Page 27 - Michael Frost-Voyages to Maturity-23531.indd

Several days of unpleasant weather ensued, sixty-foot waves being reported
in the English Channel, which though that might seem strange in so relatively
small a body of water, was not uncommon when northerly winds and the tide
so dictated. The main issue was, however, that Khyber, because of being lightly
loaded (cargo comprising machinery, manufactured goods and special items
like whisky), sat high in the water, and thus bounced over rather than cut its
way through the waves. We, being on the main deck and on the port side, bore
the brunt of the waves crashing against the superstructure as we pitched our
way south across the notoriously rough Bay of Biscay. Thoughts that I might
not be seasick were quickly dispelled; most meals were left barely touched. This
situation was made the worse by a portent of things to come, when speed had
to be reduced to ten knots (a knot is a nautical mile per hour, the ‘mile’ varying
over the globe because of the earth’s shape) because of boiler problems. Watches
brought little relief from the unpleasantness. In fact, rather the opposite; twelve
or so meters above the sea merely made rolling worse. But at least it was fresh air,
and gradually, the nausea went.

But December 11th brought relief. It was a bright sunny day, and early in
the afternoon, Gibraltar was passed. Be it recalled that this impressive rock was
then something of a bone of contention. Though ceded in perpetuity in 1713 by
the Treaty of Utrecht to Britain, Spain had never become reconciled to its loss,
and given the poor relationship between Britain and Franco’s Spain, the rock had
undergone some painful sanctions from its large neighbour. But reading history
from books sometimes gives one a poor sense of reality. Sailing past Gibraltar
made one see how strategic a place it would have been in wartime. Though large,
it could not be described as massive; it is 426 m high compared with, say, Cape
Town’s Table Mountain at 1,095 m. But its domination of the narrow (fourteen
km) strait and its height in relation to its surroundings rendered it mightily
impressive. And, obviously, had this formidable fortress been in the hands of the
Axis, that wartime theatre may have very differently played out.

The calming of the weather, however, is not always a good thing. When the
time came to repair to the bridge that evening, an unpleasant sea had given
way to the sea not being visible at all; we were enveloped by a thick fog and
total silence. Of all the conditions that mariners dislike, fog is the worst. Safety
demands extra lookouts and technology requires constant reference to the radar.
The latter, of course, was far from reliable, small vessels, especially those without
radar reflectors, simply being invisible, and fog-horns often inaudible. And the
term ‘radar-assisted-collision’ had come into maritime parlance, Andrea Doria,
the pride of the Italian trans-Atlantic merchant marine, having been sunk in

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