The motor vessel Antigone was once typical of literally hundreds of ships flying the red ensign and carrying cargoes worldwide on behalf of British shipping interests, making up the back-bone of what was then called ‘the Merchant Navy’. They were known as cargo-liners and ran scheduled services, combining the ability to carry almost anything with limited passenger accommodation. They and the infrastructure supporting them employed large numbers of people. This ‘fourth service’ had saved Great Britain from defeat in the Second World War, remained proud of its traditions and believed in its future. To those of us who served in it, it was inconceivable that Britain should ever be without a merchant fleet flying its national flag and providing work for its seafarers.
Within a generation the whole thing had vanished, undercut by third world merchant fleets, dispossessed by interests to whom the flags of convenience yielded more profit and ignored by government and public alike. Ships like the Antigone, capable of loading and discharging anywhere in the world where there was water deep enough for them to float, were also overtaken by the march of technology: cheap air travel accounted for the passenger trade and ultimately the work of twelve conventional cargo-liners could be undertaken by a single huge container ship operating from special terminals.
In this book I have tried to encapsulate this way of life which vanished with the scrapping of Antigone and her sisters. As a novel it is firmly based on reality, reflecting my own experiences along with those of my friends and shipmates; as a record of the past, I have added or embroidered little, having merely linked individual and disconnected events into a cohesive yarn.
© Richard Woodman
Harwich, 1997