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lunch and dinner, a habit derived from P&O’s origins in its trade with, and
administration of, India.

Watch-keeping on a route such as that across the Indian Ocean could be
tedious and unenlightening. The bridge had to be kept pitch-black (no reading or
anything), the absence of crossing ships, and the mainly straight route between
Sumatra and Aden until arrival at the tip of Ceylon, from where the course
deviated to the north, resulted in our maintaining only two courses for seven
days on end. (The Ceylon of the 1960s demonstrated some identity crises; it had
earlier enjoyed being known as Taprobane, then Serendip, and more recently as
Sri Lanka; I will stick with Ceylon, as it then was.)

But such time was not entirely wasted. On the twelve to four, we were fortunate
to have as our lookout a member of the crew who was outside the norm. We knew
him only as Kadar, but he spoke good English, and, of course, excellent Hindustani.
Therefore, I could enjoy some good first-hand lessons in that language, on which
subject we cadets were periodically tested (not a complicated language, but, as I
discovered, with a country boasting some 200 languages, not actually as useful
as expected). Just as significantly, he was quite anxious to take a 2nd mates’ ticket
so that he could graduate to the nascent Indian merchant marine. In 1961, it was
obvious that India was a coming maritime power, there having been at Warsash
two Indian cadets (I became quite friendly with one, a gentleman named Dadi
Modi, an intelligent fellow whose abilities augured well for his nautical career)
who, as with the two Iraqi cadets referred to earlier, demonstrated the way to a
future that not all westerners accepted, even so long after the independence of
South Asia’s nations. The night-time discussions were, therefore, by no means
uninteresting as, while Kadar was little ‘educated’, it was apparent that he wanted
to take every opportunity to learn what he could but that he had already taken
upon himself the need to learn something of politics, economics and philosophy
(not that someone from his milieu would be ignorant of the latter; Indians had
composed the Vedic texts several hundred years before Pythagoras, Socrates and
Plato had begun to rationalise ethics, psychology and logic).

While the northeast and south-westerly monsoon seasons are usually very
marked, March is, as it were, a sort of shoulder season. We were, therefore, on
this section of the trip favoured with a markedly pleasing period of weather and
enjoyed a ‘calm sea and prosperous voyage’, marred only by the revelation that
our destinations in northern Europe were to be Bremen, Hamburg, Rotterdam,
Le Havre, Antwerp (for dry-docking) and then London for five days. This seemed
to me distinctly unfair; nearly five months at sea and then only five days at home.
(The order of ports was confusing, as I could not see how loading cargo in the
appropriate order could be accomplished if one did not know in what order the
ship was to deliver its goods. The answer, of course, was a combination of lower
weight (stability) and careful organisation of goods on the ship’s three levels;

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