Out and About -July-issue-

34 | OUT AND ABOUT COSTA BLANCA WALSH’S WISDOM
Walsh’s Wisdom
Spanish Skipper who
saved an armada
Never forgotten was the drama as
the Palm Line freighter Enugu
Palm finally answered the wheel
and skimmed by a metre or two a row
of ocean-going freighters moored at an
African port’s quays.
A second’s delay on the part of Captain
Inés would have led to one of the worst
shipping disasters in African history. Had
it not been for the quick thinking of the
skipper several freighters moored at the
Ivory’s Coast Port of Abidjan would have
been devastated.
This true story and others is waiting to
be discovered in Costa author Michael
Walsh book, Untold Sagas of the Seas
Volume II from Amazon and Kindle.
Palm Line, a British-owned shipping
company, plied 5,000 miles West
Africa’s seaboard. In the early 1960s, the
company’s commodore was Spanish born
Captain Inés, whose hands-on character
was legendary. He never suffered fools so
I got on perfectly well with him.
Palm Line vessels were specially
designed to negotiate the sand bars of
the African creeks that excluded entry to
liners that might otherwise bring
trade to communities located to
the Dark Continent’s interior.
The Port of Abidjan on the
Ivory Coast, however, is a modern port.
Having picked up the pilot at the port’s
approaches, Captain Inés, in accordance
with the protocol, surrendered control
of the Enugu Palm to the pilot. The local
pilot’s knowledge of the port is essential
for safe mooring.
On this occasion, it soon became selfevident
that all was not quite right. The
recently boarded pilot was blind drunk
and quite incapable of riding a bicycle
let alone a fast-moving ocean liner in the
narrow confines of a port.
The Enugu Palm did successfully
negotiate the port’s Vridi Canal without
colliding with its palm thronged banks.
As an 18-year-old Ordinary Seaman
standing at the ship’s wheel, I was best
placed to see the unfolding drama as the
pilot inexplicably instructed the engine
room to full ahead. After all, we were now
approaching a lengthy quay along which
several freighters were moored.
Eyes and mind riveted, I watched the
expression of growing alarm on the face
of Captain Inés. Racing at full speed,
about 18 kilometres per hour, the Enugu
Palm’s bow was clearly destined to cleave
the nearest moored freighter in two. I
must have been the only British sailor
ever to witness a port pilot being roughly
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Michael Walsh Heart to Heart Poetry, Amazon Books.
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