Page 79 - Michael Frost-Voyages to Maturity-23531.indd

Cannanore in Colombo

This is, in many respects, a strange port. It lies amidst a vast accumulation
of mankind, near the mouth of the Hooghly River, a tributary of the Ganges
whose journey to the sea created an ever-expanding agglomeration of islands
and tributary rivers that together constitute the world’s largest delta. The arrival
itself is to another of those ports that is barely visible from the sea, the land being
exceedingly flat and low. It was also subject to many floods, a fortunate fact for
agriculture, but far less so for its millions of inhabitants. Our destination was a
berth at the wonderfully-named Budge Budge, a smallish city some 25 km from
Calcutta itself. There we tied up but were told that we were to expect a tidal surge,
and therefore to ensure that we were well secured to prevent a major marine
incident. Nobody on board knew anything of tidal surges, so we secured ourselves
to the wharf with every rope and wire on the ship and which were available from
ashore. These surges were apparently quite unpredictable, so we prepared for a
six- to seven-foot wall of water (in fact, when it came, it was a sorry little thing
indeed, being about four inches high and so quickly past that few noticed it. But
that was a surprise that was quite welcome, not a disappointment).

As I indicated earlier, mail became one of the primary pleasures of life on
board, and here I received an interesting missive from Mother (she was always
my main correspondent, for she liked writing letters about what was, I suppose, a
fairly dull existence in a somnolent Sussex village; from Father, I recall only two

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