AN OLD SAILOR REMEMBERS
Young Malay sailors hungry for adventure worked on many British Merchant Navy ships in the 1940s and 1950s
WE were standing along the railings fronting the Mersey River; Pak Cik Md Nor Hamid and I, attempting to sing Ferry Cross the Mersey by Gerry & The Pacemakers. We gave up after a few attempts, much to the amusement of the young documentary crew from Malaysia who came to Liverpool to document the former British Merchant Navy sailor’s life in conjunction with the screening of the movie, Pulang, by Kabir Bhatia.
Not too far away from us stood a grim reminder; a monument with columns and columns of names of Merchant Navy sailors who did not make it home. They had died at sea during World War 2.
Among those names are rows of names unmistakeably from the Malay world.
Young Malay sailors hungry for adventure had worked on many British Merchant Navy ships plying the high seas in the 1940s and 1950s.
Pak Cik Md Nor Hamid, now 85, was one of them and he is one of the last few remaining former sailors who is still standing, so to speak, to tell the stories of his adventures at sea and talk about those who made the ports of Britain their home.
I met Pak Cik Md Nor in the early 1990s and several more times after that, in my quest to meet as many Malay sailors as possible to document their life stories. Many had since passed on.
Earlier, in the hotel where I was staying, I showed him old pictures of some of the former sailors I had interviewed and he remembered them — nicknames and all, which ships they had sailed in, what pranks they were up to; all jawdropping, belly-clutching stuff that had us roaring with laughter. One particular incident was when he stood in awe looking at the Statue of Liberty.
Remembering a friend’s advice, the naïve young lad from Tanjung Keling, Malacca, looked around him, and when no one was watching, gave a salute.
He was told by his friends that it was customary to give a salute when one first visited the statue. I bet his friends too were hiding somewhere and rolling on the floor laughing!
Pak Cik Md Nor, who left after a stint at Jalan Ampas Studios in Singapore working as an assistant cameraman, remembered them all. When he came to Liverpool in December 1952, he remembered meeting an older Malay sailor by the name of Othman Haji Alias, a sailor from Serkam.
“Oh, we called him Othman Aji, he lived above the butcher’s shop!” he said, coming round to the story that brought us to Liverpool.
The feature film, Pulang, started as an idea by Primeworks Studios chief executive officer Datuk Ahmad Izham Omar, who happened to be the grandson of the old sailor who left his wife and 5-year-old son, to work on board one of the British Merchant Navy ships.
The son, Omar, who was studying in London in the 1960s, came searching and found his father who had by then, stopped sailing. He was in Liverpool.
“I believe he stopped sailing because he was always suffering from asthma,” said Pak Cik Md Nor who remembered meeting Omar too.
He also recalled that the older sailor had lived in Colombo, as sailors often did, stopping anywhere that took their fancy before jumping on to another ship for another spot of adventure.
Pak Cik Md Nor must have met many people who contacted him when searching for their longlost relatives.
“I have their names here,” he said, pulling out several pieces of paper from his pocket.
“The problem is, many changed their names and used Christian names because locals found it difficult to pronounce Malay names,” he explained. This is indeed one of the reasons many couldn’t be tracked down.
“I brought many of them here and some stood there with tears in their eyes when they recognised some of the names,” said Pak Cik Md Nor again, when we stood at the memorial, not far from the office where sailors would sign on for the next ship.
Othman, thankfully, for all his travels never changed his name and towards the last few years, he dutifully sent postcards to his son Omar, who was still in school.
Omar was in Form Three when he received the first postcard from Tokyo. But there was no address.
More postcards arrived from places Othman’s ships had docked, still no address, Omar told me when I met him in his house in Petaling Jaya last May.
Pak Cik Md Nor gleefully nodded in agreement at this habit of old sailors moving around settling in different ports. Although he stayed put until today because he met an Irish lady called Margaret who later became his wife, taking the Muslim name Zubaidah.
“I never returned home until after 25 years, although I kept sending money to my mother,” remembered the former sailor whose story about being swept out of his ship by a strong wave and swept back in again by another wave, became a mandatory story to tell when talking about old sailors.
“Yes, life was fun as a sailor, you only think about your parents when there were storms at sea,” he said as we walked back from the seafront to the car.
The life story of the assistant cameraman who turned stuntman or extra in the 1950s movie Antara Senyum dan Tangis with the late Tan Sri P. Ramlee and later as a sailor, has all the ingredients of a blockbuster waiting to be made.
For now, he is happy that the son of a relative, Remy Ishak, is playing the lead role in Pulang.
He is happy to share his stories that will fill the void and gaps in the memories of relatives of old sailors who never returned.
As to whether Othman returned, all will be revealed when the movie hits the big screens in Malaysia on Thursday (July 26).