FALKLANDS MEMOIRS

EARLY DAYS

Late October 1983

I arrived in Stanley on 22nd October 1983 via VC10 to Ascension Island, then twelve hours on a Hercules. The Hercules flight was throbbingly noisy and we were given ear plugs. It was nearly dark and there was military baggage stacked up to the roof right next to our knees. The only way to relax was to sprawl sideways over and under your next door neighbour. Some climbed the baggage and slept on top.

The contractor's manager also came down on the plane. In the evening he fell against the rough pebbledash side of a portakabin. Of course rumours said he was drunk and when he visited the Governor the next day he didn't look too good. Rumours also said that he was involved in a scuffle, but I'll give him the benefit of the doubt on that one.

When I saw him the next day he had a badly grazed chin and just said he had fallen over. He seemed an difficult character as the treatment of his secretary later showed.

The mv England had come down to Stanley with about eighty workers. It seems LMA (Laing/Mowlem/ARC the contractors) got off to a bad start in another way too. A party had been organised on the England and an invitation was addressed to the Head Postmaster - Sir Rex Hunt and the general for whom the airport was being built were not invited. The party was quiety abandoned.

The workers had been on board for three weeks and were so bored they hadn't even got the energy to play cards. Most only got up for meals and the daily hard-porn video, one of only a few constantly repeated. They were pissed off because they were expecting their first mail for three weeks but it was a weekend so they didn't get any. They weren't allowed ashore either. The only person who was taken ashore was a head-banger taken to hospital.

I boarded the ship and we sailed round to Mare Harbour, just outside East Cove where the port was to be built, and anchored off-shore.

The only signs of human activity were a small jetty made out of packing crates and a bogged-in tractor. The surveyors had come overland a year earlier to live at a shepherd's cottage called Mount Pleasant House, then they left for the winter and returned a few weeks before we arrived. The tractor must have been driven overland too.

The Merchant Providence with the vehicles, materials and equipment had broken down and been repaired in the Canary Islands I think. It was late and arrived a few days after us. The only way ashore was by lifeboat until the Merchant Providence arrived with a small Beaver workboat. We moved in to East Cove and anchored near the Merchant Providence.

The first job was to build anchorages so that the Merchant Providence could be moored and used as a jetty itself. Other ships were to moor alongside and lorries were to drive up a bridge and over the deck to get cargo from the visiting ship. But all that was some way in the future.

The Merchant Providence unloaded sections of a pontoon with its derrick and this was assembled and used to transfer the first excavator and bulldozer to shore at a fairly flat beach. The next job was to build anchorages for the struts to fix the ship to the shore. These were cast with beach gravel, salt water and cement.

Sometimes when a small group of workers was ashore the wind got up and it was too risky to use the workboat. I was caught for a few hours once but on some occasions the workers had to be abandoned overnight. There was one portakabin for shelter by that time, but no other building, water, food, etc.

While I was living on board the England it was very civilised. The ship was an old Cunard north sea ferry. Unfortunately it was very light and dragged its anchors in high wind. There were two at the bow but even so the ship drifted across the cove. Several times the captain managed to get the anchor chains untwisted and put out into Mare Harbour to ride out a storm, leaving some people ashore.

On some occasions it was too rough just to float about so the captain ran up and down Choiseul Sound endlessly, passing Centre Island at regular intervals. Once the wind was force ten gusting force eleven. The wind is very steady though when it's really strong. We went right round to Fort William harbour beyond Stanley once to ride out a storm.

I was getting my sea legs gradually, though sometimes I could only manage the first course at meals. Even though the plates were in a stack which popped up on a spring from the counter, sometimes they still crashed everywhere. At other times it was blissfully calm and sunny.

Lots of rubbish was being thrown overboard. The crew were even going to the trouble of banging holes in the bottoms of tin cans to make them sink, because they often just bobbed about otherwise. On one occasion I saw hundreds of black plastic rubbish bags bobbing about towards the shore on mill-pond calm water in East Cove.

Even the construction workers said it was f.....g disgraceful. After everyone, senior and junior, had complained, the crew burnt rubbish in oil drums on the rear deck where there were two huge notices banning smoking, petrol filling and open fires. The workers had been prevented from having a barbecue there at the equator so they were not amused. Bottles and the like were still thrown over.

Some surveyors had been living at Mount Pleasant House which was just west of the proposed runway five miles north of East Cove. They were living in primitive conditions for weeks before we arrived. The old army generator often didn't work so they had being going over rough grass tracks to Fitzroy about twelve miles away for showers. One or two people went up there to join them.

They all now wanted to have showers, meals and visit the bar on the England because it was closer but the LMA manager wouldn't let them. I suppose it may have been because the workboat was extremely busy and weather conditions were unpredictable. It was still hard on them, though. Brian M, a section leader, kept making excuses saying that he didn't know what the plans were.

Our post was delivered by a small sea plane.

The England needed to leave to pick up the next lot of workers from Cape Town, but LMA were warned that the Merchant Providence was still a ship until moored so should not contain more than the specified number of occupants. This delayed the departure of the England.

When the Merchant Providence was attached to the shore with struts, arrangements were made to get us all off into various places. Bunks for seventy two were built in a hold of the Merchant Providence, an initial portakabin pioneer camp for thirty was set up on the shore at the west end near the temporary jetty where the flexifloat beached and a few of us were sent up to Mount Pleasant House.

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