w and it was certainly rubbish in 1972. The range for a helicopter is quite small, with only 2-3 hours sailing most ships were out of range unless hugging the coast. We had found out the name of the ship, she was called the Berge Istra, but our Lloyds list did not have information on her.

She was a monster, a huge long green monster. As she came alongside our

In 1971 I was the senior surgeon on the P&O liner Orcades. It was coming home from Australia time. 24 hours out of Freemantle in the middle of the night there was a summons to the Radio Room for an urgent medical consultation with an unnamed ship’s master It was his Chief Electrician who had been repairing electrical wiring on top of one of the ship’s boilers; he had received a severe shock (the ship worked on 480 volts) and had been catapulted backwards and fallen at least 20 feet. He was still alive but the Captain feared he was dying and needed more assistance than he and his crew could provide.

It was quickly apparent that he was in a lot of pain, and the master needed advice on the appropriate dose and frequency of morphine that the ship was carrying in its medical supplies. The nature of the pain suggested chest wall injuries, front and back, and possible vertebral damage in the lower thoracic and upper lumbar region. The two most pressing worries were that he was peeing blood and getting paler and iller by the hour. This strongly suggested internal injury to at least one kidney and possible internal bleeding due to injury to other organs such as the liver or spleen. He probably needed surgery and he would soon definitely need blood, both ships were a minimum of 2 days from land in any direction. There is a commonly held myth that anything serious that goes wrong on a ship can be rectified by dispatching a helicopter, this is rubbish now and it was certainly rubbish in 1972. The range for a helicopter is quite small, with only 2-3 hours sailing most ships were out of range unless hugging the coast. We had found out the name of the ship, she was called the Berge Istra, but our Lloyds list did not have information on her.

She was a monster, a huge long green monster. As she came alongside our

d received a severe shock (the ship worked on 480 volts) and had been catapulted backwards and fallen at least 20 feet. He was still alive but the Captain feared he was dying and needed more assistance than he and his crew could provide.

It was quickly apparent that he was in a lot of pain, and the master needed advice on the appropriate dose and frequency of morphine that the ship was carrying in its medical supplies. The nature of the pain suggested chest wall injuries, front and back, and possible vertebral damage in the lower thoracic and upper lumbar region. The two most pressing worries were that he was peeing blood and getting paler and iller by the hour. This strongly suggested internal injury to at least one kidney and possible internal bleeding due to injury to other organs such as the liver or spleen. He probably needed surgery and he would soon definitely need blood, both ships were a minimum of 2 days from land in any direction. There is a commonly held myth that anything serious that goes wrong on a ship can be rectified by dispatching a helicopter, this is rubbish now and it was certainly rubbish in 1972. The range for a helicopter is quite small, with only 2-3 hours sailing most ships were out of range unless hugging the coast. We had found out the name of the ship, she was called the Berge Istra, but our Lloyds list did not have information on her.

She was a monster, a huge long green monster. As she came alongside our

morphine that the ship was carrying in its medical supplies. The nature of the pain suggested chest wall injuries, front and back, and possible vertebral damage in the lower thoracic and upper lumbar region. The two most pressing worries were that he was peeing blood and getting paler and iller by the hour. This strongly suggested internal injury to at least one kidney and possible internal bleeding due to injury to other organs such as the liver or spleen. He probably needed surgery and he would soon definitely need blood, both ships were a minimum of 2 days from land in any direction. There is a commonly held myth that anything serious that goes wrong on a ship can be rectified by dispatching a helicopter, this is rubbish now and it was certainly rubbish in 1972. The range for a helicopter is quite small, with only 2-3 hours sailing most ships were out of range unless hugging the coast. We had found out the name of the ship, she was called the Berge Istra, but our Lloyds list did not have information on her.

She was a monster, a huge long green monster. As she came alongside our

ney and possible internal bleeding due to injury to other organs such as the liver or spleen. He probably needed surgery and he would soon definitely need blood, both ships were a minimum of 2 days from land in any direction. There is a commonly held myth that anything serious that goes wrong on a ship can be rectified by dispatching a helicopter, this is rubbish now and it was certainly rubbish in 1972. The range for a helicopter is quite small, with only 2-3 hours sailing most ships were out of range unless hugging the coast. We had found out the name of the ship, she was called the Berge Istra, but our Lloyds list did not have information on her.

She was a monster, a huge long green monster. As she came alongside our

w and it was certainly rubbish in 1972. The range for a helicopter is quite small, with only 2-3 hours sailing most ships were out of range unless hugging the coast. We had found out the name of the ship, she was called the Berge Istra, but our Lloyds list did not have information on her.

She was a monster, a huge long green monster. As she came alongside our relative sizes became plain. We were a big passenger ship, 28,000 tons give or take, but we could have been a lifeboat for this one; it transpired that at that moment she was the biggest ship on the planet. In an amazingly short time, they had lowered a tiny looking little red lifeboat, strapped the injured man into a wrap around stretcher, named after its designer, Anderson, and secured him as tightly as possible. The lifeboat bobbed across in double quick time. We had our patient on board and carried him to the hospital when the first problem presented itself. He, like his ship, was huge. So huge that he was too long for our hospital beds, he was 6ft 8in tall. We made him comfortable on one bed while the Ship’s Carpenter sawed off the foot of the other bed. He was pale as a ghost, but able to talk and his English was good though his nationality was Swedish. His pulse was thin and fast, his blood pressure low and he was in agony every time he urinated because of blood clots in the pee. On closer examination it seemed that a lower left rib had ripped into the left kidney, more ominously it looked like he had a ruptured spleen too. His abdomen was tense, exquisitely tender and the muscle hardened on light touch. This was probably due to blood in the peritoneal cavity but could indicate a ruptured bowel.

All in all his chances of reaching Durban did not look too bright, and the first priority was to give him some blood and keep his pain as co