Themes

David describes requisitioning merchant vessel, the Europic Ferry, for use in the Falklands War.

'I only requisitioned one ship and that was the Europic Ferry. Directly I had to go onboard in uniform and say, “Under the special powers act, I hereby requisition your ship.”

And she was in Southampton, and in fact I was having a day off and I was at home here and I got rung up saying, “We’re strapped, there’s no one in the office who can go, could you go to Southampton and requisition Europic Ferry?”

So I pitched up and the Master was… I remember him… he was wearing a vest and pyjama trousers when I first saw him and he said, “Oh yes, ohh yes,” [laughs] “I’m going to South Atlantic, who’s going to provide me with charts then?”

And he usually did a run to the Hook of Holland and back and didn’t do anything else, so he only had the charts that would of got him to the Hook of Holland and he was particularly phased that somebody would have to come over with a map that would enable him to get down there.

But he did and he was sort of expecting it. He was a ball parkish ship with a big flat deck half which had already been chartered for a NATO exercise and had already had helicopters land on it, so I think it was a fair cop, as he saw it.'

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