1968

In 1968 while making our round the world trip in our little British motor home, we were traveling from Thailand to Japan on the freighter, Queensville. We had about a 36 hour stop in Hong Kong, and the one night we were anchored in that harbor, we spent several hours standing on the deck of our ship, fascinated by the activities below us.

The Queensville was surrounded by lighters with supplies to be loaded. Burt counted 32 barges around the ship at one time. These barges are the homes of whole families that operate them. One end of the barge is built up; apparently the covered part is for bedrooms and living in bad weather, the upper exposed part is for living and cooking and for eating most of the time. In good weather and especially in hot weather they undoubtedly sleep on the deck, too.

The kitchen is a little cubicle with some kind of stove; some may be bottled gas because gas tanks were common, but some must have been wood, coal, or charcoal since we saw flames coming out of one flue. They seemed to have a steam type of rice cooker, inside of which was a rack where another pan could be set to be warmed at the same time. Everybody also had a big, black round bottomed pan for frying. They must have two burner stoves, but no oven that we could see.

One sees wrapped bread and different kinds of rolls, cakes, and pastries in the shop windows, but one doesn't see breads for sale on the streets as in Cairo.

We saw one grandmother who apparently was in charge of the kitchen, and she either stepped into the cubicle or worked from the outside. We saw her dish out huge mounds of rice to plates and bowls on a large tray, and then she set warm sauces on the tray from which the diners helped themselves. They sat on the deck although there was a platform a few inches high at one side which was used as a seat too.

The floor was covered with material like linoleum or sometimes with polished wood. We saw one young mother wipe up the floor before she put her three small children down for the night, but their bed was a dirty piece of canvas on which they lay down and then pulled it over themselves. The smallest of the three children was tied with a rope, so his movements were somewhat restricted, and also he couldn't fall overboard. Even the two older children would seem to be in danger except for the fact that they had been trained all their lives to "watch it".

After another mother had finished her evening chores, she packed a baby on to her back with a turtle type scarf - a square with four tails which she tied around herself - and when their barge was in position to be unloaded, she worked with the two men lifting and pushing the heavy bales of whatever they had brought out to be transferred to the ship, all the while with her baby on her back. He should have gotten sea sick with all the action, and it must have been doubly hard on her. The other children were left to play by themselves on the living platform. Of course, once the boat is unloaded the children have the whole ship bottom to play in. One ship we saw had a cradle type bed, and another one had a real metal crib which in the morning was standing on the cargo.

The woman with the baby wore black pajamas, and she wore a wrist watch. All the women on the barges wore pajamas, and mostly black, but some had lighter colors, and one even had on an all white set. Some wore gloves while doing the heavy work of unloading the cargo.

I am always curious about the cargo being loaded and unloaded, but we couldn't decide what any of this was. The boxes of some said 12 dozen, and some of the boxes were labeled to Toronto via Vancouver, and other boxes said "in bond" to Toronto via Vancouver. They didn't seem too heavy, so may have been clothing. The captain mentioned seeing a small boy carrying a box bigger than himself, and he thought this box might have held artificial flowers.

The lighters almost all had a little garden, and many of them even seemed to have some chickens - for eggs or meat, or both? But obviously whole families live on their barges. One wonders if they might not also have an apartment where they live when not on the barge if they are rich enough. The captain says the workers in this port are very capable and efficient.

We stood for three and a half hours watching the unloading of the cargo from the barges to the ship, and finally dragged ourselves in when activity slowed down for a while. Actually, it continued all night until about 2:30 when it started to rain, and they had to close the hatches.

I have stood on the deck of a number of freighters, and I always find it very interesting to watch activities around the ship while in port, and this evening was no exception.