MARITIME ADVENTURES: As a 19-year-old Senior Ordinary Seaman in 1961, I was marooned with others in the Congo interior.

This followed the cargo liner’s grounding during the aborted navigation of the 4,700km long River Congo. Just short of Matadi, the British freighter MV King Arthur was caught in the currents of the world’s deepest river.

The stricken vessel, with now a truck-sized hole in its bow, was towed by a Belgian tug to the riverside village known as Boma.

On the far bank could be viewed the vast savannah of Portuguese Angola. The Congo Crisis was then in full spate, and the river provided the cover of darkness for the crossing of illicit arms and mercenaries.

There was always the possibility that the troubled freighter and its crew could fall victim to unpredictable events during the ongoing tribal rivalries and hostilities.

The stranded ship’s location placed it on a collision course with a region pivotal in importance to the outcome of the Congo Crisis itself. When addressing King Arthur’s gathered crew, the 2^nd Officer came straight to the point. On the advice of the ship’s agents, all were cautioned against setting foot outside the kraal. The advice given was to stay aboard or close to the ship.

The small river town’s small quayside was protected by troops loyal to the Armée Nationale Congolaise. Along the jetty’s length were sand-bagged machine gun posts.

Bored whilst in a wharfside bar, I and a deck boy were foolish enough to accept a native’s invitation to visit a remote kraal situated in the jungle several kilometres from our moored vessel. 

Whilst drinking in the remote shantytown’s corrugated tin-constructed bar, our European features caused us to be singled out first with a welcome and then by curiosity and then with barely concealed hostility.

As we two relaxed, my 16-year-old companion was blissfully unaware of the impending menace closing in on us. However, I had by now realised the sinister interest being taken in us.

Trapped in a remote tin tavern in which several hundred near primitive tribes of drunken locals cavorted to tribal music, I realised we two were increasingly viewed with suspicion and hostility that bordered on hatred of Whites.

Realising I had only moments to extricate us from what could be a bloodbath, I confided in Peter, the deck boy. 

Far left is the 16-year-old deck boy who narrowly escaped with his life. It was a contented life aboard the MV King Arthur marooned on the River Congo. Mike Smith raises his hand whilst Jock Smart has his back to the camera.

‘We are going for a piss.’

‘I don’t need to.’

‘If you don’t go for a piss, you will be killed. Do not look around you. Just follow me. Do not look at others.’

After excusing ourselves, we casually made our way to and through the bar’s batwing doors. Such drinking dens do not boast conventional toilets. One relieves oneself outside against the ramshackle sides of the shebeen.

‘Don’t waste time peeing, Peter. Just run like fuck as your life depends on it because it fucking well does. Are you ready?’

The now terrified 16-year-old deck boy looked at me to see if I was pulling his leg. My agitated expression was all he needed for him to follow my advice.

As soon as the batwing doors closed behind us, we hurtled as fast as our legs could carry us down the rough jungle track along which we had arrived.

After one or two kilometres of hard sprinting and jogging, I falsely believed we had made good our escape. Pausing in our headlong flight and with hands on our knees, we fugitives gasped for air in a jungle clearing.

The sky that night was unusually bright, and thankfully, there was a moon. All around us was the claustrophobic and sinister dense jungl,e but all was silent.

Like two scared hunted deer, we held each other up for support. I was alarmed by a sound of rustling in the nearby foliage.  Glancing to my right, what I then saw shocked me to the core. Against the lighter shadows, I could make out half-crouching running figures. Each native was armed with a panga as they furtively attempted to head us off.

 If our pursuers were to succeed in cutting off our means of escape, there could be little doubt as to our fate. Sensing a gap still remained ahead in the forest, I urged the deck boy to take flight again.

Running as fast as our legs could carry us, we two hurtled down the myriad of forest tracks and with the hot, fetid jungle night air burning our lungs, we finally broke through a clearing to the outskirts of the Boma kraal where we could sight of our marooned vessel.

Such an account gives a glimpse into the dark heart of Africa. Africa was virtually unchanged since the Dark Continent was thus described by the 19th-century novelist Joseph Conrad. You can share this story on social media: TELL US WHAT YOU THINK.

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