Abstract | Attempted piracy in the River Blackwater. One ship, the ST GEORGE, was owned by the Goulandris brothers, one brother in command. The other brother wanted to get rid of him as he considered him too old, but this was not considered as a legitimate grievance by Captain Goulandris. His brother was quite friendly towards
him when the ST GEORGE was laid up in the Blackwater, at the same time tried to get
rid of him by getting some fishermen from Tollesbury to board the ship and forcibly
remove him, but somebody gave the game away. When they arrived in the dark to do the job the Captain was waiting for them with a gun and two gallons of petrol and
they quickly disappeared into the darkness of the night.
The Captain knew who they were and when he came ashore and met them in the
Club he approached calmly and tolerantly and said "Never do that again or you burn". He was very kind to his men as they were of his nationality also very
amusing. He would come into the Club and before he had hardly got his head in the
door would say "missus I very hungry, what you got to eat?" Whatever he was offered
he always wanted pork chops and big white beans. On another occasion after he had
made a journey to London, he had to stay ashore as the duty boat left
early. We could not put him up and he had to get a bed in the village. He was
banging on the back door at about 6 o'clock in the morning saying "missus let me
in I bloody cold all night". One week he seemed to only eat nuts and apparently
it was the Greek Holy week he journeyed to Colchester and returned with enormous
parcels of food saying "Christ he rise and tomorrow we feast". He had courage and
determination and was the first ship to leave with a cargo of wood for Russia
during that depression, the piracy didn't disrupt International Relations.
Notes
This probably relates to ST GEORGE that was laid up in River December 1957 to May 1958.
See Laid up ships for more details.
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