Page 187 - Michael Frost-Voyages to Maturity-23531.indd

The 3rd mate habitually kept the twelve to four, by no means my favoured
watch. However, on this ship it was not too bad an assignment, for few bothered
those on the bridge after midnight, and most of the unpleasant activities took
place while one was asleep; I was also fortunate to have ascribed to me the junior
cadet, Brian Neilson. This young man was one of the most literate and erudite
persons who crossed my path while I was at sea. He suffered from an unfortunate
appearance, being dark and swarthy and somewhat hunched, to the extent that I
thought that he suffered from mild kyphosis, but he had a rare breadth of mind
that kept us in good conversation night after night on the long trip to Karachi.
I quickly came to the conclusion that he was not long for a nautical career; he
undoubtedly should have been at University. (I believe that this was in fact his
only trip to sea, though what became of him I do not know.)

A more significant personnel issue arose with the Captain. His wife, a pleasant
lady who was well liked by the officers, suffered a mysterious ailment shortly
before arrival in West Pakistan, and had to be flown home with her husband from
Karachi. This was a matter of some relief for all of us. Foote took over, as it was
expected that Captain Firth would soon be back. In fact, his wife’s indisposition
was more severe than first thought – he returned to the ship only at the conclusion
of the voyage – but Foote was a good replacement, taciturn, but a reasonable man
with whom to work.

Karachi was, as I had earlier thought, not a place where one would dwell
with any pleasure. Not especially hot in November, it nevertheless suffered from
the impediments of maladministration and poverty. The equipment operating
in the docks comprised elderly cranes of a type that the Royal Docks had long
since sent off to third-world ports and was made the worse at night by the most
Gotterdammerung of scenes, great flashes of lightning emanating from the
gantries and shore connections, often of sufficient intensity to read a book. A
supervisor told me that the demonic scene arose from the age of the equipment,
the extreme unreliability of the electricity supply and, as much as anything else,
the ignorance of the crane-operators (as often as not, he told me, the variable
electric current would cause large numbers of fuses to blow – as in ‘lightning
bolts’ – the fuses then simply being replaced by any nails of sufficient size that
happened to be available, the supply of correct fuses having long since been
exhausted). Frankly, I couldn’t wait to leave for East Pakistan.

As before noted, the Ganges-Brahmaputra Delta is the world’s largest. How
many people the system supports is difficult to calculate, but because of it being
one of the world’s most fertile regions, it directly supports a population in the
hundreds of millions. It floods frequently, is subject to cyclones, rising sea levels,
tectonic plate movements, and unpredictable changes in its course. There are a
number of significant cities in the vicinity, but in 1966 the primary problem –
though whether it was actually seen within the country as a problem is doubtful
– was population growth. At the time of our arrival, the population was over 70

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