Page 112 - Michael Frost-Voyages to Maturity-23531.indd

But we were also there to learn our craft, brought home to us by the immediate
need to get some rowing experience. For that tuition the school was equipped
with a few gigs (often called Captains’ Gigs, as the Captains’ transportation was
their primary task in the days of sail) but which now are for more mundane use,
including learning how to row. This ‘skill’, rapidly learned, was familiar to me,
as those same boats were used to train all cadets. But it was not exercise that I
enjoyed, for it was hard, created blisters, and was far less efficient than using a
motor boat. But rowing was on the curriculum!

The first rowing exercise was therefore something of a ‘trial to be borne’. Our
task (eight rowers could be accommodated) was to row across the Solent up
to, and under the lee of, tankers berthed at Fawley oil terminal, one of Britain’s
biggest oil ports and sited opposite Warsash. On the very day that we rowed over,
under Nelson’s command, berthed in a conspicuous place was Manhattan, a
virtually new behemoth of a tanker that shortly thereafter achieved fame by being,
because of its special elongated bow, the first, and indeed only, tanker to brave
the Northwest passage from the US east coast to Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, bringing
back from that there one token barrel of crude oil. (The vessel was at that time at
105,000 tons perhaps the world’s largest tanker, but that was a record not to last;
Ardshiel, by no means the world’s largest in 1974, weighed in at 214,085 tons).

To a degree it seems strange how world economic, climatic and political
changes have affected the whole world oil supply, particularly in the Arctic.
Oil no longer needs to be taken from Alaska eastwards (a topic that I will later
address), that passage being almost ice-free, future ice-breakers will likely be
submarine rather than surface vessels, and in 1969 political disagreements
between Canada, Russia (soon to be a much-reduced political force) and
the US caused Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau to assert Canadian Arctic
sovereignty, apparently successfully.

Back in the classroom, we settled down to lectures, which I had begun to enjoy.
Other activities included a quiz, a debate on a Chunnel or a Bridge (I seconded
advocating the Tunnel with a brilliant argument, but which failed to carry the
day), and attending a long and fascinating economics talk by a lecturer from the
London School of Economics, coincidentally at the time that Mick Jagger was
attending that august institution. (Many adults then considered such reprobates
to have IQ’s too low to be measured, but Jagger had qualifications very similar to
my brother’s, who could have got into any University. Again, in my mind, a class
reaction – Jagger’s lack of ‘proper diction’ and louche appearance condemned
him to, well, condemnation.)

I was very happy at this time to receive from Carole a long and quite
affectionate, but rather anodyne, letter, though I was not at all sure that it was
generated by my urbane wit or by the fact that she had gone off someone else.

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