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impose upon anyone who went into such gaseous environments without adequate
backup (attested to by Mostert in ‘Supership’). Reinforcing my reflections, I later
came upon a book by Michael Caine about the filming of ‘Zulu’ (to me one of the
finest of films, with him as a star or otherwise), in which he states that he very
nearly left South Africa during the filming because of the gratuitous violence
shown to blacks by supercilious whites.

But all was part of the day’s work. It transpired that a split of fairly minor
proportions had been discovered in the forward tanks (apart from the masts no
longer being aligned as they should have been) and, on a surveyor’s advice, 200
tons of concrete was pumped between the hull’s forward longitudinal girders. The
damage occasioned by the grounding ended here; thus repaired, Mantua sailed
on until its scrapping in 1976, in reality long past its ‘best by’ date.

This being August 26th, my jaunt into the city was something of a disappointment,
the day being some sort of public holiday. As this was one of those ports where
the oil terminal is located as far from the city as it can be, the actual time ashore
was fairly brief, and all that I managed to do was go to the local zoo. This was
not unenlightening, however; I was particularly drawn to a large tank in which
a number of fishes were kept. What again struck me, with the prevalence there
of large and small sharks, was the behaviour of those animals, for if one needed
a lesson in ‘survival of the fittest’ this was the place to see more of the savagery of
nature. Quite often the biggest of the sharks, not all hammerheads, would simply
bite their aquarium companions, often in half, and eating what they had bitten,
simply glide elsewhere into the tank, presumably satiated.

But it was good to walk ashore, and good to have a coffee that was something
other than the drek served on board. That, of course, was soon enough to be
the norm, for we had the dull prospect that for another seventeen days we were
steaming back to Abadan, a port for which my enthusiasm could scarcely decline;
it was always exceedingly hot and dusty; its only redeeming feature was that mail
was pretty reliable. But it got worse, for from the Gulf we were to sail for nineteen
days to Port Elizabeth, one of the world’s duller ports. Then we had to return to
Abadan, thereafter, to take twenty-one southerly days to reach Cape Town. This,
of course, was a wonderful city, made the better by the berth being in the city
itself (certainly one of the world’s most picturesque ports) and the taking on of
fresh provisions (milk in particular, a welcome change from horrible powdered
milk). Then, once again, we were bound for Abadan.

In general, being actually at sea produces a philosophical view of life. But
occasionally real life throws an odd curve. The vessel being due for periodic
maintenance, the last return to Abadan was notable for heralding the much-
anticipated return to UK, a return that had looked as though it would never occur.

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