SHICKELL JOHN

 

Shickell John. H. Mollyhawk, was born in England on 2.12.1890 and died in the USA in 1975.

He obtained his Master Mariner's certificate in San Francisco in 1920.

He rounded Cape Horn four times including three times in the barque IVERNA, 2 times westward and once eastward.

John Shickell gives the following account of his seafaring life :

< I was born at Derby, England, on December 2nd 1890. I spent a lot of my boyhood at Birkenhead with my grandparents. I suppose it was natural for me to have yearning for sea life, as several of my uncles were seafaring men. I spent most of my spare time ( and some of the time when I ought to have been in school, too ) wandering around the docks. In 1902, when 12 years old, I stowed away in the full-rigged ship BRITISH ISLES. She was towed out of the dock on high water and when I felt the motion in her I thought we were at sea. So I showed up too early, and was put ashore in the tug. However, I had to finish school and in 1908 was fitted out at Lawis's with a brassbound uniform and a cap badge of Mackay Co of Liverpool, and joined their bark IVERNA. I made Three Cape Horn passages in her, two to westward and one east. I deserted her in Portland, Oregon, in 1910. And shipped in various vessels out of West Coast North American ports... all sail until the first World War drove most of the sailing vessels from the seas.

I must have been born under a lucky star, as I met with very few really exciting experiences. I don't have to tell you that one was being washed across the main deck of BRITISH YEOMAN, then under Canadian colors, somewhere along Cape Horn Road while running easting down. I ended up on the pin rail, we called it the t' gallant rail then, with only a few inches between me and over side.

I lay there unconscious until her Captain spotted me and grabbed me before the next green one came over the weather rail. It was also on this ship that I had another close call. She was in the doldrums, bound for San Francisco from Sydney that time I was aloft on the main loser topsail yard, about to bring in the lower block of the upper topsail downhaul, when the ship's bows lifted on a big swell that caused the upper topsail to flap back. She had lost an upper topsail earlier, and when the sail went to rags, the clew iron, I suppose, broke off about a fathom of the jackstay at the yard arm. There was nothing for me to grab, and I was pushed backwards by the heavy wire bolt rope and fell from the yard. The rail was directly below me, but although I didn't know it at the time., I hit the main lift and was knocked unconscious, and landed on the main yard and lay there, on a rolling ship, until the Second Mate, George Wigsten (last Master of the American bark KAIULAMI, last American vessel to sail), came aloft and grabbed me as I was about to fall again.

Otherwise, my seagoing was a bit on the uneventful side. When I quit the sailing vessels, I got a 2nd Mate's tichet here in SF, and as the years passed, Chief Mate, and in 1920 passed as Master Mariner. I was Master of several cargo and tanker ships.

Eventually old age sort of caught up with me and I retired from seafaring.

When the ship BALCLUTHA was restored in 1954-55, my old shipmate, Captain Wigsten, was shipkeeper in her. I was a member of the crew of volunteers who gave of our time to help make her shipshape again..

But Wigsten had to return to his lodgings in Baltimore later in 1955 and I took over his watches, daytime, at weekends and holidays to hold the job for him.

But he returned a very sick man and died a few weeks after he flew ' home ' ( SF ) of cancer. So I stayed on, and am still standing my watches, 8 am to 4 pm, weekends and all holidays >

Written at 17 Sutter Street, San Francisco, California, Feb. 4th 1967.