Lord Yamraj’s Transport

After completing the 49^th Staff College Course at Wellington, I was posted as Chief Instructor at the Institute of Anti-Submarine Warfare at Kochi, followed by three tenures on the Staff of the Fleet Commander, Eastern Fleet, as Fleet Anti-Submarine Officer. Both appointments were considered ‘hot’.  Having served directly under three Admirals in succession, I was expecting to go in command of a missile corvette in the least. Most successful officers did just one tenure on the Fleet Staff and moved onto commanding frontline ships. Since three successive (or should I say successful) Admirals had written my reports, I used to sleep walk with cutlass in hand and began having grand nocturnal visions of leading my own personal Fleet into battle! My wife used to bring me back to Terra Firma with her ordinary 20-20 vision “Go back to sleep, Lord Nelson!”

I never imagined that my personal prognostication was so much off the mark. When the command list was promulgated, I began by looking at the top of the list and as I went further down my heart began missing beats. There at the bottom of the list, in very smudged print, as if as an after-thought, where the rust-buckets are generally listed, my name figured prominently against Lord Yamraj’s transportation vehicle - the Water Buffalo or INS Mahish. What can I say: ‘Kismet, Hardly!’

Mahish was a Polish ship, of WWII vintage design, built in 1985 in Gdansk during the Soviet era by Soviet Naval architects with brains in their backsides. India had acquired four ships in exchange for bananas. The ship was about 60 meters in length and had a large ‘Tank space’ to carry BMP tanks and a Company of Troops. Of course with our Indian ingenuity of ‘much more with much less’, we used to carry the much bigger T-72 tanks, Arty field guns, Troops and assorted paraphernalia. The ship was so awkwardly built that in the calmest weather it would roll a good 20 degrees and in order to keep my balance I had to self-induce a counter-roll of 20 degrees to achieve gyro stabilisation. There were times when I reached home after hardly a day’s work and unconscientiously continued with the 20 degree anti-roll, much to the consternation of my wife and kids. “Mum, why is Pa waltzing around in the house?”

While most warships on our planet sail with both engines in the ahead mode, Mahish had to sail with one engine ahead and the other engine in astern mode!  This was because, the engines were designed without reverse gears, so when you needed to go astern, you had to stop the engines and propellers and fire the engines in the astern mode! Since there were limited air bottles on board to kick start the engine, (and also there was no guarantee the engines would fire with the first salvo of air) it became a practice to handle the vessel with one foot forward and one foot backwards.

What can you expect from dishing out bananas, anyway!

The good thing about Mahish was that she was born to be a beach bum! You could beach Mahish time and again and she would never fail to leave bottom every time you wanted to withdraw (from the beach, ofcourse!). Ships are designed to float and sail on water and the thought of deliberately grounding a ship is the nightmare of every mariner. While, putting her on the beach can be done by any landlubber, taking her out of the beach is the key to the whole operation. To do this, the beach is surveyed by physically measuring depths with hand-lead-line and carefully charting the results, calculating the tide for secondary ports and reducing it to chart datum, establishing the gradient of the beach, then adjusting the trim and list of the ship by water ballasting the tanks to match the gradient, before you can even think about beaching the ship. Don’t forget, the tide is constantly changing. So, if you’ve calculated to beach / un-beach at a particular time, you can’t change the time without going through the entire procedure. Remember ‘Operation Overlord’ of WWII, Landing at Normandy, D-Day and H-Hour on 06 June 1944?  There was a method in the madness for so many days of preparation.

On the issue of beaching, Mahish stole a march over the other Landing Ships of the squadron. I can proudly say that I was so confident of hitting the beach at any time of the night or day that the Fortress Commander would dispatch me to give live demonstrations to all the dignitaries visiting Port Blair. When the time came to embarking the 108 Mountain Brigade with their Tanks and field Arty guns during the Kargil episode, Mahish under my command was the only LST at short notice that set sail for a landing on the Makaran coast. Unfortunately, the cabal of party elders in the Government decided to keep the Navy and AirForce out of the skirmish. In frivolous pursuit of a very vacuous mind, I used to think that the disinclination of other Landing ships to prove their beach-worthiness used to border more on ennui than anything else. After Anand Kulkarni (54/B) left, I took over as

L-19, Squadron Commander of the 19^th Landing Ship Squadron. Sadly, during my deliberations with the young Commanding Officers, they would be indulgently dismissive of my efforts to get them to beach their babies.

Mahish was designed to suffer from multiple personality disorders. The ship was built to withstand a nuclear holocaust and so had very small portholes, the size of saucers. We had to navigate the ship from the open bridge. The wireless sets were valve operated with one operator fanning it desperately, and the other transmitting in short bursts to prevent the valves from heating up. The radar worked on cutting edge technology of 1937, when the first maritime radar was fitted on HMS Sheffield and paved the way for all future radars in the world. One usually had to look out of the porthole to confirm a target acquired on the radar.

I can say with confidence that we operated Mahish with a remarkable combination of sloth and caution. The bower anchor on board was non-operational because the gypsy sprockets had worn out, and likewise for the Scotchman’s plate and links and kenter shackles of the anchor chain cable.  With the unbeatable ingenuity of the Naval Repair yard, they had kept replacing bits and pieces of chain cable, windlass drum, brake liners and bushes from decommissioned vessels till it became difficult to estimate which exactly were the original parts of the original windlass. This left us with only the stern sheet anchor (designed for beaching operations) to anchor our vessel. So, during Formation beaching, while every other ship of the Fleet reverentially pointed to the tide at anchor, we showed our backside in utter disregard. It was bottom’s up, without the Gin pennant!

The ship could do very little apart from beaching, but that didn’t stop us from patrolling the Western entrance of the Malacca Straits and challenging every Merchant vessel that passed that way. Mahish would boom on the wireless “Ahoy, what ship, where bound?” and the big Car-Carriers, Tankers, Bulk Carriers, Passenger vessels and Container ships would salute us by lowering their Red ensign to half-mast.

Mahish had a top speed of 6 knots which strangely coincided with its bottom speed of 6 knots. We had a contingency plan when the Flag was embarked for beaching exercise. With binoculars around my neck and braided sea-cap, I would take position behind the compass pinnacle and holler “Ring on Main Engines”, the Chief Quarter Master would repeat “Ring on Main Engines”, the Side Boy would pick it up and pass it down the voice pipe “Ring on Main engines” and the Engineer Officer in the Engine room would smartly put the engine telegraph to ‘Standby Engines’, with all the toots and whistles accompanying the order. Then we would work our way from, ‘Dead Slow Ahead’ to, ‘Slow Ahead’ to ‘Half Ahead’, to ‘Full Ahead’ and ‘Battle Speed’ in same fashion, without moving even half a knot faster. The Admiral would look at the ship’s wake and smile without saying a word.

Once in a while he would tease me by saying “Up two turns, Captain.” Now to a layman this may sound like “Up yours, Captain!”, but in naval parlance it simply means ‘can you rev up your engines a bit to give us more speed? I would oblige with all the seriousness of an English butler “Sir, request permission to hoist the foxle awning on the main mast and use it as a sail.” The Admiral would graciously wave me off and say “Belay the last order, Captain.”

Apart from high speed manoeuvers of this nature, we executed our signal telegraph messages very seriously. Flag Echo on the halyard meant ‘Senior Officers are having lunch and will thereafter retire for a small snooze’, which was designed to totally confuse the enemy because in the International Code of Signals, Flag Echo stands for ‘I am altering course to stbd.’ Incredible!

Since the mascot for our ship was the water buffalo, one fine day I instructed my Executive Officer to have one brought and tied at the gangway for one of our parties. “Chief, Isn’t it a good idea to get a mascot for the evening’s party?” I said. The ExO replied “I don’t think so sir.” “Just do it, dammit!”, I barked (Like the Admirals I had served with). And it was done. That evening as the party progressed, the ExO came to me “Sir, the mascot has shat all over the entrance to the ship and the guests will have to wade through a pile of dung to get to their cars.” From that day there was no talk of the mascot in my presence, though I was keenly aware of all the wardroom jokes that eventually must have found their way to the Reader’s Digest.

At this point I must narrate a very interesting episode that got the establishment knickers in a twist. My coursemate, Anand Kulkarni (54/B), was commanding INS Kumbhir (another Mahish class of ship). Kumbhir was beset with bigger problems than Mahish. After working very hard with the Naval Repair Yard at Port Blair, Anand got the ship to move its bottom and leave the moorings at Haddo wharf. One Sunday morning, Kumbhir set sail with all gusto at a top speed of 3 knots for her machinery trials. It was a fine Sunday morning and the 108 Brigade Commander was settling down to a-hole-in-one-shot on the golf course when he noticed thick black smoke bellowing out from the funnel of INS Kumbhir in the far distance. Not knowing what to make of it, he called the Fortress Commander and reported that one of his ships was on fire!

The Fortress Commander was taken aback but called up the Operations room and told them to get in touch with Kumbhir on the wireless to check it out. Probably the radio set on Kumbhir wasn’t working too well (valve set and what not of WWII vintage), but when the Ops room didn’t get a reply they panicked and launched a helicopter to investigate the matter.  Meanwhile the Commanding Officer and his brave men on board were sorting out  a few in house issues in the engine room (that’s what they are supposed to do), quite oblivious to the outside world. The Officer on watch in the Bridge saw the chopper, but decided it was a routine flight and didn’t think much about it. When Kumbhir finally made way into harbour about 4 hours later, she was welcomed by a very concerned Three Star Admiral, his staff officers, personal retinue and dog, not to mention of an entire Flotilla of Officers and sailors, who had been pressed into service with a red alert and recall messages to sail out immediately. Anand Kulkarni walked down the gangway of his ship to a rousing reception of rabbling ratio! 

In school I used to take part in the 4 x 100 meters relay race. The best runner in a relay is invariably given the last leg and has the advantage of having the whole stadium rise in applause. The second best runner gets the first leg, while the third best runner gets the third last leg, leaving the second leg for the weakest of the four runners. Harold Sir, our sports teacher in school had for some inexplicable reason put me in the second leg, when I deserved to be put on the first leg. Our school was run by the German Jesuits. When I reported the matter to Fr. Oesch, he smiled and said “use this as an opportunity to win the race”.

When the race began and the baton was passed to me, all four first leg runners were more or less neck-to-neck. Since I had a definite edge over all the second leg runners, I took off and gave a huge lead to my team, which continued and we eventually won the race and saved the day for the school.

I remembered this great lesson when I took over command of Mahish.