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was made the better, however, by my starting on May 19th (a bit late really, but
that gave me more time for saving to buy the necessary blue mess dress that was
needed for formal occasions for all officers, and which to this point I had not
needed to purchase) with a Mediterranean cruise. By coincidence I received at
about the same time a letter from Karen, who was in Norway, indicating that she
expected to be in Venice on the same day as Oronsay was scheduled to be there. I
wrote quickly to make the date, especially because at that time she had for a time
a ‘permanent’ European address.

All was not over with temporary assignments, however; I had another dock
staff appointment to Baradine, a black-hulled cargo carrier designated for the
Australia run, and was for two weeks berthed in the Royal Docks. As noted
earlier, P&O retained a highly competent group of cargo supervisors, and gangs
that knew precisely what they were doing. The dock duty was therefore more
boring than anything else, and furthermore did not count as sea-time needed to
accumulate before I could sit for my 1st mates. I therefore looked forward to this
posting with a lack of enthusiasm. Even the location of the docks on the north
side of the Thames was against the any enjoyment, Woolwich, East Ham, Ilford
and Dagenham having very little to excite the senses.

On April 8th, I joined Baradine (much like an un-modernised Comorin but
infinitely better than Khyber). It was a mark of my ennui that it was not until April
24th that David’s comments about Louise suddenly came back to me. I had her
address and phone number, so a brief call to her house elicited from her mother a
dinner invitation. Though Mottingham meant nothing to me, I decided to go there
by bus (the MGA was again playing up). Crossing over the Thames to Woolwich
I found that bus connections were easy, and I soon arrived to a nice detached
house and was greeted by her mother and introduced to her father (an avuncular
pipe-smoker) and her young brother, a charming young fellow of about 8 who
was deep in a discussion with his father about local politics (all this while we
were awaiting Louise’s arrival – she evidently knew how to make an entrance, for
I myself, because of some tactical dawdling, had effected my arrival at precisely
the appointed hour). Ten minutes elapsed before she descended, and my first
reaction was, well, I was tongue-tied. She was not conventionally ‘beautiful’, but
appeared very fit, charming and possessed of the sexiest imaginable voice.

Dinner was delightful, though I have no idea what we ate! It transpired that
Louise was working for a London company that was engaged in research in the
North Sea for oil, and 1965 was by coincidence a rather crucial year. In September
oil deposits were found in the West Sole Field, to be shortly followed by the
collapse of an oil rig with substantial loss of life. Of course, discoveries of this
sort do not simply occur spontaneously; exploration was envisaged by the UK
Continental Shelf Act in May 1964, and for some time Louise had been engaged
in research with this company (BP? - I never found out). It was known by April

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