Page 149 - Michael Frost-Voyages to Maturity-23531.indd

Comorin at sea

Comorin was the odd ship out, being the renamed and re-painted Singapore,
a 1950s black-funnelled vessel with updated but similar features to Khyber. It
carried a dozen passengers, or rather, could do so, because those civil servants,
bankers and the like who were destined for the eastern postings preferred to go
in first-class, air-conditioned and fast ships rather than be bored in a converted
freighter; cargo, of course, wasn’t fussy. Thus, passengers on this ship were rare
but welcome. Comorin was to be the last of the old ships to be ‘modernised’ prior
to P&O realising that they were no longer viable economic units. But they for a
while they provided a tri-monthly service to Hong Kong.

It was a sign of the fading utility of this type of ship, however, that while I
joined on September 7th, we waited until the 18th before sailing from London
for the Netherlands, all that down-time being expensively occupied in paying
the ship’s expenses while it earned nothing. Even then, we spent three rather
tedious days in Rotterdam loading miscellaneous machinery and manufactured
goods, followed by arrival in Genoa on September 29th, at this stage a port
holding little of interest for me. We had, as I recall, three passengers, one a
young lady whom I approached and by whom I was immediately rebuffed; all
to the good, in fact, because of the exams that loomed ominously. I suddenly

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