Page 195 - Michael Frost-Voyages to Maturity-23531.indd

driving down the roads!) but by-passing those defences by circling through the
surrounding desert, surprising the Arab armour (most of which was Russian-
made; the tanks reputedly contained crew heaters for use in Russia’s freezing cold,
but in the searing heat of the desert could not be turned off).

It did not take London long to realise that the position of Canberra would
soon be critical; we were therefore ordered to substantially reduce speed until
it became clear what was to happen in the Canal Zone. But this became quickly
apparent; the Egyptians had been taken completely by surprise, their leadership
was abysmal, their troops ill-trained, and Nasser’s misleading statements caused
Syria and Jordan to attack Israel and lose for Jordan the West Bank, and Syria to
lose the strategic initiative by ceding its Golan Heights. The war was over in six
days, the Israelis suffering under 1,000 casualties (the Arabs lost some 20,000),
and some 400 tanks to the Arabs’ hundreds of tanks and over 450 aircraft. (For a
contemporaneous, if febrile, account of the conflict, see ‘The Tanks of Tammuz’ by
Shabtai Teveth, published in 1968; compare this to a more seasoned commentary
in ‘Enemies and Neighbours; Arabs and Jews in Palestine in Israel, 1917–2017’, by
Ian Black, published in 2017.)

As it was entirely likely that there would be no Canal transits for a while
(blockade ships were immediately sunk at both ends, and it was not reopened
until 1975, the ‘yellow fleet’ of fourteen ships, so named because of their
increasingly sandy colour, being interned in the waterway for the duration, a
fate so narrowly missed by Canberra) London ordered that we turn around
and divert to Australia via The Cape of Good Hope, a route that required some
3,000 nautical miles of extra sailing.
The turnaround required us to dock in Gibraltar, both for refuelling and
for mundane requirements such as the provision of charts for a route almost
unknown to P&O. Gibraltar, being a major naval base, had all that was needed.
The major irony of this whole episode was ironic indeed. Our passenger who
had missed the ship upon our earlier visit to The Rock now had to disembark to fly
back to London, there to fly onwards to Aden; a great story for the grandchildren,
I’m sure, but at the time, one can be equally sure, a very poor subject for mirth.
The voyage down the West coast of Africa was pleasant enough, being mostly
conducted out of the sight of land. There was the traditional ‘Crossing the Line’
ceremony, an event which I witnessed from the bridge during an otherwise lazy
afternoon. What I also witnessed, however, was of substantially more interest.
Looking aft from the bridge, one’s view immediately beneath was of the first class
swimming pool. There I saw, for the first time, two girls, obviously friends (they
had to be, the first-class passengers’ age probably averaging 65 or more). One
was quite young and appeared to be in her mid-teens. The other, however, was a

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