eadphones.

"I must explain to you that it was no easy matter for a Russian
seaman to serve on a vessel which visited foreign ports. First one
had to go through the Communist Party sieve and then he was told that
if he jumped ship his family would suffer for it.

"Anyway, he bought me a lovely pair of Telefunken headphones when
the ship berthed at Constantinople (Istanbul) which I have to this
day. But not on his first trip, when he was not allowed to go ashore.
And it was not the captain who decided who could go ashore. A trusted
member of the Party would pick out a group of seamen who could land
but they had to stay together the whole time.

"I never managed to go abroad. At the Club I had obtained a morse
test certificate for 40 letters a minute (8 wpm) in Latin characters
and 90 letters (18 wpm) in the Cyrillic alphabet (Russian). To go
abroad one had to up-grade to 80 Latin and 120 Cyrillic letters. (16
& 24 wpm). I was put on a small coastal ice-breaker which cleared the
river estuaries in the Black Sea.

"The Black Sea is one of the most treacherous inland seas in the
world. During the winter its northern shores are frozen whereas the
coast of Asia Minor keeps the southern shores relatively warm by
comparison. This results in gale force winds and rough seas. Waves
follow each other very closely as opposed to the long swell one gets
in the Pacific. Ships have to leave port to avoid crashing into each
other.

"I was about 18 when I first went to sea as a cadet W/T operator.
One day when we came out of an estuary the sea was so rough that the
captain decided to turn back. As we turned to starboard we noticed an
American freighter behind us heavily laden with wheat and very low
down in the water. To our horror it was caught between the crests of
two enormous waves and broke in two roughly amidships. Although we
were only about half a mile away the freighter sank before we could
get to it. We saw a few survivors in the water, but it would have
been impossible to put a boat into that treacherous sea. Apart from
which a man cannot survive many minutes in a water temperature just
above freezing. It was all over in a flash and we returned to Odessa
in deep shock.

"Odessa used to have four harbours. The callsign of the W/T
station was EU5KAO. I remember it very well because it was my job to
take the weather forecasts for shipping which it transmitted
regularly."

Takis