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Oriana at Hayman Island

5 Oriana, Comorin and 2nd Mates’ Ticket

was assigned to Oriana. If there were one ship that I could have chosen,
Ithis would have been it, though Canberra would have been equally
desirable, if only because the latter was the fleet flagship.

A quick consultation with my fellow cadets persuaded me that I had been
given the best of all of the choices available for that time of the year; one of them
had been appointed to Ballarat (and while I wanted to go to Australia, it took
but moments to appreciate that my way of going Down Under was likely to be
infinitely more comfortable), and another to Surat, similar to, but certainly better
than, Khyber, on the Far East service (though it would doubtless actually reach
Formosa). And I still had ten days or so of ‘leave’ to enjoy, although it has to be
said that leave was now an even more lonely existence; I had difficulty seeing how
that substantial disadvantage could be overcome. I needed a car.

On May 1st, 1964, I joined Oriana in Southampton.

It was being refurbished, repaired and getting a lick of paint, so there was only
a skeleton crew aboard. And this was a good way to get to know a ship, for any
deck officer had to know how to get around the ship, essentially in smoke, murk
or darkness, without the assistance of lighting (there were, of course, all sorts of
such emergency features, but having already been on a ship that had essentially
completely died in the middle of the Indian Ocean, I was not so sanguine as to
think that everything would work as it should). Additionally, it was in dry-dock

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