Peter William Kerr
Job Description
Mate, 1st Mate
Period
1976 - 1978
In late 1976 on board the Cheynes II, Peter Kerr as second mate and Paddy Hart first mate were working the gun deck and one of the crew tied the fuse back on the gun which is a NO NO and we hit a wave that jarred the harpoon which in turn pulled the fuse (3 second fuse). Someone yelled “get off the deck quick” so we all jumped down onto the main deck and hid behind the hatch – but not Paddy Hart – he calmly turned the gun to sea and stood behind it, the head went off with a bang, shrapnel went everywhere. It blew holes in the gun deck. We all looked around to make sure no one was hurt and here was Paddy standing behind the gun, timber broken all around him and stating that the thing that saved him was his Irish training.
"It was a dangerous job but as mate you were required to fill all the shells and make up the gun powder for the heads on the way out in the mornings and you would get one crew member to help, but this one particular morning doing the gun powder I turned to see the crew member light up a smoke. Well,did I s*** myself!!! He was going to blow us all up. I quickly informed him what he could do to us all and he quickly put it out, so it was full of surprises."
You only have to look at the records to see that Kase Van der Gaag was a top skipper. He picked the right crew to back him up, even to the point that his ship must catch the most, so in turn you tow the less in so that you get home sooner, but it never worked out that way as the spy in the sky, Mick Walters, would change it around and make you pick up the last few we shot.
There was the time where the skipper let me bring the vessel to the wharf (my first) and I asked for full astern and somehow they hit dead centre on the shaft and it takes about ten seconds to get right then go astern. Well – I am panicking now – the wharf’s only about 8 seconds away and we are doing about 4kts. 300 tons of vessel is about to go straight into the wharf. Well the engineers got it done in record time. We got full astern with extra power and managed to stop about 10 feet from the jetty. My job wasn’t looking too good for a while – there are all sorts of things going through my mind. Thanks to the engineers we were saved from all that paper work.
Peter William Kerr