[CW] Buoys and Gulls — by Olive Roeckner /VE7ERA SOWP 2891V

[D.J.J. Ring, Jr.]

[image: bandg.png]
Buoys and Gulls — by Olive Roeckner /VE7ERA SOWP 2891V
From:

The World Wireless Beacon
Society of Wireless Pioneers (http://sowp.org)
Volume 1, Number 1
March 1989

Buoys and Gulls — by Olive Roeckner /VE7ERA SOWP 2891V

From:

The World Wireless Beacon
Society of Wireless Pioneers (http://sowp.org)
Volume 1, Number 1
March 1989

SOWP is truly a global society as our new publication's name, World
Wireless Beacon, would indicate. Total count of 'member' countries,
according to our last directory, was 39. It could be higher now. In future
issues it would be great if we could visit with our fellow brasspounders
from as many of these nations as possible.

Our port of call this trip, is in Scandinavia via, Köping, Sweden – home of
Birgitta Gustaffson, SOWP 3854-M, former deep sea radio operator and at
present a scribe in her own right. Birgitta responded quickly with ready
agreement, to my request for background material and a few reminiscences.
It was nice hearing from another YL,'' she wrote. "I was very happy to be
reminded of the old days when I pounded the key in ships. I'll be pleased
to make a contribution by writing of my seagoing experiences, but I'm aware
of being a lengthy storyteller. Her solution was to write a short article
for this newsletter. with a longer, more detailed one for a future Sparks –
Journal. Birgitta's full time journalistic chores keep her occupied, but
regardless of a very full schedule, she and OM Thorsten, retired
harbourmaster of Köping, try to make yearly vacation trips to places they
once visited by ship. Then we mostly saw only the ports," muses Birgitta,
“now we can travel to the interior and look for those castles in Spain:
Birgitta has recently begun research on a writing project involving her
first love – the sea, and wireless. This will undoubtedly consume much of
her time, but we're pleased that she was able to send us the following
'abbreviated' version of her life as a Sparks in the Swedish merchant
marine: When I was three, I made up my mind - I'd become a sea captain when
I grew up! When I was 17, I was sent to sea to get those whims out of my
head. I signed on as a second cook/messgirl in an old steamboat in the
Scandinavia-England trade, where I cleaned messy pots and fought with the
coal-heated stove for two months during my school holidays. It didn't cure
my longing for the sea, but I found out that working in the galley was not
for me. But what was? This was in the early '50s; I was a female and born
20 years too early to be allowed to sign on as a deckhand and start making
my way up to the bridge. So I went back to school. Then, a couple of years
later, I heard a radio interview with the first Swedish YL at sea. Eureka!
This was the answer! We were five girls out of 24 students in training
school. Four of us went 10 sea for longer or shorter periods: the fifth
joined 1he Foreign Service, where she is still working 1n the radio
department. but not with Morse, I guess. We had only one year of training,
quite insufficient, and I never got further on the technical side than to
change valves and fuses. Many lessons were spent on book-keeping, as the
ROs in Swedish ships do the accountancy of wages and most of the other desk
work on board. After passing our exams, we were kicked out into the world
with full responsibility for a ship's radio station: No apprentice time
with an experienced RO. Those were the days when crystal-controlled
equipment had just taken over. But my first ship1 the M/S DAHLIA. had the
only 'non-crystalized' transmitter left in the Swedish merchant navy. I had
no idea how to operate it. My predecessor had gone on sick leave and my
ship sailed for the Mediterranean a couple of hours after I'd come aboard.
Out we headed into the rough seas. I got the station started, but couldn't
raise enough antenna power to send my QTO. I had to report my failure to
the skipper. He. a very kind man, took one look at my green face and asked
if the emergency transmitter worked. When I stammered, "Yes, sir;· he told
me to go to bed. I solved my problems with the DAHLIA's transmitter later,
but we never made friends. I stayed on the Med. trade for a couple of years
in the DAHLIA and her sister ship, the INDUSTRIA. A round trip took four to
six weeks with stops in a lot of nice ports - and some not so nice, like
Algiers where their liberation war was underway. My quarters offered no
luxury beyond a washstand. The cabin was located in a different deckhouse
than the bridge and the radio room. I had to go down one outside ladder,
cross an open deck and climb two more ladders to get up to the station. As
a consequence, mine was never the first station on the air when the alarm
sounded, as it did now and then in the North Sea and the Channel. My cabin
door opened out onto the deck and, during wintertime in northern waters.
the deck crew sometimes had to clear away the snow or ice made by the
washing seas in order to get me out in the morning. I met my
'husband-to-be' in those ships. He was Second Mate in the DAHLIA and later
became First Mate in the INDUSTRIA. When he advanced to relieving skipper,
he had to start in the company's smaller ships without a radio operator. I
changed to another shipping company then in order to see some more of the
world. From 1958 to 1959, I sailed in the M/S COOLANGATTA, a reefer of 3200
deadweight tons, half the year on a worldwide charter. She must have been
uneconomic, always sailing in ballast when outward bound. When empty, she
rolled something awful! But she was clean and beautiful, my dreamboat on a
dream trade. I always loved those weeks in the tropic waters when we were
just a spot on a wide open sea. After that year in the COOLANGATTA, I only
took short trips in different ships, alternating with sailing with my
husband as the 'Skipper's wife'. Then in 1961, he got a job ashore and we
started to raise a family. We now have two grown up children and I work as
a journalist at the local newspaper. In the long perspective, my seagoing
years seem like a pleasant dream. Of course, I must have been unhappy now
and then; I always had to go through some days of seasickness in every new
ship. I must have been lonely, too; the people around me couldn't always
have been nice. But you have a tendency to forget the unpleasant things. I
do remember the good comradeship, the kind fuss around me, the care. When I
arrived in the DAHLIA, I was the first YL in the company and I was treated
like a mascot on board. The skipper offered me his bathroom, the chief
steward fed me candies and the engineers switched seats in the mess room so
I didn't have to push my way past them to get to the RO's seat. Well, I got
older and tougher. I wasn't spared the rough times but I had a good start.
And if life now and then seems too filled with routines, I stop and think -
I have those five years at sea when life was an adventure.  No one can take
that away from me.
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