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walking around with holsters by their sides, filled or empty I did not care to find
out. We departed at about midnight, bound for Jesselton.

Few, I suspect, have been to Jesselton (now Kota Kinabalu). Though the capital
of Sabah, it was a rather charming, and notably clean, outpost of the Empire. Our
going there hardly seemed necessary for the small amount of cargo which was to
be discharged, but presumably, the company had to ensure that shipping agents
knew on which ships reliance for delivery could be placed, so the flag had to be
shown, even though we were only there for eight hours. Historically interesting,
it had been virtually destroyed by the Japanese and British armies, but the centre
of what vitality there was (this was a sleepy corner of Empire) resided in the
Jesselton Hotel, into which I took a brief look, and was for a moment transported
back into Somerset Maugham’s South-East Asian world. (One could note that
Mohammed Ali visited in 1975 after fighting Joe Bugner in Kuala Lumpur, so the
city was not as ‘remote’ as one might suppose.)

We saw another, perhaps more enlivening, view of Borneo (still in the state of
Sabah) in Labuan, which we reached after steaming at only eight knots through the
night. Once again, we were in a place without much name recognition, but in fact
it was a fairly significant location. Taken over by virtue of (a doubtless iniquitous)
treaty by the British in 1890 as a new Singapore, it first hit the world news when
in April 1904, during the Russo-Japanese War, it became a temporary stop for
Admiral Togo’s battle fleet as it tried to make contact with the doomed Russian
fleet, which had steamed all the way from the Baltic (see ‘Hubris’ by Alistair Horne).
Additionally, in World War II, it became the Japanese administrative capital of their
short-lived East Indies Empire. I was glad to see a bit more of this island when I was
obliged to take two seamen ashore to hospital – a detour so pleasant that I decided
that on my next visit I would take a guided tour.

Another overnight transit of some 575 km took us to Rajang, at the mouth of
Borneo’s longest river. I have already expressed some doubts about destinations
really being ‘ports’, but this was a sine qua non of nothingness. We appeared to
anchor in the jungle, for there was no sign of any habitation (the 4th mate, who
had never been to the Far East, being an ex-BP tanker cadet, told me that there
was a bar ashore. Alas, he was jesting – a particularly feeble one, a good jest
requiring at least a scintilla of credibility). We were truly in a tropical jungle,
however; it poured with rain all day.

Three days later, we were still at anchor. We were also sweltering, because
overnight we had been assailed by a fleet of what must have been the world’s
biggest flying insects. They happily flew into windows and portholes, presumably
attracted by the light, so all had to be kept tightly closed. I was pleased to note
that the locals, who mysteriously appeared from somewhere each day in barges
and small motor boats, had no bother with B-52-sized insects. The cargo too

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