# Mbms



## Trevor Clements (May 6, 2007)

I expect many of us have received MBMS' in the past. In my short time at sea the one which sticks in my mind was during the Cuban crisis. I was only just 20 and thought it was all very serious. 

My Captain at the time had been through WWII, and was unpeturbed. However I seem to recall that he took me into his cabin and showed me a coding system for use in emergencies. does anyone else remember this code?

Trevor.


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## Mayday (May 26, 2009)

Was that the MERSEX thingy?

Had a few of these but never ever came to anything
Ocean Safari rings a bell, North Atlantic NATO exercise.

Remember once being soliceted by a chap covered in gold braid in Kiwi about some big exercise covering the whole of Western Pacific controlled by NRV.
The happy day came along and nil hrd.


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## Troppo (Feb 18, 2010)

Ha ha ha!

I was one of the 'gold braid' covered chaps for a while....I was a Naval Control of Shipping officer in the navy reserve.

It was all very cold war centric. Ruskies coming over the horizon stuff...

A glorified yacht club.

It has got a whole lot more serious now in the gulf, though. NCS does a good job there.


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## John Briggs (Feb 12, 2006)

I think that many shipping companies, particularly tramp ships, ensured that the Master had a code book.
I know that in Manners there was a code book on every ship and for commercial reasons many messages to and from the company were in code. 
It also came in handy when passing messages that were to be kept confidential as the crew would never find out.


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## Trevor Clements (May 6, 2007)

On the Hyrcania we used Shell Code, because we were on charter to them, but this was something different. Its just that for all that I have a fairly good memory for these things I cant remember what form it took when he showed me it.

The MBMS told us to obey the instructions of U.S. naval forces. They were stopping Russian ships loaded with missiles and bound for Cuba.


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## david.hopcroft (Jun 29, 2005)

We were 'buzzed' by an American patrol aircraft on a Shell tanker bound for Curacao. It came up low astern and the first anyone heard or saw was as it roared over us climbing away. Just checkin' we only had 'tank' tops on deck !! I suppose.

David
+


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## Baulkham Hills (Jul 11, 2008)

I sailed on a tramp in 1969 called the "Bretwalda" owned by Hall Bros. Newcastle
and I never remember a telegram from the owners that was not in code or longer than 7 words. I remember asking the Captain, who was a veteran of all the mean tramp companies Chapmans, Souters etc., why even the most mundane message was sent in code. He said it was all to do with penny pinching in the cost of telegrams. 
The code book was commercially available and rather large and covered almost everything. There was no doubt that when it was decoded the number of words well exceeded 7 words.
Later on sailing on tankers especially on the spot market code was used and in that case I think secrecy was important.


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## trotterdotpom (Apr 29, 2005)

Radiotelegrams were pretty pricey items, I'm surprised codes weren't used more often. Look after the pennies and the pounds will look after themselves! You could save a few bob by running words together (one word = 15 letters) too. You just had to take care that you didn't muck up the intended meaning. In Grimsby, the fishermen were bigtime telegram senders ("wires" as they were known then) and they often used codebooks purchased from the local newsagents. 

John T


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## Graham P Powell (Jun 2, 2007)

BP used their own company code books. I seem to remember the Captain showing mean three or four very large leather bound books. A favourite trick at GKA was for shipping companies to write out the message normally and then divide it into blocks of 10 character words. Alright for us but Japanese and other foreign vessels had quite a bit of difficulty with the chopped up English. Admiralty traffic of course was virtually all in code and could be very lengthy. I handled several messages from China which consisted of four character number groups. I understand that each one referred to a Chinese alphabet pictogram. Some companies sent great long screeds in plain language which code could quite easily have covered.

Surprised really they didn't use it more.
rgds
Graham Powell


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## surfaceblow (Jan 16, 2008)

One company I worked for not only used a code book after a while you did not need to look up the code words since the repetitive nature of the messages. Most of the daily messages had there own format so just after the date and time there was a letter that indicated what form followed by group of numbers. One message was used to indicate fuel, lube and water onboard plus next port requirements. 

Joe


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## Naytikos (Oct 20, 2008)

I seem to remember Bank Line using a code for their few QTCs. British ship-board bureacracy being the way it was, I never saw the code book during my one 7month 20 day trip with them.

One of my Greek ships was chartered to BP and I kept the code books in the radio room and transcribed the messages in both directions. It was, perhaps still is, quite clever in that the code groups appeared random but were compiled in such a way that any group could be identified even with one letter missing.


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## Troppo (Feb 18, 2010)

P and O always ran their words together, with a / between them.


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## Peter Martin (May 30, 2005)

I remember as a humble deck cadet being given a small aluminium plate with a code book to decrypt a message during an exercise - the word 'Brimer' sticks in my mind and GBMS? This was in the early 70's


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## trotterdotpom (Apr 29, 2005)

I think GBMS was the collective call sign for a message from the Admiralty to "All British Merchant Ships". MBMS was the collective callsign for a message to "All British Merchant Ships" from someone else but can't remember who. Any ideas?

There used to be a couple of booklets hanging around with details ...."Admiralty Notices to Ships Radio Stations" or something.

John T


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## Vital Sparks (Sep 19, 2007)

Three BP codes that have stuck in my head are KIZTO, which I think means full stop, KJIJX which references several pages from the BP operations manual instructing how to tank clean in preparation for loading aviation turbune kerosene and KACNY which means "acknowledge Birttankol", which was inevitable followed by the completely redundant signature Brittankol.


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## Moulder (Aug 19, 2006)

trotterdotpom said:


> I think GBMS was the collective call sign for a message from the Admiralty to "All British Merchant Ships". MBMS was the collective callsign for a message to "All British Merchant Ships" from someone else but can't remember who. Any ideas?
> 
> There used to be a couple of booklets hanging around with details ...."Admiralty Notices to Ships Radio Stations" or something.
> 
> John T


The callsign GBMS was a general call to Any British Merchant Ship and I've used it on 500 kHz more than once.

MBMS, I believe, was the callsign used to indicate messages from the Admiralty.

(Thumb)


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## trotterdotpom (Apr 29, 2005)

Thanks Moulder, I knew it was something like that. Now if you asked me what SVVV meant ....

John T


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## Trevor Clements (May 6, 2007)

david.hopcroft said:


> We were 'buzzed' by an American patrol aircraft on a Shell tanker bound for Curacao. It came up low astern and the first anyone heard or saw was as it roared over us climbing away. Just checkin' we only had 'tank' tops on deck !! I suppose.
> 
> David
> +


We were similalry inspected by a USA Amver coastguard plane, on two ships I was on. the funniest was when I was very young and on Hyrcania, Bill Protheroe was on watch and he whistled the radio room to get me up to the bridge.

"Sparky boy there's a plane an' 'e's morsin us".

No Bill that's not morse code, just his navigation lights flashing.

No boy 'e's morsin us, you'd better answer 'im (Imagine a Welsh accent)

We had a light on one of the masts which could be keyed, and so being green as grass I started keying A A A!

This blooming thing came swooping down, flying alongide us with a searchlight illuminating the entire ship.

"There you are" says Bill, "I told you e was morsin us"!


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## Trevor Clements (May 6, 2007)

The best message I ever decoded on the Hyrcania was the one reading "Proceed Cardon load Miranda crude Lands End FWO".

Do I go to prison for revealing that? Remember the notice in the Radio Room?

Trevor.


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## richardwakeley (Jan 4, 2010)

Blue Funnel ships still had the Admiralty code books and metal frame in the Captain's safe in the 1970s. We had a one day "Defense Course" with a Navy guy teaching us how to use them when I was at Bristol Tech for the Electronics Course in mid 70s.

We also carried the Chinese 4-letter code book. Very occasionally it was used by Chinese crew to send telegrams home.

I hated the BP Kizto Kacny code, because I couldn't read their messages like all the others I could spy on when waiting my QRY!


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## Binnacle (Jul 22, 2005)

I was under the impression that it was the "Lombard" commercial Code book that was used in my younger days on Salvesen tramps, but a Google search would indicate I'm mistaken in that name. In later years attending DEMS courses, a crash course in Nato coding was given. On one ship trading UK/Norway an Admiralty safe was fitted in my bedroom, complete with Nato books and weighted bag. It had a combination lock, could hold six bottles of Grouse, which was handy in ports where the customs were sparing in the issue. Admiralty sealed envelope "Z" was kept in the safe of Polar Maid which I was on in 53. I understood this contained a call sign to be used if the balloon went up. Incidentally a Colt .45 revolver sat on the shelf beside it.


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## chadburn (Jun 2, 2008)

Interesting to read that in 1953 it was envelope "Zulu" in the Admiralty Safe, when I became involved in the Cold War side of thing's in 1960 it was envelope "Tango", the change being I presume because of the update's it would contain. Everthing including all the Service's equipment was based on the "Orange" force's moving to interfere with Allied Shipping and the invasion of Europe ( the invasion of a group of island's in the South Atlantic was never "considered"). At the time I was "issued" with a Pistol was during "Exer Brave Defender" and it was as somebody has previously called them the "Wobbly Webley" however, when I worked for Maritime Fruit we were "issued" with pistol's after Munich 1972, the choice was either a Berretta "Compact" (Baby Berretta) or the Walther PPK which I kept in the compartment where the Fulcrum Bearing(s) were for my desktop fold down typewriter which could not be seen when the machine was in the down position.


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## trotterdotpom (Apr 29, 2005)

Maybe they did have suspicions about Argentina and that's why they changed the name to Envelope Tango?

John T


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## chadburn (Jun 2, 2008)

Sorry John, In all the Exercise's I was involved in they were (as a previous contributor has also indicated) based solely on the North Atlantic/Europe Zone. The STUFT remit was based on what would be required to meet that area of conflict and how to supply mainland Europe, Tank's, Warship's, Aircraft and other equipment were designed and built solely for that purpose which is why we had problem's with sending the "wrong" equipment both in the Falkland's War and the 1st Gulf. When my Son and his Regiment were posted for the 1st Gulf he only had Northern Europe style Cam Clothing there was no Desert Cam clothing available unless he bought it from an Army Surplus store himself. The sole's of the Boot's they were issued with melted.


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## Tai Pan (Mar 24, 2006)

Remember MBMS from GKA when the King Died. On Esso Bedford off Yemen.


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