HE HAS BRAVED ROUGH SEAS around the world; battled with tons of cargo tossed around by giant waves, but Albert Broomes’ great pleasure was seeing the world while doing what he loved best.
The 74-year-old retired seaman now spends most of his days lazing around his Lodge Terrace, St Michael home with his wife Harriett, basking in the memories of 40 years at sea.
“My father before me was a seaman and from a boy I knew him working on the Harrison Line ships. I always loved the sea and I said when I grow up I want to go to sea,” Albert told the SUNDAY SUN while relaxing at home last Friday morning.
He was one of ten children, eight of them boys, and the first of those boys to follow their father to sea. Four of his brothers also became seamen, inspired by their father and encouraged by their eldest brother.
From “elementary school” Albert dreamed of going to sea.
There was a certain mystique about the way his father would leave and be absent from their home for so many months, then return with presents and stories about life in places little Albert could only visualise from the pictures painted by his father.
From “Lower Primer” (beginner’s class) to “Seventh Standard” (class seven) the schoolboy looked forward to age 13-plus and leaving school for the world of work.
But he would have to wait three years before he could follow his passion. His parents had sent him to learn the motor mechanic trade. Still, his thoughts were forever on the sea.
He remembers his excitement the day an experienced seaman from Mansion Road, Bank Hall, where he was working, told him there was a ship coming in and asked whether he was interested in finding a job on that ship.
Successor was a ship in the popular British shipping company Harrison Line, and the apprenticed mechanic Albert wasted no time borrowing a bicycle from a workmate.
“I slipped through the back from the boss and ride down to the Baggage Warehouse on the Careenage.”
Those were the days before the Bridgetown Harbour was built, and passengers were ferried from the then port station known as the Baggage Warehouse to ships anchored in Carlisle Bay.
Albert caught a row boat that took him out to the Successor in Carlisle Bay. He was 16, and on board, he introduced himself to the Barbadian boatswain, who knew his father. To his disappointment, there was no vacancy for a deck boy, the position he wanted.
Out of curiosity he made his way upstairs and met the ship’s mate, who also knew his father. Again, he was told there was no vacancy for a deck boy, but he was promised a job if there was one when the ship returned to Barbados.
But fortune was on his side.
“I was about to go back ashore and get back up to my trade, but as I was about to go down the gangway to catch the government launch that was going to take me back to shore, this hand rested on my shoulder and someone said, ‘Son, don’t leave the ship yet. The deck boy just failed the doctor’.”
He had landed his first job on a ship.
Albert has kept all the records, logs and certificates he earned securely stored at his home. From time to time he takes them all out and relives the experience.
As a deck boy, he was paid the tidy wage of 12 pounds, 17 shillings and six pence a month.
“That was a lot of money in those days when the exchange was $4.80 to the pound.”
It was more than police officers in Barbados were earning at the time and the reason so many men left other jobs to become seamen.
Albert was mindful of the low wages Barbadians were earning and of the fact that he had left a mother and nine dependent siblings here. He faithfully set aside five pounds from his pay every month for his mother.
Promotions came quickly and he recognised the importance of study if he wanted to move further up the ranks.
When other seamen were having a good time ashore when his ship docked in a foreign port, he went to his cabin and beat books.
“I wanted to excel and I never mucked around. When the ship did a long time at sea and we get into port, fellows rushing ashore to get a drink, I used to go into my bunk and read my book. I studied my work hard.”
At 26, he was promoted to boatswain or chief petty officer, and became head of the deck staff.
He has seen the world, traversing the globe, getting glimpses of life in places like New Zealand, Australia, Russia, South America, and sometimes encountering racism as he travelled to distant places.
In an Australian bar one night, a white Australian accosted the “nigger”, only to be shown another side of the Barbadian.
“I told him ‘You keep that in speech, but keep your distance because if you come any closer I will show you how hard a nigger can hit’.”
At the time he had been training with well known Barbadian boxers of the day during his brief stints at home.
There were many highs and lows in the life of this retired seafarer.
Even today he tears up when he remembers a disastrous experience at sea that almost claimed the life of his brother Audley, a deck boy, and in which another brother, Kenneth, now deceased, was injured, when a container was toppled by a wave.
When he recounts the explosion on board a ship docked in Holland’s Rotterdam port on another occasion, the details are spine-chilling to the listener. This time he was in the company of five deck colleagues when a spring wire that ties up the ship broke, and the group was shaken by the deafening explosion.
It had come from the engine room and when the smoke cleared, a few of his colleagues lay dead.
That incident, along with battling rough seas and the long hours at sea led him to point out: “Sailing on those seas is not easy. You have to be on the lookout always, especially in bad weather and you have to be on the lookout for falling cargo.”
At age 30 he fulfilled an early promise he had made to himself and married the sister of his “good friend”, a fellow seaman.
Together they had three daughters who were raised mainly by his wife, who said: “I devoted my life to my children while he was away.”
Albert was at sea on November 30, 1966, when Britain’s Union Jack was lowered for the last time and an independent Barbados’ Broken Trident raised.
He was proud to be one of the two people chosen to carry the symbolic commemorative Broken Trident into Independence Square on Wednesday night at the launch of celebrations to mark Barbados’ 50th anniversary of Independence.
Though sailing remains his love, it is on terra firma in a “peaceful, independent Barbados” that he wants to happily spend the rest of his life.
gercinecarter@nationnews.com