Able Bodied Seaman

When I, when I went on the vessel, the first steam ship, in the Merchant Navy, I was an able seaman. Now an able-body seaman, you had to be a rigger. And the first ship that I went aboard and certainly you reported to the boatswain, he would be the deck foreman. And he knew that I was signed on as an able seaman and he took me up forward and he said there's two wire runners here, that had to be changed and spliced. He said "There's a wire there," and he said, "put an eye splice in each one of those runners and weave it off on the winches." And I said "What kind of a splice do you want in it? " "Oh," he said, "a Liverpool." That's the name of a splice in a wire. So I went ahead and I, I got the rigging up and I cut my wire and I went ahead with the Maryland spikes and I spliced, I spliced my wire, and I was at . . . see he went on he went back aft, to crew working that we were in the . . . And when he come and he looked at the second one he said "That's good enough. Now," he said "come with me and take a coil of this six thread rope." So I took a coil of the six thread rope and went up to the lifeboats and he said "Replace the grab lines around that boat." And you had to put long splices in them. So I did that, he said "Alright." He never bothered me after, because I have shown that I was an able seaman. And an able seaman, you had to be a rigger. And those days, on the ships is not like now, the containers and that. All of our cargo, there was different types of cargo, you had it in slings. And rope slings, that had to be long splices. And then you had cargo trays and you had to make cargo trays. And you had long splices and you had and short splices in them. And the seaman who boarded the ships, in those days, we had to, we had to make all of our own cargo gear, every bit of it. So that was, that's what an able seaman is on a ship.