Frank Hughes
Job Description
Skipper
Period
1953 - 1958
Frank Hughes was born in Belfast, Ireland and was only 15 when he first went to sea. He signed on as ship’s boy with the Blue Funnel Line and traveled the Far East until the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War. For two years his ship ran the blockade between Marseilles and the Spanish ports. The cargo they were carrying was mainly food. When the war ended in Spain, Frank set off overland through Europe to return to England.
He sailed in tankers – before and during World War II. One night in 1942 in the Caribbean a torpedo ripped into the tanker and it went down in three and a half minutes. They didn’t even have time to get a boat away. When Frank went overboard he was wearing only underpants. It was pitch black and then the sharks started to attack. Of the crew of 52 only 19 survived. Frank says that all around him he could hear screams from others in the crew as the sharks got them. Hughes won the Lloyds medal that night for supporting a shipmate whose arm had been torn off by a shark. It was daylight when he and his companion were found. After shore leave Frank Hughes sat for his 2nd Mate’s certificate and joined merchant ships as 3rd officer and 2nd officer for the rest of the war. He took part in the invasion of Africa and Sicily and at Bari, Italy and had another brush with death when a nearby ammunition ship blew up. Three of the crew of Hughes’s ship was killed. After the war, Hughes served in troopships. He got his Master’s certificate in 1949 and transferred to migrant ships. Because he was away from home so long he started to look around for a place in which to settle down. He decided to bring his wife out to Australia because he couldn’t think of a nicer place to live.
For three seasons – from 1950 to 1952 Hughes was employed by the Australian Whaling Commission. He went to Albany in 1953. He skippered the original Cheynes and the Kos VII for the Cheynes Beach Whaling Company and has the distinction of being the first non-Norwegian gunner to operate in post-war Australian whaling.
Frank Hughes