Old Jonesy

Old  Jonsey

Old Jonesy was born on 7^th August 1890 and spent most of his life in the merchant navy at sea. Born to proud Welsh Parents from the Wrexham area he spent his early life in the streets around Liverpool docks. From the moment he left school at thirteen or fourteen he was at sea working in the engine rooms on merchant ships. Engines were his heart and he studied engines like children today study books. Jonesy knew nothing else other then the life of a sailor. By the time the First World was started he had already travelled the world and stood on every continent. Every ocean was his factory but only one port was his home, Liverpool. By 24 he was a ships engineer and was soon sailing the Atlantic Ocean on the convoys bringing war supplies from America. He even had the glory of winning a medal in the First World War after the ship he was serving on managed to sink a “U” boat. Now bearing in mind this was a merchant ship armed with only one solitary gun mounted on the ships bow; this was quite an incredible and unusual feat. Although old Jonesy could hardly read or write, his knowledge of ships engines was next to none. This was an age when engineers would feel, smell, listen and touch in order to maintain their engines, text books and theory didn’t exist, to be a good engineer you had to become part of this living entity called an engine. Every little vibration and every slight change of tone in the constant throb of the turbines was interpreted, understood and dealt with by these amazing men. No picking up the mobile phone and asking for help, if you failed to keep your ships engine running sweet it could mean certain death for you and your shipmates. You ate, slept and lived with the engine until its constant throb became your heartbeat and its oil became your blood.

There was none of the glamour and glory enjoyed by the boys in the Royal Navy, the lads in the merchant navy endured the roughest of ships and the filthiest of conditions that went with these rust buckets. During times of conflict and risk, it was quite common for the boys in the boiler room to be locked in their engine rooms to ensure they didn’t abandon their engines if the ship got hit. It was a stern reality that they either lived or died with their machinery. 

The sea was their life and often their death, many perished on those long days spent on the convoys between America and England. The Atlantic ocean can be one of the cruellest seas on the planet, grey sky leaden with rain, howling wind and endless cold grey ocean heaving up to the height of a large house then crashing down with all the force gravity can hurl on the old rusty hulks used to transport vital supplies to keep Mother England alive. If the cold didn’t kill them, the German U boats certainly would. Even in the moments they tried to sleep one ear was constantly listening out for any indication of the silent killer lurking below. The only warning the poor lads in the engine room got that a torpedo had hit the ship was a wall of icy black water and certain death. Those above often had to endure a slow death in the cold icy black water smothered in filthy black oil, unless by a remote chance that another ship dared to take the risk to pick up the poor souls that survived the initial plunge into hells mouth. The U boats were ruthless and often worked in packs like hungry snarling wolves stalking their prey. If a ship stopped to rescue sailors there was every chance that a U boat would soon send that ship down to the inky depths of Davey Jones locker.

The courage sweat and tears given in the First World War were rewarded by years of desperation and broken hope caused by the depression of the 1920s and early 1930s. Merchant sailors spent half the life in cruel poor conditions at sea and the other half their lives pounding up and down the dock looking for a sail on one of the dilapidated rust buckets tied to the harbour.

However just after the First World war Jonesy met his Nelly and after they married they were blessed with four healthy children, one girl and three boys. Old Bill Jones didn’t get much chance to see his kids grow up as he spent most of his early married life at sea. Nelly cared for her brood with the money Bill earned on his journeys across the Oceans.

The dream of peace and a better world were soon shattered by the rise of Nazis Germany. In September 1939 Poland became the catalyst that would set Europe on fire and change the lives of men for generations to come.  Hitler’s evil hordes were soon trampling Europe under their jack boots, only this time the machines of war would also spit their venomous poison from the air as well as on land and sea. 

The age of the bomber plane had arrived and soon the cities of Europe would become the burning funeral pyres of mankind.

Liverpool port was to suffer the full might of the Nazis Luftwaffe as it rained its cargo of death down on the innocent inhabitants below. Night after night the bombers came leaving the smouldering piles of rubble behind and a devastated population to scramble amongst the rubble for their loved ones crushed beyond recognition.

Hitler knew that to crush England all he needed to do was starve its population. To do this he would send his U boats to sink the convoys and his bombers to destroy the ports. Liverpool was the allied command centre for The Battle of the Atlantic, destroy Liverpool and the Battle of the Atlantic would be his.

During the Second World War old Jonesy was now too old to serve on the convoys, so rather than carry broom handles and toss flour bags around whilst playing at being soldiers in the dad’s army, he did his bit by serving on the dredgers clearing the sea lanes in and out of the Mersey. If he thought the convoys were dangerous this was even worse. Clearing a route through one of the most bombed sea lanes of  World War Two, was extremely dangerous work due to constant bombing, loose mines and unexploded munitions on the river bed. The Port of Liverpool at one stage was cut off from the rest of Britain for five days by the constant targeting of the German Luftwaffe. The Mersey was awash with the debris of war. Bodies of dead sailors were constantly being dragged out of the water and the sunken hulks of damaged ships littering the smashed dock side, poked their broken remains above the filthy waters of the Mersey as if to ask for salvation.

After The Second World War Jonesy never again sailed the Oceans. However the sea was forever in his blood and even when he gave away his old kit bag for the last time, he would still go down to the docks in Liverpool and spend hours chatting to the old sea dogs coming in on their ships. He would have a sad far off look in his eyes as the ships dropped their moorings and slipped away on their various adventures across the seven seas slowly steaming out of the Liverpool docks along the old muddy waters of the river Mersey.

Old Jonesy may have been illiterate and a salty old sea dog but he was extremely loyal to the woman he married. After leaving the sea he spent the rest of his life constantly at her side. It was only when he lost the woman he had loved and lived with all his adult life that he finally past away. The doctor said that Jonesy’s health was the health of a man twenty years younger but that he no longer had the will to live. 

If he could have he would have put on the death certificate on the 7^th July 1970 that Jonesy had died of a broken heart, a year or so after his Nelly had passed away.