A brief excerpt from Too Cold for Mermaids

Over the next few weeks I scraped, scrubbed, sanded, and sweated whenever I could find the time while the old slave-driver imparted his water-wise wisdom in bits and pieces. Between tasks, he recounted tales of serving aboard the ships of the Blue Funnel Line and described his surveying of Ontario’s lakes while in the employ of the Canadian Hydrographic Service. His incredible repertoire included passing references to a boxing career in England, service as a Labour Member in the British Parliament, and hard-hat diving in the Suez Canal in the late 1950s. How closely his fantastic stories represented truth is unimportant. They were entertaining and passed the time, and, if I listened intently, a gem of seamanship could always be found hidden somewhere within his tale. The crusty old man’s eyes sparkled with excitement as he relived his adventures; so much so that just listening to him felt like giving him a gift.

One of my favourite anecdotes was Mr Markey’s description of a northward passage from South Africa. His ship, laden with bananas, was bound for England, and as ship’s carpenter, he was responsible for maintaining conditions favourable to the preservation of the cargo. That meant controlling humidity and temperatures below decks by ensuring adequate airflow. During each watch, he made his rounds of the compartments that held the stalks of fruit, opening and closing bulkhead hatches as needed.

Sometimes, when you opened an ’atch, a rush of air would ’it you from the other side. The trouble was that the bloody banana spiders would spin a web across the ’atchway. Some of ’m were the size of dinner plates. I ’ated ’em with a passion!

It wasn’t immediately obvious to me that the old merchant seaman was teaching his pupil about ingenuity and resourcefulness, but he eventually made his point.

When we put in at Sierra Leone, I went ashore and bought a plastic water-gun on the market. I filled it with ammonia, and whenever I saw one of the little bastards, I let ’m ’ave it. We were in the Bay of Biscay off the coast of France when the skipper sent a deck ’and to fetch me. I went to the bridge and ’e said, “Chippy, come wi’ me. I want to show you some’ing.”

We went below and ’e pointed out stalks of bananas covered in little black spots. “Ever seen anything like ’at before?” ’e asked.

“No Cap’n. Never,” I said.

Mr Markey’s eyes twinkled as he chuckled boisterously, clearly pleased that the ship’s captain hadn’t connected the cargo damage to his ingenious conquest of the repulsive spiders.