HMS Tartar 4th Commission 1971 21

We left Gan and the bats behind and arrived in Diego Suarez, Madagascar on Sunday 17th January, we were there for two days. Another mechanical breakdown meant the crew had to take turns peeling spuds for the 285 hungry mouths onboard until the peeler was fixed.

French Navy on a run ashore.

  1971 is the year of the Pig, our Chinese laundry crew along with leader Freddy, although that is probably a nom de convenience, celebrated by having their one day off. These guys work every day and make a little extra money by selling underwear, very much what we would now call 'boxer shorts' out of odd pieces of material. They would go ashore if a casino was available, otherwise they lived all their time on the ship.

Madagascar being French we had a trainload of local dignitaries turn up for cocktails, the messdecks of course had a much ruder name for such gatherings, which were all pomp and ceremony while we had to slink off ashore unseen on the aft gangway "Don't look Fiona". I got one run ashore and it was a wild one, I can remember being in a very large bar looking down on the ground floor where there was standing room only while Jack Tars and French Foreign Legionaries danced, laughed and drank with each other. We got friendly with some of them and they invited us back to their barracks to continue the party, however we were turned back at the gate by some stern faced sentries. We refuelled and were off again on the 19th.

Don't look for me, feet up in the Radio Room, or lying out in the mess.

  Another tour on the useless Beira Patrol, two of us this time, HMS Lynx is also in the area and during her six weeks only stopped one tanker, which she had to let go. We of course had competitions to keep the 'Biera Bucket' along with quiz's using the radios with Lynx and our fleet auxiliaries Resource and Tidereach, most of us simply topped up our tans for our return to Blighty.

Beira will take us into February, our 'reward' is a few days in Port Elizabeth South Africa, after that it is plain sailing for home.