The elusive big black tanker

I was never really aware that boats had played a role in my mum’s life until she came to stay.  But they certainly seemed to have done and still do.  The drive down south from Colombo to Galle touches the coast at the beginning and end of the journey.  That coastline is the major route for tankers and freight ships heading to the Colombo port. These huge vessels can be seen on the horizon dotted sporadically all along the south coast. Mum is fascinated by them, especially one huge black tanker she saw on her first trip south with me in the car. She has been looking for this particular boat ever since.  From time to time we catch glimpses of what might be ‘the black boat’. However she is never very sure that it is the same one. And of course it probably won’t be the same one as, whichever one it was, is more likely far gone by now to some distant part of the globe. 

I’ve been trying to track down the roots of this fascination with the big black boat. Her father was a diver and swimmer. He died when she was very young. She thinks it was something related to diving too much. She has always had a fear of water and despite my dad’s best endeavours, she only ever managed to swim a breadth of a pool. So water does not hold a fascination in and of itself.  In mum’s early life, there must have been trips to Dunoon, one of the traditional seaside resorts for Glasgow, supported by the busy Clyde steamers.  There must also have been the trip between the mainland and the Isle of Man for her honeymoon. She also told me about a very memorable Norwegian fjord cruise with her best friend at the time. And when she visited me in Naples, we had various trips on the hovercraft between Naples and Ischia and Capri and on the ferry between Pozzuoli and the islands.

When I think back to my childhood and early adulthood, boats played a sporadic but memorable role. There were the local Caledonian MacBrayne ferry rides between Gourock and Dunoon and Wemyss Bay and Rothesay for day trips or weekends away; there were the occasional international P and O ferry trips between Hull and Rotterdam to visit my brother in Holland, and between Dover and Calais for our one French and one Spanish holidays; there was a trip between Orkney and Thurso, during a visit to my other brother who was working in Dounreay, the nuclear power plant there, on something no larger than a fishing boat which was so rough it was unforgettable.  More recently mum followed the news reporting about the Costa Concordia in January this year with great concern and interest. Nothing however explains the fascination and search for the elusive big black tanker.

When we go shopping in Galle at the weekend the road is parallel to the sea though it is often hidden by buildings. Every time you can see the sea we watch for boats. Chaminda, our faithful tuk tuk driver, has obviously spotted this liking for boats and has noted it as a ‘mum’ thing as opposed to a ‘Lesley’ thing as prior to mum arriving I had never shown any interest in boats (except perhaps when the huge cruise liner comes, in which case it is more the incongruity of it in Galle Harbour alongside all the small fishing boats and the noticeably up market crowd in Seafair supermarket around the same time that sparks my interest). Yesterday Chaminda decided to pursue the liking for boats and, on route to Keels on the other side of Galle, he pulled up outside the Galle Harbour gates and asked if we wanted to go in. I have always assumed that since this is right beside the high security Navy camp that it was a no go area. However given the option we said yes and stopped at the security gate.

The navy guards looked at us rather suspiciously and I assumed Chaminda had got it wrong. This I often assume for some reason; however these days he does prove himself right about most things. They asked for my passport and I offered them my driving licence and British Council card (this has been known to open a few doors). After checking via a long telephone conversation and considerable frowning that this was acceptable, we got the nod to go ahead. They also asked for my mum’s passport to which Chaminda went into a long explanation about how she was my mum and I was working here and had been here forever. This they finally accepted and another man came with tickets. At 25 rupees each, this seemed very reasonable. So we went into somewhere I have driven past every weekend for years. The only time you got a peek inside was in the post tsunami days when all the walls everywhere came down and the coastline was fully exposed.

Mum loved the harbour. There was the big red and black cargo ship we had frequently seen on the horizon and from afar in the harbor. This turned out to be delivering raw materials and picking up cement from the Holcim plant on the outskirts of Unawatuna. Cranes could be seen lifting cargo off the ship. There was the ice plant which I had only heard about. We watched as the huge blocks of ice came out of the warehouse, were put into an ice crushing machine and the crushed ice was loaded into a truck to keep the fish fresh.  We watched the fishermen cleaning their multi-coloured boats which were about 6 deep in the harbor. A quick maths calculation produced about 300 small fishing boats.  There were the tugs, the navy patrols, the navy camp (from  a different angle). There was the fish being sold wholesale. The place was buzzing. Everyone was working, busy doing something – this in and of itself was a sight worth seeing.  Mum loved it and is still talking about “that busy place with the boats”.  As we left we both waved at the navy guards who waved back with big grins.

Now had the elusive big black tanker been there, it would have made both our days. However thankfully in a sense it wasn’t because, had it been, we would have had to stop there first on every shopping trip to Galle.