# Voyage of Walkendick. Part III.



## Cpt Dick Brooks (May 13, 2013)

After another week of wandering about Languard Point, including several forays into Felixstowe town centre, my stores were becoming rather run down. I had very little money left, other than to buy fresh bread and milk, so decided to start on my voyage back up the River Orwell to Ipswich. Coming up to the end of November, 1963, and Christmas would soon be upon us all... it was a good time to arrive back home again to be with my family and friends.
Reluctant to end my adventure without completing my goal, I cast off my mooring ropes during the flood-tide on the next favourable wind and headed north across Harwich Harbour... then up Sea Reach of the River Orwell, after passing H.M.S Ganges on my port side. 
After sailing about three miles up the River Orwell, I decided to anchor for a while at Collimer Point... not feeling ready yet to go all the way back to Ipswich. I could set some rabbit snares, and visit some of my old wild-fouling haunts... and maybe even bag the odd duck or two with my trusty three bore, skeleton-stock, poaching shotgun. 
Once anchored just outside the main shipping channel by the No2 red buoy at Collimer Point, I swam ashore to see what I could get up to... and boy, was the water ruddy freezing! I would have liked to have taken 'Black Bess'... Ernie's eight foot hardboard dinghy... but it was far too heavy to lift on board by myself, let alone tow behind the raft at sea. I did manage to score half a dozen swan's eggs, which were absolutely delicious. Each one was the size of half a dozen hen's eggs when fried in a little lard in my frying pan.
I spent a very pleasant week anchored at Collimer Point, and was happy when I heard someone on the fore-shore calling out my name. It turned out to be my partners in the raft... Wally Sedgewick and Kenny Hall. I swam ashore to meet them, but was absolutely stunned with the sad news that they'd brought me... President Kennedy had been assassinated at Dallas, in Texas, in the United States! He wasn't just the President of America, but represented the young people all over the world... only being a young man himself. I decided, then and there, in front of my two mates that I had to get out of this country and go and explore the wonders of the world before they blew it up.
We needed a ship... a real ship... one that we could sail all the way around the world. But, as usual, we were all broke. What to do? The first thing was to get back to Ipswich and go back to my job at William Brown's timber yard. I was only on boy's wages, at the time, but I'd be eighteen years old in six weeks... perhaps they would give me adult's pay... man's money!
I said goodbye to Wally and Kenny, and swam back to the Walkendick. The wind was freezing, and I nearly lost it... swimming back to the raft. I had earned the mile swimming certificate when I was at secondary school at Broomhill swimming baths... swimming it in April. I'd almost passed out then, and the teacher... Mr. Hopkins... had to help me out of the pool, and bought me a hot cup of tea at the shop to help me revive.
This time, a man had just walked up to us on the fore-shore with his dog as we chatted on the river bank, and must have seen that I was in some difficulty. He had undressed and swam out to help me climb up on to the deck of the raft. My next recollection was sitting in the cabin drinking another scolding hot cup of tea... which seemed to do the trick nicely.
After a couple more days to build up my strength, I raised the anchor and set sail... full and by... running down wind under full sail all the way back to Ipswich. As I sailed up the main shipping channel, many of the owners of the yachts still on their moorings waved to me as I passed them. They were securing everything on board their yachts to either ride out the winter, or be slipped at the ramp and made fast on dry land.
When I was off Ipswich power station, Wally and Kenny came out with Lyndon in his open converted ship's lifeboat to greet me, and take me in tow up to our mooring on the mud-bank off Cliff Quay. They all asked questions at once when we had secreted ourselves in the cabin with a hot cup of tea, and there was one hell of a booze-up in the back room on The Lifeboat public house that night.
It was a good job that our old school-mate, Fred... short for John Leach... was back from another trip at sea out to the Far East... as he willingly shouted the rounds. On top of all my tales of sailing my raft out to sea, there was Fred's own stories of his adventures as a deck-hand on a large freighter carrying mixed cargo in the South China Sea. I decided, there and then, to apply to join the British Merchant Navy when I turned eighteen. All the best, Cpt Dick Brooks.


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## ccurtis1 (Aug 16, 2007)

A good tale Cap'n, but dare I say it, not up to your usual standards.


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## Cpt Dick Brooks (May 13, 2013)

*For ccurtis1.*

It's good to hear from you, ccurtis1, and I'm sorry if you didn't think that the 'Voyage of Walkendick, Part III' was not up to my usual standard. But this is a true story... not a work of fiction. What I've written really happened! And there is much more to come... telling the story of how I spent 26 years of my life at sea... on my own ships... all over the world. And that doesn't count the eighteen months that we sailed Walkendick on the Rivers Orwell and Stour, and around Harwich Harbour while I was student at college at Civic College. 
These raft journeys... under full sail... were the inspiration that drove me onwards in later life. And my 11 years experience under sail, first with Blue Bell, then later with Biche, gave me the training for when I needed it most. When I ran short of fuel with Début in the South Pacific, and under jury rig... and with only Mariana, my young Samoan wife as crew... sailed my thousand ton displacement ship 4,600 miles across the South Seas to Australia. I hope you like my next post on Sunday. All the best, Cpt Dick Brooks.


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## tsell (Apr 29, 2008)

Another great read, Dick.

Cheers, mate!

Taff


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## Cpt Dick Brooks (May 13, 2013)

*For tsell.*

G'day, Roy, how are you making out? I'm glad that you enjoyed the read of my last post. The things that happened in it changed my life forever... especially hearing about the assassination of President Kennedy. 
We didn't know it then, but East Suffolk was the largest depository of nuclear weapons in Western Europe during the Cold War. What with the multiple I.C.B.M's., with up to a dozen individually guided warheads on each missile on the four U.S. bases scattered around the town of Ipswich, there was a secret dump-site in Rendlesham Forest, to the north of the town, where all the old free-drop nuclear bombs were stored. 
If the Russians were going to make a pre-emtive strike on the United Kingdom, their target would be this small market town in the Suffolk countryside. Where the bunnies' tail of England used to be, would have been a thousand foot deep hole in the North Sea.
The local council were so concerned about this that they constructed a massive underground car park near the council headquarters, the courts and the police station in the mid sixties. This would have been a nuclear bunker for all those who controlled the town to take shelter in when the four minute warning was sounded. They would then all come out to take control again in the town once the radiation levels had decreased sufficiently for them to do so. I even climbed down to the bottom of this hundred foot deep hole during its construction while on nights as a police officer on that beat. 
Thankfully, it all blew over like a puff of wind at the end of 1989, with the collapse of communism in Poland, the Berlin wall being pulled down... and even the Tiananmen Square incident in China. We could all breathe out a little in relief... until the next time. Let's hope that most of us old guys will be long turned in for the big dirt nap long before that happens. All the best, Roy, Cpt Dick Brooks.


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