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cheek by jowl for three to six months at a time, this looked like an uncomfortable
squeeze indeed.

As nothing seemed to be particularly required of me at that time, I looked
around what was probably to be my home for a considerable time. I looked for
the wardroom and dining saloon but found that the Spartan nature of the ship
allowed only for a ‘dining room’ that was a bunch of immovable tables that bore
more of a resemblance to a cafeteria than anywhere where one would sit and chat.
The utilitarian nature of the ship seemed to be absolute.

I ventured out onto the deck. One of the best features of the Royal Docks
was that ships’ loading and discharging was carried out, and overseen by, local
crews or gangs specially chosen to take over these duties at the home port, ships’
deck officers usually carrying out these tasks in foreign ports. (By happenstance,
my maternal grandfather had headed one of those specialist gangs for a number
of years, but he had died before I had had the urge to go to sea so imparted no
relevant wisdom to me.) On this occasion, all this was naturally quite new to
me. I saw a lower hold full of chrome ore, smelled the odiously sweet aroma of
heated palm oil in the deep-tanks (both from Malaya), saw some of the tobacco
(from Indonesia) being unloaded from the secure lock-ups, watched the curious
task of unloading the ‘ingots’ of rubber (a bit like handling tea-chest sized jelly
cubes covered with talcum powder, this to prevent the rubber degenerating into
one congealed wobbly mess), this from Borneo and Sarawak, and saw numerous
miscellaneous oddments like cinnamon sticks from the Philippines. I began to
feel that I was about to learn what world trade was all about.

Little, therefore, needing my attention, I walked home (one could walk under
the Thames by foot tunnel, ferries being much slower than walking through
the drab – and very smelly – passage that was well located both to get to the
docks and to our shop and home on the south side of the river). Mother was very
surprised to see me – I think that she expected me to be on my way to India by
that time – and we had fish and chips for dinner, the last time that the family ever
dined together in Woolwich.

A few words are necessary here about the ships and the changes in the nautical
environment of the sixties, a time of huge change in most aspects of life in the
western world but particularly within the seagoing fraternity.

World War II could not have been won by Britain at sea but could easily have
been lost. The British Merchant Marine in 1939 was, by some way, the world’s
largest. But it was extremely vulnerable; there were many months when U-boats

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