_A totally bizarre

THE DEPARTURE was supposed to have been sometime
before dark on July 5. I had been warned that if the boat
was still painted red and white, the colors it had sported
back when it was a buoy tender for the Canadian Coast
Guard, things were probably running a bit behind schedule.

The color 1 wanted to see, as we
bumped across the train tracks
down to Halifax's Richmond
Terininal pier, was black,
preferably with a skull-and-
crossbones and kill flags painted
on the side.

Alas, the boat's steel hull and
fo'c’s le were a chequerboard of
black and white. Which likewise
meant, as it turned out, that
‘things were indeed behind sched-
ule. The ship's new name, Cleve-
land Amory, had been painted on
the bow, but that was about all
that was finished.

With a sinking feeling in my
stomach, {| made my way straight
up to the bridge of the 1,2(10-
tonne vessel, only to find the walls
sprouting spaghetti, which is to
say there were cables and wire
coming out of everywhere, but
nothing was hooked up.

Finally, | clambered up to the
top deck where a separate cabin
sat on the port neer the stern. 1

had also been promised not only a
private cabin but a toilet, shower
and sink. Well, that much seemed
to be according to plan -— except,
when I tried the facilities, nothing
worked. /

And that, in a nutshell, was the:
whole problem. Nething worked.

Tracking down the captain —
the inimitable, indefatigable Paul

, Watson ~~ i got the woeful
lowdown, It seemed the guys he’d
bought the boat from had guar-

, anteed shipshape delivery by the

© 5th, but hadn’t allowed for the
fact that, since decommissioning,
the vessel] had been allowed to rot.

For openers, both generators
had to be rebuilt virtually entirely.
There were, in addition, plumbing
problems, radar problems, radio
problems, and the main engines
~ hadn't in fact been fired.up for
years,

, “~The plan — the reason [’d come
‘along — was to charge across the.
Atlantic up to the northern coast
of Norway to confront. whaling
’ ships. Watson is wanted for hav-
ing scuttled a Norwegian whaler:
last Christmas, several navy and
” coast guard vessels were reported
on standby, just waiting for him.

_ My reporter’s instincts for a good

story were a-tingle.

\: Other instincts, however, were
beginning to crowd the
newshound’s hunger into the
background.

“:. Elasted 10 days. By that time,

‘,, the generators still hadn't been

"started, let alone the main engines.
. The thrill of Halifax hed worn
. thin. And the food... well, some
things are best left unsaid. The
- long and the short was I'd used up
most of the time J had available,

~ and we still hadn’t left the dock.
‘So it was adios, eco-amigos.

It took another 10 days before
the Cleveland Amory’s lines were
thrown. The boat barely got out

- of harbor before both engines
conked out, leaving captain and

‘crew adrift in fog off-Sable

» Island, the famous Graveyard of
the Atiantic.

. They had to be towed back to’
Halifax, whereupon police seized

“the boat on instructions from the

’ former owners, who were °
\-disputing who should pay the
. considerable moorage fees. ~

This somehow got resolved, the

<: engines were apparently fixed, a
“-" reporter from a Halifax paper was

' taken on board, and the black

. ship charged back out to sea.

‘. By now, the battle plan had
been somewhat modified. Instead

_ of pursuing Norwegian whalers on
. the far side of the ocean, Watson
“announced he was going to chase
foreign trawlers out of the Grand
‘Banks, where they stand accused

be ‘of continuing to deplete the re-
_ maining fish stocks, while Cana-
. dian fishermen have been

ab
Miunter

STRICTLY PERSONAL

grounded by government cdict.

Alas, barely a day out of
Halifax, the port engine blew up.
There was shrapnel all over the
engine room. If it had happened a
minute earlier, one of the
engineers would have been shred-
ded,

This meant the boat could only
go at half-speed, roughly six
knots. But because there was a
single propellor, with just the
starboard engine, the vessel could
only steer a zig-zag course,
reducing her effective speed to
barely four knots.

In the end, when they finally

tracked down a Cuban trawler,
the good captain was reduced to
steering from down below with an
emergency wheel at the stern, The
tadio was oul (as was the cadar),
so there was no communication
from the bridge, which meant
that, as Watson closed in on the
Cubans, he was fying blind, with
somebody scrambling frantically
up and down the ladder, telling
him how close they were toa col-
lision,

lathe midst of all this, the
Hatifax reporter was accused of
stealing a receipt with the name of
one of Watson's big supporters on
it. The reporter says he found it
being used as a marker in a book
he borrowed.

In any event, Watson ordered
him confined to his cabin, The
reporter yanked on a lifejacket
and tried to leap overboard (o
escape, but was restrained,

In the end, a couple of Zodi-
ac-loads of Mounties were
dispatched from a Canadian Coast
Guard ship that iad been tailing
the Cleveland Amory, and the
black-painted protest vessel was
duly seized.

Watson was arrested and flown
by helicopter to St. John’s, New-
foundland, where he was cheered
by the same fishermen who, only
a few years before, had wanted to
lynch him for opposing the seal
hunt.

Dr. Lyle Thurston of Deep
Cove, a veteran of many a weird
and wonderful boat trip, was on
board as the Cleveland Amory’s
medical officer through all this. It
was, he says, ‘‘a totally bizarre
hog-ride.”” Amen.

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