# For Johnny Martin. R.I.P.



## Cpt Dick Brooks (May 13, 2013)

I first met Johnny when I was running my tall ship, Biche, out of Ipswich Dock, back in 1971. I had spent six years as a police officer while fitting her out, and running my first ship, the gaff cutter Blue Belle, doing fishing trips and sailing adventures in the North Sea and English Channel. I even used Blue Belle for police operations, as the small Ipswich Force had no police launch. Biche was a gaff yawl, an ex-Bay of Biscay tuna boat working out of Isle-de-Groix in Brittany. I was moored on the northern end of the Roll-on roll-off berth at the north-eastern corner of the dock when he saw my ship.
While I was working on deck, doing one of the hundreds of small jobs to do on a tall ship, he started chatting about my ship, and that he'd spent many years at sea as a younger man. I invited him on board for a cup of tea, and to look around Biche.
He told me in his northern accent that he'd worked as part of an engine-room crew out of Harwich, during the end of the Second World War, racking out boilers and rodding-out the boiler tubes of visiting warships. He also had to remove the water-injection valves for the boilers and steam inlet valves for the machinery, to regrind the seating, and reinstall them.
After the war he joined the British Merchant Navy, again working in the engine-room of old tramp steamers with reciprocating engines all over the world. When his wanderlust days were over, he became a carpenter on high-rise constructions, in and around the Ipswich area. He married and started a family and settled down. Although I didn't know him at the time, he was involved in the construction of the large Paul's silo next to the Old Customs House, on the northern end of Ipswich Dock. I used to walk past it every day in the early sixties when it was being built, on my way to the Civic College, where I was studying science. 
Johnny asked me if he could crew on my ship when I took out fishing parties during the winter. He liked being on a ship again, be it only a small tall ship, and he volunteered to crew in the spring on sailing charters across the North Sea and down the English Channel. By this time, he'd given up on construction after hurting his back, and had the janitors job at the local Lloyds Bank, in Fore Street, down by the docks.
Throughout my expeditions out into the world, first on my dive-support ship, Dauntless Star, out to the Persian Gulf, where I worked out of Dubai for two years, then on my twelve year voyage around the world on my salvage ship, Debut, when I was eventually shipwrecked in the Coral Sea and spent three years castaway on Emily Reef, Johnny kept my course and position marked on a map of the world on his living-room wall. We kept in touch by post, wherever I was, and I really looked forward to his letters while I was castaway on my own.
On returning to England in 1990, he would visit me to talk about old times. My young children would always look forward to his visits, as he would bring them a bag of sweets to share between them. Me and old Johnny would slope of to the pub for a few beers and reminisce about our adventures out into the world. As we got older our meetings became less, going down to the Steamboat pub on my birthday in January, then down to The Butt and Ouster at Pin Mill in the summer. We used to sit on the front seat on the top deck of the bus, like a pair of schoolboys, and talk of old times on our way to Chelmerdiston, before walking down Pin Mill Lane. When his knees wouldn't take the hill anymore, and he had to stop half-a-dozen times to suck on his puffer, on our way up to the Shotley Road, I took him for our last adventure on the bus to Shotley, where we only had to take ten paces from the bus before we were in the front door of the Bristol Arms. 
Alas, after that he was too weak to make the journey, being almost eighty years old, and became very ill. I visited him every week at his bungalow at Kesgrave for a month, but was informed by his sister, Susan, that he had died. He was eighty one years old, so he had a good innings! She came down from her home in the Lake District to look after him during the last weeks of his life, along with his son, Richard, from Perth in Australia. We had planned to travel around the world together and visit him, then ride the train through the dessert across Australia to the east coast. Never mind, it was a good dream.
At his funeral, I dressed in my full captain's uniform out of respect for him, and placed my cap on the foot of his coffin when I recited a poem in his honour, the epitaph of Robbie Louise Stevenson, who lies on the summit of Mount Via, in the heart of Apia, in Western Samoa:- 
'Under the wide and starry sky, dig the grave and let me lie.
Long that I lived, and gladly die, I lay me down with a will.
Here are the words you graved for me, upon the grave where I long to be.
Home is the sailor home from the sea, and the hunter home from the hill.
For all our memories together, Johnny. All the best, from your old mate, Cpt Dick Brooks.


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## ben27 (Dec 27, 2012)

good day cpt brooks,yesterday,20:14,re:for jonny martin,R.I.P.thank you for sharing your story.may jonny rest in peace,regards ben27


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## ecb (Mar 24, 2011)

Enjoyed the yarn Capt Brooks.Thanks.


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## Hugh Wilson (Aug 18, 2005)

A most interesting post and my sympathies are with you on the loss of your very good friend.

I have however, one question. How did you manage to receive his letters when you were a quote 'castaway on my own' ?


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## Cpt Dick Brooks (May 13, 2013)

*For Hugh Wilson.*

Hi, Hugh. Good to receive your thread. To answer your question, first when I arrived in Australia on board my ship, Debut, with only my young Samoan wife with me, my ship caused, to say the least, quite a bit of a stir, both in the press and on television. The Rainbow Warrior had only been sunk two weeks before in Auckland Harbour, and I offered Green Peace the use of my ship, until they could replace her. At the same time, Phillip-Woodhouse Productions film company of England, were going to make a major feature film about the sinking by the French Navy. A friend of mine, Tiger Tibbs, of the brig Eye of the Wind contacted Phillip-Woodhouse Productions at their office in Auckland, suggesting my ship for the roll. Green Peace also wrote to the film company, and I was requested to phone them collect by the Cairns Harbour Authority. The deal was done. When the press got hold of this, it was splashed all over Australia.
Because of the delay in writing the script, then again in getting the funding of ten million dollars, then another delay in re-writing the scrip to appease the wishes of the sponsor, Debut overstayed the permitted time allowed to remain in Australian territorial waters. I was ordered to leave by the Customs Office, or pay import duty for the ship. I phoned the Marine Surveyors Office in Canberra to enquire of a safe anchorage inside The Great Barrier Reef that is in international waters. They gave me the position of 25 miles east of Bloomfield, in 140 feet of water. I took my ship there and anchored, waiting for the film company to complete their script, before returning to Cairns to have Debut dry-docked and fitted out with masts and sails to look the part of the Rainbow Warrior. The engineers from the dockyard had already been out to the ship while I was anchored at False Cape, just outside of Cairns, to appraise the work, and their quote of Aus$340,000 had been accepted.
Seven and a half months later, just after Mariana returned to Debut after giving birth to baby Robbie at Cairns Base Hospital, the anchor chain broke during tropical line squall. I had all 900 feet of inch and a quarter stud-link chain out, and it snapped like a piece of string when the squall-line hit. Surrounded by reef, with visibility down to only twenty feet at night, Debut drove on to Emily Reef, 25 SE of Cooktown. The wind blew from the SE at 25 to 30 knots for a month, driving Debut further on to the reef, 15 foot waves crashing against the starboard quarter of the ship. Although the hull was still watertight, showing the quality of her construction in Selby, I knew that she could never be recovered. Using her ballast tanks and loading 800 tons of water into the hold, I kept her steady. On each Spring Tide, I would pump her out, and using the winch with the anchors I'd set in the reef, I would ease her up on to the reef. With a draft of 18 feet and only a Spring Tide of 10 feet, she had to grind a grove into the coral with her keel and bilge-keels until I was happy that she was safe. I then flooded her down again to keep her secure.
There was no food on the ship suitable to wean a baby, so after eleven months Mariana wanted to leave. I knew if we left together, we'd attract too much attention from the authorities, so dividing the 15 dollars left between us, I arranged a lift for her into Cairns. She got a lift from a friend down to Mackay, where she got a job as a diver, collecting tropical fish out on the reef for aquariums all over the world. When she had earned enough money, she flew to Samoa to wait for me to come and collect them.
I connected a permanent mooring to one of my one ton anchor set in the lagoon on the port side of the ship, so visiting fishing-boats could stay overnight in safety, while having a day or two R&R, or doing repairs to their ships. They came out regularly with fresh food and mail, and once the word got around, the tourist boats would bring out their guests to meet me. Some even came from as far as Perth, 3000 miles away on the west coast of Australia. As the mail sent to the Harbour Masters office in Cooktown took up to two months to arrive, Mariana used to send a similar letter to the Your Choice radio programme. On Tuesday nights, I would listen in rapture as Noel Hurley read her letters to me over the air, on ABC, the second strongest broadcast in the southern hemisphere, next only to BBC World Service. One letter from Mariana took 50 minutes to read out. He also read out a letter from a friend in the UK, and there was a live ship-to-shore radio call patched into the radio station. Any fishing-boat or tourist boat coming out in my direction was asked by the Harbour Master to bring out my mail, and to collect my replies. They brought Johnny's letters out to me, with the mail I received from all over the world. 
I stayed another two years alone on my ship, selling off parts of the ship as souvenirs to the tourists. I wrote three books to while away my time. The Judas Kiss, the Samoan Princess and the Samoan Sunset. They are now being published as The Black Ship Trilogy. After I'd managed to ac***ulate Aus $9,000, I made my move. I collected Mariana and our two young children from Samoa and returned to the UK. By the time I arrived in Ipswich, I was down to $200, not much of a margined to spare. All the best to you, Cpt Dick Brooks.


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