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was also very conservative (a trait that can flourish in the cloistered world of ships),
which led him to espouse, quite vigorously at times, that Britain was going to pot, in
particular that the working class, whom he thought could barely speak the Queen’s
English, was becoming a bit uppity; the BBC, the divine repository of how to speak,
was beginning far too eagerly to allow the lower orders (the Beatles not excluded)
to rise above their station. As far as he was concerned, change should be gradual,
and, if necessary, be imposed from the top of society downwards, Commonwealth
citizens should appreciate how fortunate they were, and neatness was tantamount
to Godliness (which he also liked, each Sunday conducting a wardroom ‘service’).
True to form, it was rumoured – there may have been a picture in his cabin – that
his car was a vintage Bentley … but that may have been wishful thinking, on our
part, of an archetype that he seemed to represent.

But all that set aside, he was held to be an excellent (the need for the caveat
will soon appear) seaman and he was committed to instructing cadets about the
skills of their trade, even sending us down for a month to work in the engine-
room (an idea that I did not know any other captain to follow, although I am
sure that some did). And, despite his foibles, he was always polite to his officers,
sometimes sternly so; such cannot be said of all captains, many of whom overtly
enjoyed the imperium of a ship at sea.

The mate was of an entirely different order. Arthur Tate was a very small man,
perhaps five feet six inches. This did not seem small generally, but set against
the gargantuan Basil, when on the bridge, he appeared to be quite comfortably
able to walk beneath Basil’s stomach. He was also very taciturn, again perhaps in
response to the effusive and booming Basil. The remaining officers called him
‘half-a-mate’, which fitted rather well. He did not keep a watch and, therefore, had
a superficially easy job, because on a new tanker there was very little paintwork,
ship’s gear or rigging repair to effect. He was also reputed to be well acquainted
with the gin bottle but never known to be drunk. His particular skill, however,
was an essential one; P&O had two large and two small tankers, the first two,
Malwa and Garonne, being for the carriage of ‘black oil’ (lightly refined, sludgy
stuff that was for P&O refined largely in European ports) and the latter two,
Mantua and Maloja being white, or light, oil carriers. They were more specialised,
cargoes varying between the heavier grades (for example, diesel fuel) and the
very light, the most volatile perhaps being aviation spirit, which was barely a
liquid and therefore a dangerous cargo to carry. The problem with such a small
tanker fleet was that very few officers knew much of loading or discharging oil
products, and this was important; there were only four input lines into twenty-
seven cargo tanks, and any type of product could be contaminated by coming
into contact in the slightest way with a less-refined product. Therefore, it was
always necessary to load the cargo from the most refined first to the least refined
last – the latter, I believe it true to say, could hardly ever be contaminated except
when very egregious errors occurred. On the other hand, the highly refined

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