I’d been out East for just over a year sailing in the waters of the Far East and down to Australia & New Zealand, and in the last month or so my sore throat had been getting worse. Originally I thought it was a standard sore throat and that it would ‘go away’ in due […]

It appears that I have a post out of sequence – after Muscat the post should have been Ras al Khaimah, and then Dubai – please accept my apologies. Too many readers have already read the ‘Dubai’ post to change the sequence. Ras al Khaimah from a painting in 1809. Ras al Khaimah has been […]

MV Pundua – ordered by the M.O.W.T (Ministry of War for Transport) in 1945, but was delivered to British India Steam Navigation Co. when launched. The Company had 105 ships at the outbreak of WW2, and during the war they lost 51 vessels due to enemy action. They also managed 72 other vessels, and of […]

There comes a time that when you are offered something and it sounds great, you should be careful – but I wasn’t careful and agreed. As MV Juna reached Fremantle in Western Australia I agreed to supervise the loading of freezer and chiller cargo, on the understanding that once is had been completed I was […]

MV Pundua – ordered by the M.O.W.T (Ministry of War for Transport) in 1945, but was delivered to British India Steam Navigation Co. when launched. The Company had 105 ships at the outbreak of WW2, and during the war they lost 51 vessels due to enemy action. They also managed 72 other vessels, and of […]

I’m late I’m late for a very important date. We still had to call at Doha (Qatar), Dammam (Saudi Arabia), Bahrain Island, Kuwait and finally Basrah (Iraq), which is about 90 miles up the Shatt al-Arab from the Persian Gulf. The Tigris and Euphrates Rivers meet and become the Shatt-al-Arab and in English this means The […]

Uniform button from a BISNC uniform – we still wore the Company’s uniform even though the ship was sailing to Japan to be scrapped. Of course, we wore our caps when required, mainly in port when we were duty officer. I did sail with captains that required the officer of the watch to wear his […]

The emblem of Kuwait Kuwait is about 277 miles north of Dammam, or a short seventeen hour voyage, but far enough away for the weather to have changed for the worse. We arrived off Kuwait at night during a wild storm with high winds and dashing rain that hammered on the bridge windows. The clear […]

There comes a time that when you are offered something and it sounds great, you should be careful – but I wasn’t careful and agreed. As MV Juna reached Fremantle in Western Australia I agreed to supervise the loading of freezer and chiller cargo, on the understanding that once is had been completed I was […]

We sailed from Ras Al Khaimah for Dubai, which was a very short ‘voyage’ of about 112 km (70 miles) or about four hours at a very economical speed. Dubai Creek in the 1960’s. As you see the creek was too small for a deep sea ship to use, so we anchored off the coast once […]

There comes a time that when you are offered something and it sounds great, you should be careful – but I wasn’t careful and agreed. As MV Juna reached Fremantle in Western Australia I agreed to supervise the loading of freezer and chiller cargo, on the understanding that once is had been completed I was […]

There comes a time that when you are offered something and it sounds great, you should be careful – but I wasn’t careful and agreed. As MV Juna reached Fremantle in Western Australia I agreed to supervise the loading of freezer and chiller cargo, on the understanding that once is had been completed I was […]

There comes a time that when you are offered something and it sounds great, you should be careful – but I wasn’t careful and agreed. As MV Juna reached Fremantle in Western Australia I agreed to supervise the loading of freezer and chiller cargo, on the understanding that once is had been completed I was […]

We sailed from Bombay (now Mumbai) for Muscat (which is in Oman), and we planned for a few changes. The first officer was due to leave us when we arrived in Dubai, and the second officer would be moved up to first, and I was to be the second officer – all very temporary, but […]