I was sixteen when I made my first visit ‘abroad’ in 1960, I’d been asked to help a teacher to look after a group of British school children while visiting Germany. We were to stay at Youth Hostels as we made our way up the Rhine by rail and returned via paddle steamer, Bismark Paddle […]
In mid 1962, after two years at HMS Conway, I graduated. British India Steam Navigation Company, also known simply as BI, accepted me in August, as an indentured cadet (apprentice). House flag and funnel Once I’d been accepted I applied for a British Seaman’s Card and a Discharge Book I had the paperwork to prove that I […]
Many of us have a book inside that we would like to write if we just knew how – I am not talking about putting pen to paper, but to construct a story that others would wish to read. For years I wanted to write and would throw away my attempts, because I was not […]
Venice airport as we approached our gate As we exited the customs area in Venice I expected to see the promised ‘meet & greet’ person. I’d booked a water taxi to our hotel, via our hotel. The available area of the arrival hall was checked to make sure that we were not in the wrong place – […]
SS Shieldhall, used to be a Clyde ‘sludge boat’. 1972 GT, built in 1954 and now saved as a piece of history and maintained by volunteers. In 2012 she was repainted in the colours of R.M.S Titanic to mark the centenary of the sinking. She operates over the weekend as a pleasure steamer taking tourists […]
Life can get crowded as the Arcadia arrives just behind us. Of course our old favourite had to join us Sapphire Princess A short time later Queen Victoria arrived and to top it all Marco Polo slips in . . . Fortunately we were the first to arrive, so had clearance quickly. But to be […]
Ceylon did not become Sri Lanka until 1972. The country has had a chequered history, from the Portuguese arriving in 1505, followed by the Dutch, when the king of Sri Lanka signed a treaty with the Dutch East India Company, in the hope that the Dutch would get rid of the Portuguese. It was during […]
I think that every bus in Cochin (Kochi) had been hired for our arrival. This time we didn’t take a ship’s tour because it is just as easy to DIY. Two of our friends had decided to join us for a tuk tuk tour of Cochin. Our other two friends where having no end of […]
Life can get crowded as the Arcadia arrives just behind us. Of course our old favourite had to join us Sapphire Princess A short time later Queen Victoria arrived and to top it all Marco Polo slips in . . . Fortunately we were the first to arrive, so had clearance quickly. But to be […]
I’ll never go abroad – which was a stupid comment that I made at thirteen, comes back to bite me. My first adventure abroad was just after I’d just turned sixteen in 1960. Billy Beedles, who was a family friend and a schoolteacher asked me to accompany him in August to help shepherd a […]
The photograph was taken from within the Sydney building that I worked in the mid 1980’s. On this particular day we were having a lunchtime BBQ, partly to farewell the person in the Arab costume, (he is at the BBQ), he was being transferred to the Middle East. Between the building in which I worked, […]
BOAC I joined BOAC in 1969 and in 1971 an Act of Parliament merged BOAC with BEA to take affect from 31 March 1974, which would create British Airways. The UK had joined the Common Market, as it was called then, in January 1973, so the merger of the two government-controlled airlines made sense. BOAC […]
Life can get crowded as the Arcadia arrives just behind us. Of course our old favourite had to join us Sapphire Princess A short time later Queen Victoria arrived and to top it all Marco Polo slips in . . . Fortunately we were the first to arrive, so had clearance quickly. But to be […]
Where ever we went in Southampton we came a cross history, whether from a few years ago to over a thousand years ago. He still guards Bargate, and watches over the peace of the town. The town has been in existences from the Stone age, through the Bronze and the Iron age. It was called […]
