# Where are you, Dirty Mike?



## Cpt Dick Brooks (May 13, 2013)

I first met Dirty Mike in the Member's Bar of the R.S.A. in Apia, in Western Samoa. His real name was Michael Matthews, a Kiwi, in his mid forties. He'd been bumming around the South Seas for a dozen years, ending up in Apia nine years before and marrying a local girl. 
The Minister of Police, Laupepa Malietoa, told me to steer clear of him as he was a wrong' un, spending more time in his jail than out of it.
"Don't get involved in any of his scams," he'd told me. "and take no part of any of his business deals."
Saying this, he arranged a contract for my ship with Vainu'u, the manager of Mobil Oil, to service the anchor chains and buoys on the oil-tanker moorings out in the harbour, and the mile-long undersea pipeline to the shore. I gave him the position as mate on board my ship for the operation, spread out over the next year.
Nearing the end of my contract, he asked me if the offer was still open for him to join my crew when I left Western Samoa, as the noose was beginning to tighten over a shooting incident, and he was looking at some serious jail time. He waited out at sea for me, five miles from the harbour on the leads, in his Arlia fishing boat.
When we arrived in Wallis Island he was placed under ship arrest, as they had no extradition treaty with Western Samoa, but he still managed to sneak ashore each night to see a local girl. There was a new Dirty Mike on the way when we left for Fiji.
On reaching Suva, he sold his Arlia and flew back to Auckland, but the over-regulated lifestyle didn't suit him. He returned to Apia to face the music, and was even taken back into the family by his wife. He managed to elude being sent to prison, and was still running his small café when I arrived to collect my wife and two small children in 1990, after being shipwrecked and castaway for three years in the Coral Sea. I stayed with him in his small bungalow while making arrangements, before flying back to the UK with my young family. Get in touch, Mike, so we can chew the fat. All the beast, Dick Brooks. Read more of our adventures in my book, "The Black Ship's 
Odyssey" by Cpt Dick Brooks, published by Amazon on their Kindle system. Code B00FNKV88A


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## Cpt Dick Brooks (May 13, 2013)

*For Dirty Mike, R.I.P.*

Earlier this year, my ex-wife Mariana, returned to Apia, Western Samoa, to visit her family and to take care of some personal business. We have been divorced 17 years, and lives nearby in Ipswich, England, with our two youngest daughters and their four children, along with her ten year old son from her second marriage. I asked her to look out for Dirty Mike, and get him to write to me, or even send an E-mail, if it was possible. I hadn't seen him since August 1990, when I called in at Apia to collect my family after I left Debut on Emily Reef, following spending three years castaway. She looked all around Apia for him, and in the villages in the surrounding area, asking all those that may know his were abouts. She finally met some members of his family, who told her he had died some years earlier. He worked hard as mate on board Debut, overhauling and repairing the mooring systems of the tanker berth out in the outer harbour of Apia, and the maintenance and testing of the mile-long under-sea oil pipeline to the tank farms of Mobil Oil, Shell and BP. He sailed with me on Debut to Wallis Island, then on to Suva in Fiji, before flying home to New Zealand. You had an adventurous life, Dirty Mike... you had a good one. All the best to you. May you rest in peace. From your old mate, Cpt Dick Brooks.


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## Cpt Dick Brooks (May 13, 2013)

*Laid to Rest.*

I have just returned from a visit to Apia, in Western Samoa, along with my ex-wife, Mariana, to visit her elderly 88 year old mother and other members of her family. I wasn't lucky enough to meet any one that I knew from my earlier visit in 1982 and 1983, as they have all left for elsewhere or departed for the grave, but I was lucky enough to meet two ex-pats who knew Dirty Mike from way back in the 1970's. One was a German, and the other an Ozzy, and both were now retired businessmen from back in the day.
Reminiscing about the past, the subject of Dirty Mike came up, and I asked them if they knew what finally became of him, causing his death. My ex-wife told me that he had died on an earlier visit she made to Apia, a couple of years back. They told me that after he returned to Western Samoa after leaving on my last ship, M/V Début, for Fiji and then New Zealand, he settled down to running his restaurant down by the harbour and helping out in his wife's shop.
He'd set his son up with his own pea-soupo, (tinned food), shop in the suburbs when I returned to Apia to collect my wife and children after being castaway on Emily Reef for three years off Australia, and later upgraded it into a chicken and chips takeaway shop for the locals. We all had a hearty laugh, sipping beer on the balcony overhanging the water by the new yacht marina by the harbour, remembering Dirty Mike with the single button buttoning his shirt and the cigarette butt permanently slotted in the corner of his mouth.
They told me that he'd come down with some nasty tropical decease or other eight or ten years ago, and had to be flown down to Auckland for hospital treatment... but he had lost his fight for life and had died. For you, our old friend, Dirty Mike, we all still think of you. May you rest in peace, from your old mate, Cpt Dick Brooks.


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