Pacific adventure before the mast was not plain sailing
Register for free to read more of the latest local news. It's easy and will only take a moment.
Michael Gutteridge and his wife Aya enjoying the Japanese tea ceremony.
THINK of the term cabin-boy your mind is likely to hark back to the romantic but harsh days of sail.
However, the cabin-boy was also a 20th century phenomenon as Michael Guttridge demonstrates in his first published novel.
Despite its title, "The True Adventures of a Cabin-Boy", is a novel, but based very closely on Michael’s real-life adventures sailing across the Pacific in the early 1960s.
Michael, who later made a transition from sailing to social work, has lived in Inverness since 1984, but there is a hint of more exotic travels in the garden behind his Crown guest house. He and Japanese wife Aya have built their own tea pavilion where Aya can conduct the Japanese tea ceremony — the couple met when Michael’s eldest daughter married Aya’s nephew.
Perhaps it was moving from Britain to Canada that gave Michael a desire to travel.
Born in London, but brought up in Gosport, at the age of 11 Michael moved with his family to a remote area of north Saskatchewan in Canada.
"The phrase ‘culture-shock’ wasn’t invented then, but that’s what it was," Michael said.
"My brother and I were half wild. We’d just open the door and start exploring the great Canadian wilderness.
"Then we moved to British Columbia. I couldn’t say I felt nostalgic for Britain, but I didn’t really settle in a Canadian high school."
It was after high school that Michael decided to go to sea.
Though he signed on in Canada, the ship was a British grain carrier based out of Hartlepool and with an English crew.
"My official title was catering boy, but everyone called you the cabin boy," Michael explained.
"It was a big ship, but not particularly well maintained and not particularly modern, even at that time."
As well as China, Michael sailed to Australia, Singapore, Japan and Hong Kong, but most of his time was spent at sea with as much as three weeks between landfalls.
"Three weeks certainly feels like a long time at sea," he said.
"There were no telephones on ship. The crew had no way of communicating with home.
"There were no TV or DVDs to entertain the crew and the radio didn’t work very well. The food was dreadful too, what you’d expect on a British freighter where the cooks had two weeks training before they went to sea and that was all about amounts, not actually how to make the food taste any good."
Poor management also meant the crew rarely knew how long the voyage would take.
"Either the ship’s officers didn’t think the crew were important enough to inform, or they didn’t know themselves," Michael added.
"The ship had also been away from Britain a long time and the crew had been promised they would be back for Christmas.
"Initially we were supposed to be sailing from Vancouver to China and back again, but in China we were told we were going to Australia. Then we got to Australia and they told us we were going back to China."
Inevitably these frustrations had an impact on the crew, who were still bitter about being on the losing side of a sometimes violent seaman’s strike in the UK.
"There was a lot of ill feeling," Michael said.
Which was particularly bad news for Michael as he admits that the cabin boys — and especially the newest of them — was the lowest in the ship’s pecking order.
"They’d do anything they could to show up my green-ness," he said.
Nor could he expect any support from the officers.
"Some of them did feel sorry for me, but that didn’t help because that made you an object of suspicion with the crew."
Along with the personal frictions, the ship also faced real dangers, including a strength five typhoon made doubly worrying by their cargo. Grain expands when wet and there were fears that the ship’s aging hull might not be able to take the strain if water entered the hull.
"But it came to an end and it was an experience," Michael said.
"I was only at sea six or seven months, but it was a very intense rite of passage for a 17-year-old boy."
The experience also introduced him to parts of the world few teenagers would have had the opportunity to visit in the early 1960s.
Japan was still something of a mystery to most westerners and not yet the technological power house it was to become.
However, the most alien place was China. Exacerbated by Chairman Mao’s economic policies, the country was in the grip of what became known as the Great Chinese Famine, resulting in at least 15 million deaths, though the Chinese attempted to hide the extent of the tragedy from the world, even to the extent of exporting grain to the Soviet Union.
"I saw things in China that some people might think were disturbing," Michael said.
"China was very primitive in some of the parts that I saw. Conditions in the port were terrible to. All the work was done by human labour. The authorities showed pure indifference to humanity. The dock labourers were working all day in the sun being continually harangued by loudspeakers telling them to work hard for the greater glory of socialist China."
After his time at sea, Michael returned to Britain with the idea of completing his further education there, but in the end returned to Canada to go to university in British Columbia.
There he became involved in acting, but after marrying and starting a family, began looking for more secure employment and became involved in social work.
However, with a long-term ambition to be a writer — he admits his admiration for seaman-turned-novelist Joseph Conrad may have influenced his decision to go to sea — the family relocated to the Algarve for a brief period before moving to Britain when he grew dissatisfied with what he was producing.
Following a return to social work in Angus, he made another attempt to pursue his writing career with a move to a long abandoned farmhouse on the edge of moorland, a 14-year stay that saw the birth of five more children to join his Canadian born daughter.
"Because we were living in a farmhouse with no running water and I had to work on the land, I actually had less time for writing than I would have had with a normal job," he added.
"I realised that we couldn’t carry on like this. The children were wanting things and we were living hand to mouth."
However, a book of short stories written at that time were later published in Canada. There has also been interest in producing some of Michael’s work for radio.
Michael updated his Canadian qualifications with a degree at Aberdeen University and until his retirement was a social worker with Highland Council.
Which leaves him with more time to write. "I wouldn’t want to think that all my writing is going to be based on my time at sea," he cautioned.
"The True Adventures of a Cabin-Boy" by M. J. Guttridge, is published by Grosvenor House Publishing and available at Waterstone’s bookshop, Inverness, and via Amazon.
