Page 105 - Michael Frost-Voyages to Maturity-23531.indd

I was pleased to find that Anne and her latest beau had decided to pull together
a half dozen or so of our ship’s own lusty youth and take a trip ashore, and to this
group I was invited. We put ourselves in the hands of a taxi driver (this, we were
told, was a city of the honest, presumably because la policia enforced their own
inquisitional morality), and he took us to a rowdy night-club.
My enthusiasm for flamenco dancing and associated hi-jinks had never been
very great, and this club, half full of U.S. sailors, most of whom did not seem
to eschew the local beer, made something of a convert of me, though perhaps
not a whole-hearted one. Flamenco was certainly noisy and skilful, our small
group exhibiting little British reserve; in fact, Anne seemed to become quite flirty,
something to which I took no exception at all, she complementing my inelegant
shape exceedingly well. Nobody seemed to get drunk, but that might have had
something to do with the four MPs who hovered by the bar. It was a noisy, but
surprisingly chaste, long evening out.

The morning saw few activities. Another tour would have served me well,
but as Barcelona was a frequent cruise port, I was unworried. However, I was
never to return.

The final port was Gibraltar (it did seem that politics may have been involved,
for in comparison with the preceding joys of Venice, Piraeus, Naples and Barcelona,
this was a place of few pleasures – the Barbary apes may be cute, but only for
ten minutes. And there was no shortage of alternative ports, the most obvious
being Lisbon, Oporto and Corunna, all of which had unique features that were
more exotic than British pubs). But after a cruise of this length, nobody seemed
concerned that three days later we berthed in drab Tilbury. Relationships ended
– though not all – largely, one supposes, because even on a large ship, everybody
lives in close and artificial proximity to all sorts of people, and propinquity does
not always breed tolerance.
Although to me the personal experiences of nearly two months of
Mediterranean cruising were eye-popping educational and maturing events, it
should have been clear to all observers, including me, that we were at the end of
an era. While both of the ships were fine examples of 1950’s design and function,
they were essentially obsolete even as they were being built. No longer would
moderately fast ships carrying passengers and cargo to the ends of the earth be in
demand, for the air routes were now thoroughly conquered and specialised cargo
ships could far more effectively carry the varied products to and from the large
container ports that were beginning to be constructed. P&O had foreseen the
changes being forced upon international trade, for the company had produced
Canberra and Oriana, but the implications of the changes were not fully realised
even with these two vessels, which were magnificently obsolescent even when
launched. A further somewhat myopic decision was made when the catastrophic

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