I preferred the work hours to the slack hours, enjoyed using the body, creating steam, and the magic of making ten thousand tons move through vast oceans. But at the tag end of this journey I was distracted by the pleading eye as I worked out my watch. The owner of the eye, I thought, would need water. There had been no rain for over a week.

The eye’s owner would be hungry by now. You can’t be a man if you let another man go without food and water.

At the end of my shift, and because I had to know I stood upright, walked on two feet and breathed air, I wrapped meat and potatoes in paper, filled my mug with water and placed these as close as I could to where the eye lived. I pressed myself back into an alcove nearby and waited. It was a good half hour before a slow, misshapen being crept from the shadows, reached for the two items and made a painful retreat into the dark. A breath-taking wind had come up, and a fine swell played tricks with my feet as I went on my way, even though I’d had my sea-legs for a few years by then.

I was fifteen when I first, accidentally and luckily, became a seafarer, not knowing what adventures I would have, who I would meet or what new places I would visit. Seeking work, two uncles and I came to the harbour of Wellington to seagull. Having work is the most important thing in life.

The uncles and I had started out the day before, in the dark of a winter morning. Not a penny among us, but we had preserved eels for the train guard, a blanket and towel each, bread and a half packet of tea in a biscuit tin. We had a fishing line in a billy. Our gift of eels got us into the guard’s van without tickets, and soon after daybreak – coming out between high hills, which we could see receding as we took turns at the one small window to the rear of the van – we were looking out over grey sea lashing big tails, and the ships and buildings of Wellington Harbour. After leaving the train we went to present ourselves at the waterside.

We were in among a crowd of men, seagulls they called us, all hoping to be selected for a day’s work. ‘We can try,’ Uncle Tad said, ‘but not much show for the native man.’ There was no queuing those days. No, you took your chances. Though the selectors’ eyes passed us by on that first morning we sat out the day hoping to be called on, hoping we could make ourselves useful in some way and earn a coin or two.