A ripping good yarn about a ghost ship...

The Nutcracker was an American-built T2 oil tanker. It could be said that the crew and even the ship, inanimate object as she was, were all mad, or to put it more gently ‘odd’. Sometimes, a grouping of like minded people from all over the world will arrive at the same location and that in itself is of no consequence but, if they are at odds with what’s accepted as ‘normal’ then of course unusual incidents can occur. The crew of the ‘Fort Freedom’ - nicknamed ‘The Nutcracker’ - was such a crew. From the Ship’s Master down to the ship’s cat they seemed oblivious to standard shipboard behaviour but during the late 1950’s The Nutcracker’s typical shipboard behaviour was destined to enforce an atmosphere of incredulity. The Nutcracker incidents gouged the deepest furrows in the author’s memory. Although the author sailed on many ships before and after the Nutcracker he was never again to be so amazed by other shipboard incidents as those portrayed in this narrative.

Frank Masterson was born in Glasgow and when aged about 7 he moved to an island off the West Coast of Scotland. When in his mid-teens in 1956, he became an able seaman with the British Merchant Navy, and spent the following nine years at sea. He now lives in Canterbury, New Zealand.