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they were a popular tourist destination, but did not require much boat-work on
our part. In the late afternoon, I decided that a walk ashore with Elaine would
be good exercise, and a mere walk turned a nice day into a perfect evening.
One of Father’s favourite pieces of music was Falla’s ‘Nights in the Gardens of
Spain’ – that evening, I thought it the most perfect music ever composed, so
much in accord with this earthly paradise was it. I actually thought that I had
found a soul-mate; I was, of course, still in the fumbling-troll class of young
men, though, like it or not, without the fumbling. Two days later, the two of us
attended the tourist Fancy Dress Night (for the first-class to even visit tourist
was strictly verboten, but who was to know?) and ended the evening with a rum
and coke in my first-class cabin.
The cruise’s last port was Corunna. While at school in Folkestone, I habitually
spent many hours in its library. It actually had rather a good collection for a school
and had a selection of books on military history (some generous benefactor had
bequeathed his library to the school), one of which included the story of the Battle
of Corunna, when in 1808 Sir John Moore, with a small British army, disrupted
Napoleon’s plan for the subjugation of the Peninsular. I had always wondered
what the place would be like; so small a force, in effect, preventing the conquest
of Spain by a quarter of a million men under Europe’s most able commander was
a feat of arms much beloved of British schoolboys. Unfortunately, this version
of the facts was somewhat alternative, the truer story being that an under-
equipped and underpaid British (and partially Spanish) army had been asked by
a tightwad government to fulfil an impossible task. Almost at once it was entirely
outmaneuvered by the French, and then forced to flee precipitously to ships
provided for the purpose in the unprotected harbour of Corunna, but leaving
behind an accumulation of stores that the French by then needed more than did
the British (the French army was required to provision itself, gleaning from the
territory conquered what it could, thereby being very mobile, but, as in Russia,
very vulnerable). The British also lost more men than the French; British history
books had a tendency to grasp a victory from what any other nation would term a
defeat, but this was plainly not even a Pyrrhic victory. Moore, killed in action, was
subsequently vilified by the very government that had imposed such impractical
objectives upon him.

Interesting to see, however, was the topography of the port. Without
much by way of defensible hilly terrain, its advantage was that its harbour
was surrounded on three sides by water, thereby giving the British substantial
advantage; they had all the ships. A good history and geography lesson, though
marred by a day of heavy fog.

The last day of a cruise is always a bit of a let-down, but this is even more the case
when the day is spent in the Bay of Biscay, though on this occasion it was merely
cold and miserable, there being a lot more fog than wind. The evening perked up,

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