# Two forgotten rowers. R.I.P.



## Cpt Dick Brooks (May 13, 2013)

I was on nightshift all that week, and was just relaxing in front of the TV after my evening meal. Another half hour and I'd have to start getting ready for work. I'd been down on my boat, Blue Bell, during the afternoon doing odd jobs and having a look around. Half of the time was spent sipping on a cup of tea.
I'd applied to join the Ipswich Constabulary a week after turning 19, and had just completed my probationary two years. Attending No. 5 Police Training College at Einsham Hall in Oxfordshire for 13 weeks basic training, I'd spent two weeks on a refresher course after a year at the Sandgate Army Barracks near Folkestone, then a second at Brize Norton RAF base a year later. I was on the last Police training course to attend Brize Norton before it was completely handed over to RAF Transport for refuelling fighter-jets, and for flying out troops to locations all over the world.
I was just sipping on a cup of tea and watching the last few minutes of a program on TV that I was interested in, when there was a knock on the front door. Getting up from my deep armchair, I noticed one of the area police cars parked out in the road in front of my house.
I welcomed the two officers into my living room and asked them what was up.
"We need to charter your boat," the sergeant told me. "There are a couple of bodies in the river we want to recover." He grinned. "You don't need to change, as you'll be in it up to your ears."
He told me of the boating accident that afternoon off Nacton Shore, on the River Orwell. Two young teenaged and an older man thought they'd go for a row about in their old pram-dingy that had lain in the back garden all winter, and this was one of the first sunny days of summer. It had been a scorcher until the wind got up about tea time.
As the small rowing boat hadn't been used for the last two years, it was in a bit of a state. They had launched their frail craft at the bottom of Nacton Lane, and had paddled rather than rowed north-west up the river towards the town. Being inexperienced, it wasn't long before they were in trouble.
As the water started coming into the boat from cracks in the plywood, more of it slopped over the stern, making the boat unstable. One of the younger men stood up to bail with a plastic box, but it was hopeless... the little boat soon filled up and capsized.
One of the younger boys had been rescued by one of three canoes that were paddling around off Nacton Shore, just south-east of the sewage works outfall. The other youngster and the older man were seen together, and they both disappeared below the choppy waves. The three canoes paddled to Nacton Shore, and one of their number ran the two miles or so to the nearest phone box to call the emergency services.
We collected one of my crew from Old Stoke with the west area car, then preceded to the Orwell Yacht Club on Wherstead Road, where I kept my 10 foot clinker rowing dingy. Keith (Ernie) Bond helped me drag the heavy work-boat down the hard of the yacht club into the current running through the mudflats from Belstead Brook. We were both covered in the black, smelly Orwell ooze, and were not looking forward to more mud to come.
It was a long row down the creek to the navigation buoy, No 12, off Cliff Quay into the main shipping channel, then another quarter of a mile to my little ship, Blue Bell, on her mooring opposite the Power Station. She was a 42 foot gaff-rigged Whitstable ouster smack, with a fidded top-mast and long bowsprit. We got on board and started up the engine... a four cylinder Kelvin Ricardo petrol / paraffin engine. I had run up the engine that afternoon, so there was no problem getting it started.
After casting off the mooring, it was a relief to see that the incoming tide was sufficient to back her out into deep water. Motoring down the River Orwell towards the sewage outfall, I could see up to a dozen fire engines shining their lights over the mudflats. Just where the new Orwell Bridge is now, there was a dark lump on the mud, some 60 feet or so from the tide mark.
We anchored Blue Bell near the mud bank and readied the dingy. Using the oars as levers, me and Ernie worked the work-boat over the soft mud. When we got to the lump, we could plainly see the two bodies intertwined on the mud. I lowered myself overboard and went right to the top of my waders in the soft mud. With Ernie using his oar as a lever, and me pulling and pushing, we turned the heavy clinker-built stem-dingy around to face the shipping channel.
Both bodies were entangled together, and Rigor Mortis had set in. White froth oozed from both their mouths and nostrils. I pulled the smaller, older man free of the youngster and passed his arm up to Ernie. 
"I've never seen a dead body," he said. "It makes me feel sick." He was swallowing as he pulled the ridged body into the boat. "I can't get him under the seat." 
"Pull yourself together, you wimp!" I told him. "If you have to, break the joints." That made Ernie gag even more.
We got the two bodies into the bottom of the dingy, then levered it down the mud to the main shipping channel. After motoring the short distance to Cliff Quay power station wharf, I moored Blue Bell up against the piles of the quay, with the top being some 30 feet above us. Ernie and me rowed the dingy to some steps built into the north end of the quay, in a recess where the power station cooling water gushed out into the river.
The emergency services took the bodies off us and tried CPR and using oxygen, but of little use as the bodies had been underwater for some six hours by then. More foam gushed out of their mouths as the compressed oxygen surged back out. Bidding them goodnight, I asked the sergeant to pick us up with the area car at the Orwell Yacht Club, to take us home and prepare to start my night shift. I spent most of the night writing out a statement and completing forms for the cost of the charter and the amount of fuel used.
I stood to attention in the witness box of the Coroner's Court at the Ipswich Town Hall in my best freshly pressed police uniform. After taking the oath, I related to the court the part that I'd played in the recovery of the two bodies. I described to the assembled court that the older man had his false teeth in his hand, and had gripped them so hard that the palm of that hand was cut and bleeding. The younger teenager had managed to unlace and remove one of his work-boots, and had been in the process of undoing the other. 
I described to the court that the older man had his arms locked around the youngster's neck, and was possibly responsible for drowning him. There was shouts from the youngster's relatives, calling the older man a murderer. The court usher had to be called to separate the two groups of relatives and simmer things down before it all got out of hand. Although it was very painful to the relatives, the full truth had to be accurately told. People's personal feelings cannot be taken into account. For both of these men, both young and old, may you rest in peace. This event happened almost fifty years ago, and although I cannot remember their names, every detail of that incident still remains fresh in my memory.
I was awarded a Chief Constable's commendation for the recovery of the two bodies that night... not that I ever received it. Both the superintendent and chief superintendent of the Ipswich Division of the Suffolk Constabulary hated my guts. I was not interested in promotion, or even learning to drive a motor vehicle, but set my future outside the police force in running my ships all over the world. All the best, Cpt Dick Brooks.


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## Chris Isaac (Jul 29, 2006)

If you have a trumpet, why not give it a blow !


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## Cpt Dick Brooks (May 13, 2013)

*Chris Isaac.*

Hi, Chris, good to receive your reply. Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, and if you don't want to read my threads, then don't download them. By the dates you have given on your thread, you must be about the same age as me. I was born in January, 1946, and spent 26 years at sea as captain of my own ships all over the world. I was mainly into diving and salvage operations, although I spent my first eleven years under sail in the North Sea and English Channel. I was the first person to charter a tall ship out of Ipswich dock in 1971, but the only seafaring we can do now is through a haze of plank.
You might like to read some of the books that I've written. Go to the Books forum and read through the threads I have written for the five books that I have had published. You can access the details on how to download them on Kindle. They are under the headings of 'The Black Ship's Odyssey' and 'The Black Ship Trilogy'. Enjoy the read. All the best, Cpt Dick Brooks.


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## Mad Landsman (Dec 1, 2005)

It's good to 'share' and lay the ghosts if possible.
Nowadays everyone is offered counselling even if they only heard about it much less dealt with it.
Back then one was expected to just get on with it any maybe tell your mates in the pub - if you felt like talking about it. 
Inquest over - that's it, forgotten, or maybe not.......


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## Cpt Dick Brooks (May 13, 2013)

*Mad Landsman.*

Hi, Mad Landsman, thank you for your thread. Fifty years on, after serving six years as a police officer in Ipswich, I still remember every agony message I had to deliver... right down to the smallest detail. In those days, when you had to deal with a fatal road accident first thing in the morning, you also had to deliver the message to their loved ones. Many times, a man cycling to work... as most people did in those days... could easily be killed in the heavy traffic. When you arrived at his house to tell his wife, the kids would still be seated at the breakfast table getting ready for school. You only had a few minutes to give them the awful news, then be on your way again to take over you traffic point. 
Before the Orwell crossing was built, all the traffic passing through Ipswich had to pass through the town centre, causing gridlock. Accident were a daily event. I even had one involving a train. I'd stopped the traffic at Stoke Bridge to allow the freight train from the docks to cross over the main road. As I stood there with my arms out, a car kept on coming. The train had more than 50 waggons and had no chance to stop. Luckily for the driver, the front buffer of the diesel engine punched right through the passenger window before rolling the car over onto it's side. The station sergeant could hardly believe the message I radioed to him.
As I was the only person in the force who had a boat that could be used for police work, there were many incidents that I was asked to handle. One was to search the Rivers Orwell and Stour, and Harwich Harbour for a vessel believed to be carrying illegal immigrants. When I found her, only three miles from my mooring, she was loaded end to end with 77,000 cigars. You can imagine the look on the faces of the customs officers when I towed her to the pier-heads at Ipswich dock. Good talking to you. All the best, Cpt Dick Brooks.


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## Mad Landsman (Dec 1, 2005)

It seems that those years still live with you - Hard to shift isn't it? 

I am always happy to listen... 

It also occurs to me that you opened this thread in the 'Looking for Old Shipmates' section. 

One could perhaps suggest that some of those who had such an effect upon you would not be found here, or even in this world.


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## Cpt Dick Brooks (May 13, 2013)

*Mad Landsman.*

Good to hear from you, and to read your comments. I use this forum, correctly or incorrectly, for marine based obituaries. So many people that I've known, especially connected to the sea, are now deceased. Many of my own crews have gone, also... from my four ships. This is my way to show respect to them, and for other crew-members and their families to make contact, and to stay in touch. All the best to you, Cpt Dick Brooks.


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