Page 178 - Michael Frost-Voyages to Maturity-23531.indd

conversationalist and, in truth, was a rather dull man. He was always polite to his
officers, but it seemed that he favoured the solitude of command. Unfortunately,
my lingering recollection of the poor man was that, being on the eight to twelve,
he always came up to the bridge before he turned in for the night, and if we were
in sufficiently warm climes, he preferred to come up clad only in his sagging
Y-fronts. Even in the pitch dark this was not a pretty sight.

The mate was a different cup of tea. New to P&O, most of his prior experience
having been on tankers, he had few of the social graces that the company seemed
to favour. Being a small man, he had, we thought, a significant Napoleonic
complex; at all times he made sure to assert his rank, especially to the junior
officers. He actually acted differently with the 2nd mate, Michael Carter, a bearish
shambles of a man with a giant sense of humour and proportional maritime
experience, one upon whom the assertion of rank would just make the asserter
look foolish. The other person of significance was the R/O, Chris Hall, a young
man of abundant humour and good sense. He, Andrews and I made a good trio,
all being of similar age and with similar views on life.

The first port was Aqaba, Jordan. True, this place had little to do with Africa,
but we had some crated machinery to discharge. The geography, and politics, of
the region were interesting in themselves. From our anchorage, looking from
west to east, one saw Egypt, a United Nations camp, Israel, more United Nations,
Jordan and Saudi Arabia, all apparently spoiling for a fight over this desperately
unpleasant corner of the globe. And all too soon, they were all to learn another
lesson in fighting … and how not to do it.

We could not go ashore in Aqaba, but we could in Port Sudan if we so wished.
This particular port had a reputation among seamen in general as being one of
the world’s least pleasant. And this was how it appeared to me as I took a brief
walk around the wharf. The heat was almost intolerable and made the worse
by the swirling sand. Much of the transportation was by camel, animals with
undoubted attributes, but the old saw that the creature is a horse designed by a
committee is apt enough to remain funny. The town itself was as flat as could be,
and was, to me at least, made doubly dull by the sandy look of the place. I noted
some pleasant buildings, but thought they probably dated from when Sir Herbert
Kitchener, with young Winston Churchill in tow, had made his incursion into
this sorry country. We couldn’t wait to speed on towards Zanzibar.

In fact, that fabled name was an historic memory, for almost precisely two
years before our arrival the islands had merged with Tanganyika to become
Tanzania, a logical consequence of geography. However, Zanzibar was only an
anchorage, and therefore without transportation ashore, a fact which somebody
on board who had visited the place before said was a blessing in disguise. He
described it as a Hole.

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