Wellpark rescue painting

A painting of the rescue by A. Cumming of Lenzie, Scotland. As someone who was there I am amazed at how accurately the artist (who was not there) portrayed the scene. The following is the story of this scene:

PART 1:

My mind drifted for a moment, drawn to the glass of ice cold water sat on my desk. The water tilted within the glass and then shuddered as the ship around it rolled on the wave and vibrated to the cavitation of the propeller. I glanced towards the black porthole. I had tightened the dogs on it earlier when the roll of the ship coincided with a high wave and momentarily our cabin view looked underwater, down into the ocean. I was a little weary. With the warm air and physical nature of our work I knew I should get some sleep before my duty watch started on the ship’s navigation bridge at midnight.

But I had to finish my Correspondence course. As only a second trip deck cadet, training as a Navigation Officer, I was almost the lowest of the low, and it was important my study at sea was completed on time. Our ship, “Wellpark”, was only three days from arrival in Kaohsiung in Taiwan and my work would have to be posted back to Nautical College in Glasgow on the other side of the world for marking. As luck would have it, we had speeded up a few days earlier from our normal cruising speed to our maximum of 15 knots, so that the ship could meet its dry-dock slot in Korea and still connect into a lucrative string of cargo charters thereafter. Dammit: I had even less time to finish my studies!

I could have excused myself. As I had just written in a letter to my mother it had already been a very eventful trip, a real experience for a young man keen to see the world. The journey itself from my home in the extreme north of Scotland to the south of Argentina had involved no less than seven separate flights over three days. And the weeks at sea crossing the lower latitudes of the South Atlantic, watching the albatross glide for days, before we moved into the warmer Indian Ocean and relaxed in its sunshine, had made it seem more like a cruise. After the mountainous waves we endured around South Africa we had time for fun after work, playing games on deck and organising our Crossing the Line Ceremony. Later we had passed through the Sunda Straits, passing tropical islands on both sides. Here we watched brightly coloured sailing boats dart between the islands, flying fish, and plumes of smoke erupt from a huge volcano. We were a happy ship and we were on a journey that had now taken us into the South China Sea.

Read the full story here