhead in case of an engine room emergency; if it started flashing we had to leave slowly so as not to frighten the passengers, then run like hell to get down below (I have been on one occasion in my mess kit in the Boiler Room).”

As noted in the last Part of Ken’s story, Chusan was a ‘Happy Ship’ and Ken remembered her as being his favourite of the ships he had served on. Even in 2019, 60 years after disembarking, Ken’s technical knowledge and capacity for memory was astonishing and gives unique insight into the day-to-day operations of a machine which is essentially a floating city block. In his words;

“The "Chusan" had 4 boilers, each one had a superheat section , I am not sure how many burner bar to each boiler but it was possibly 5 or six, around twenty or twenty four in total .There were several different sizes of atomisers that could be used in each bar depending on the revolutions required by the Bridge. We tried to keep the steam pressure at a constant 525 lbs per square inch. The burner bars were changed at the beginning of each watch and atomisers cleaned by the ‘Og Walahs’ (Ed.; Goanese engineering crew) or Fireman ready for the next watch. The Watchkeeper could stand in the middle of the boiler room and look via mirrors through the uptake sight glasses on each boiler as the crew changed bars to see if we were making smoke.

So a typical watch in the stokehold was; change bars, check pressures and temperatures, have a look around the top of the boilers. At night the 8-12 and 12-4, watches blew the soot out of the boiler tubes. This was done by high pressure steam on opening a valve at the rear of each boiler. The bridge had to be informed first to alter course to allow the smoke and soot to go over the side of the ship. That is why the decks were washed every morning at 6 am. We also carried a boilermaker; the only job he used to do was transfer oil from the side tanks to the double bottom tanks or take on oil. Sometimes the ship would take a list and we had to move the oil from one side to the other.”

Above: A myriad of dials decorates SS Arcadia’s boiler room. Chusan’s would have been very similar, if not identical. Image from; http://www.pandosnco.co.uk/engineers.html

Ken’s duties saw him largely confined to the engine room and machinery spaces of the beautiful Liner ‘Chusan’, and it seems strangely contradictory that a man would choose a career at sea and yet spend no time engaged in traditional ‘seafaring’. He got a chance to get a little more up-close-and-personal with the ocean on ‘Chusan’ when he went to earn his ‘Lifeboat Ticket’, a certificate enabling the holder to take charge of a lifeboat in the event of an emergency. Ken and some of the Junior Officers attended and the course was run by the Chief Officer.

“We had to learn all the points of the compass, positions of the stars , what not to drink, how to rig a sea anchor and how to rig and sail the lifeboat.”

This was not destined to run completely smoothly, however. With Chusan moored at Singapore, two boats were lowered; one motorised and the other, with Ken and the other ‘students’ in it, not. Ken’s boat was towed out to see by the motor boat;

“There was very little wind, but we put the mast up and set the sail. Then over the Horizon a rain storm appeared, the wind blew and we managed to use the sail and tack about a bit.”

The storm and wind picked up and a torrential downpour began to assault the two lifeboats, so it was decided that the motorboat would tow the other back to the ship. 

“The sail was lowered and it was decided we get underneath for shelter. On arrival alongside we emerged from under the sail to find that the white rig (Ed.: Uniform) we were wearing had turned red - the Sail was Red and in the rain the dye had run. This of course caused some amusement to the lads that had been watching us from the deck”

Ken, now wearing a pink-red uniform, scrambled back on board to dry off. That would be his only try at attaining the ‘Lifeboat Ticket’ because when Chusan returned to London, Ken disembarked for good to spend time with his wife and young son.

Above: Chusan on a ‘Round the World’ cruise in 1962, her bow pointed at mountains in a Norwegian fjord. Image from; https://flickr.com/photos/kiloran/albums/72157594521770511

Ken’s time aboard Chusan came to an end in June 1959 after 19 months spent aboard, but his final voyage was fittingly epic;

 “The ship did the Far East and Japan run in the winter and two week cruises out of Southampton in the summer. The last Cruise that I did on her was the ‘Round the World trip in 1959 via the far east; the first passenger ship to visit Vancouver from the east. ‘Round the world passengers were dropped off in Los Angeles and we took a lot American passengers on for a two week cruise to Hawaii. There was a bit of controversy with the American Government over the amount of time in Honolulu ending up that we were only allowed one day there and one day in Hilo.”

Ken’s tale of life at sea is continued in Part 4 of ‘On the Old P&O Line!’