1944 July
Family letter from Mrs. HPV Townend (not in AMT’s set of letters - this typed by Joan Webb)
c/o Grindlay and Co, 54 Parliament St London
At Sea
Sunday, July 2nd, 1944
My Dears,
There’s certainly a spice of excitement and variety about travelling in wartime. First comes the long wait for passages, then one day the Ministry of War Transport whispers that you may go to a certain shipping agent and that you will be “fixed up”. Follow more confidential whisperings at the agents. “Come again in two days.” “Come again tomorrow.” and at last, the instructions, “Be at such and such a place at such and such a time on a certain day.” No goodbyes to friends, no farewell parties speed these departures, though the maid at the hotel, on receiving her tip remarked fervently, “I shall pray that you have a safe voyage, Madam!”
At the rendezvous are gathered one’s fellow passengers. We look at one another. We are not a big company, so we guess that our vessel will be a small one. A bus arrives. We climb in, and before we start the representative of the shipping agents gives us a little lecture on what we must, may and may not do. We drive into the docks and stop at a big shed, where we find our luggage ready piled for customs inspection. Everyone is obliging, and the extra wartime checking is put through with as little trouble as possible.
Through the open side of the shed we see a stout little tramp steamer, and learn that it is our ship. Most of us, I fancy, felt a slight disappointment that we were not going on something larger, for we all had cherished hopes that we might be lucky enough to get on to one of the fast ships that take a mere two weeks to do the trip, but we comforted one another by saying that we were lucky to be going at all.
We are fortunate too, for as one of the engineers said to me, “She’s a good little ship, though she can roll in most any sea”, and a lad, whom I take to be an apprentice, remarked, “She may be dirty, but she’s strong. It’d take a lot to knock her to pieces.”
We were soon to know all about rolling, for we went straight into big lolloping seas as we left our port of departure. Before long I judged it wiser to lay myself flat on my bunk, and remain so, with only dry biscuits to eat for the next twenty-four hours. By so doing I avoided any great discomfort, and slept for an astonishing part of the time. Herbert organizes his life differently on these occasions, and believes in struggling in to all meals at any cost. It was astonishing how quickly most of us recovered tone, and by the following afternoon most of us were on our legs again, though the little ship was still rolling considerably. Now on our sixth day we don’t mind the motion at all.
It’s amusing to remember the days when one looked down on some grubby little tramp that one passed in the Suez Canal, and wondered what it would be like to travel on so small a craft, with rusty iron decks, untidy hatches and all sorts of top hamper. Now we are finding out that it has a certain charm. We are in touch with the personality of the ship, and at close quarters with the officers and the men. As we make our way to the bit of sheltered deck abaft the funnel, where we were glad to sit on our first few days out, while it was still cold, we pass the galley, and see the pots steaming on the stove, and the cook always ready for a word. In a hutch close by a blue-eyed lad peels potatoes and whistles most of the morning. A little further on in another hutch, a butcher prepares the meat, and the ship’s cat balances on the sill of the door, waiting for his share.
I marvel and give thanks that England goes on breeding men who choose the sea as a profession, for it seems to give them little enough in return. Even in peacetime life must be dull and uncomfortable most of the time, and in these war days it must often be grim. Everyone talks to us. They seem glad of company. Most of them talk sound sense, and back of all they say there is a great love of England, often definitely expressed. A lad with a crop of fair hair said good-evening to us hopefully, as we took some evening exercise up and down the after well deck on our second evening out. We stopped to chat. “Did we belong to England?” he asked. Well, he came from Surrey, and with luck he might get ten days leave when we reach the UK, for they get two days leave for every month at sea. “Of course”, he said, “we may still be wanted for invasion work, and have to go straight on”. He said it was a change to be on the African run, after two years on the Atlantic. (And to me, he still looks just a kid) “What I can’t understand” he said, “is how people can belong to England, and go on grumbling about it.”
My engineer friend, with a pointed nose, and bright dark eyes, is a bit of a philosopher. He likes moderation. It’s nonsense, he says, to put up uneducated people to rule a country. They can’t do it. They don’t know enough, and soon they destroy freedom. He’s been in most countries in the world, and England and the Dominions are the only places where a man is really free.
Now as to this ship, she is about 6,600 tons, and not built to carry passengers. Amidships six-berth cabins to accommodate about sixty passengers, have been run up, with two bathrooms, and four shower-baths. A lounge and a drinking saloon, reasonably adequate to meet our needs, have been fitted up. We have an excellent stewardess and obliging stewards, who are willing to help us in any way they can. The food is simple, but quite good and adequate. Meals are in two sittings, of which, we rather fortunately, are on the first.
Both Herbert and I are lucky in our cabin-mates. In my cabin, we cover a big range of country. A mother and daughter from Singapore and China, who have also traveled in New Zealand and Australia. A woman from Ceylon (husband is PWD). Another woman from Nyasaland, and formerly Aden (Husband is Colonial Civil Service). A girl from South Africa, going to England to join her RAF husband, and myself from India. What is so satisfactory is that the whole party fit in. There is no trying to grab the best, and consequently we are happy and comfortable. As Mrs. Pearce, the woman from Ceylon said, wartime travel has eliminated most of the tiresome types. On the whole, passengers are nice, and some of them very interesting. Mrs. Pennyfeather-Evans and her daughter, Denise, we had met at Eileen Forsythe’s some time ago, and it turns out that Denise was at St. Monica’s with Annette and Rosemary. There are several naval officers traveling home, of which a Lt-Cmdr and a Surgeon are in our lifeboat, which gives us a nice cosy feeling. A chubby sub-Lieut is going to give P.T. classes to the ladies who are so inclined, starting tomorrow morning at 7:30.
An enterprising N.C. is organizing a Brains’ Trust, the first Session of which is to take place after dinner tonight. One way and another, although the voyage may take some time, I think we shall find enough to keep us interested and happy.
July 3rd, 1944
This is a wonderfully obliging ship. Nothing seems too much trouble, and we are allowed to carry on our various activities wherever we like provided it does not interfere with the routine of meals and such. At the moment, it is 11:15 am, I am typing in the dining saloon, while another woman irons clothes on the table behind me. All that is asked is that I remove myself when the stewards come to lay the tables for lunch. Another thing that strikes me is the cheerfulness of everyone. If this is typical of merchant navy, its no wonder we hung on and won the battle of the Atlantic.
The weather is perfect. Yesterday the sea was sapphire blue, with a sparkle, and an occasional white top to set it off. The sky was what is popularly known as turquoise, but really turquoise is a little too green to make a true comparison. Humpy white cumulus clouds sat about near the horizon, and a few mare’s tales and thin ribs of cloud trimmed the upper heavens. Sitting on deck a light wooly kept one warm enough. Walking about, one could discard that. The moonlight nights are wonderful. It’s a joy to escape from the air of the lounge, which soon gets heavy with smoke, and makes one’s eyes smart. Soon, I suppose, we shall say goodbye to some of the Southern constellations, which have become our friends, and which we shall probably never see again. Today dawned grey, as I saw when the steward crept into the cabin about 6:30 to open the port. Now yesterday’s description fits it perfectly.
The “Brains Trust” session did not take place last night, but the PT class functioned satisfactorily. I was glad to find that after certain of the more active exercises I was not in the least out of breath, as most of the others were. This must be due to my many recent scrambles up the mountains. The drill took place on the forward well-deck, and interested faces looked out at us from the various decks above.
There is a hope that those who have supplied themselves with bedding, as we have done, may be allowed to sleep on deck later, when it gets really hot. It’s said by some of the young stewards that certain people did so on the voyage out. The dining-room stewards are just like a party of school boys. Our cabin is next the dining saloon, and I hear the back-chat that goes on while they clean the saloon in the early morning, lay the tables and clear away. One of them asked me yesterday whether by any chance they had got any gramaphone needles. They have tried and failed to get any at each port they have visited, and are now reduced to trying to sharpen up their old needles, which can’t be good for the records. If only I had known I could probably have got some from the SAWAS store of comforts for ships.
The male passengers are taking submarine-watching watches, and my dark glasses are doing duty for at least two of them. The sun tries some of them, and one had the good sense yesterday to borrow a wide brimmed straw hat, tied under the chin, from one of his lady friends.
It’s wonderful how the days slip by. This morning, for instance, I did the PT and half an hours walk before 8:30 breakfast. After breakfast I did Herbert’s weekly wash of clothes. (My own were disposed of on Saturday). Then I had a tidy up in the cabin, and took some mending up on deck. One of the gun crew helped me to arrange my chair. I asked him whether his crew were short of literature, to which he replied that they would be grateful for anything new to read, so I fetched him some magazines from our store. At 11 o’clock we had boat drill, and now I type.
We have had lots more talk with the engineer. It was a mixed bag of subjects including a detailed account of all the troubles he has had with his liver. Herbert’s complaints seem pale beside them. His views on various aspects of war legislation are quite interesting. He is all against educated boys being taken to work in the pits. His view is that there are plenty of rough types round about the ship yards and such like places, who will never be fit for anything but rough jobs, but that boys who have had a decent education, often attained with considerable difficulty by their parents, are spoilt for anything else if, at seventeen they are put to rough work like the coal mines. “You mark my words,” he said, “they can never get back.” It is often far more interesting talking to these men than to ones met at parties. The secret probably is that they do not bother about polite nothings, but want to tell one what they think
July 6, 1944 As the days grow longer, the hours during which submarine watchers are needed increase, so several of the women on board volunteered to take their turn, and the Captain has accepted the offer.
I did my first watch from 6 to 7 am this morning. It was the nicest time of the hole day. The night-watchman called me at 5:30am, and brought me a cup of tea. It was moonlight when I went on the bridge, with only a faint glow beginning to show in the East. The section of sea I had to watch, kept me facing the moon. It was a lovely dawn in pastel tints. The moon gradually warmed to pale apricot, against a sky of smoky blue above the horizon, shading into dull pink. The hour passed quickly.
A kindly lad brought me a cup of well-sugared tea, and stayed to watch me drink it, so I had to control my feelings and swallow it. It is strange to think of the thousands of pairs of eyes always on watch from the ships that move on the face of the waters in wartime, and the thousands of minds that have so much time to think. It seemed to me that ones eyes and the surface of ones mind could be alert, and yet leave other levels of the mind free to think of other things.
Last evening we had gunnery practice with some of the small guns and a twelve-pounder. The shooting was so good that the group of naval officers on board applauded. As Pepys might have said, “it was pretty to see”. It certainly gave a great deal of pleasure to the passengers.
The ship unmistakably belongs to a democracy. Officers and crew seem to be on the most friendly and genial terms. Except for the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd officers, who wear their stripes on the shoulders of their shirts, and their uniform caps, the clothes are so heterogeneous that it is hard to tell who is what. A small pair of pants and a skull cap or beret are a favourite costume, and lots of the boys look well in it. They are great lads for washing their clothes, and even by moonlight the other evenings, we found a man with a bucket of water, scrubbing away at his shirt and a pair of trousers.
Our circle of acquaintances amongst the passengers and crew grows. My latest friend is the Captain’s steward, a rather delicate sensitive looking young man, who in peacetime is a master at one of Dr. Barnado’s Homes. He is an enthusiast about Barnado’s work, and full of theories abut education. Herbert’s steward is a great card, called Percy, which is a perfect name for him. He’s a grand worker, but always has time to chat with anyone on almost any subject. He chose an elderly retired spinster school-mistress to be the recipient of his views on marriage. “Why make one woman miserable when you can make hundreds happy?”
Amongst the passengers are an interesting family, father, mother with fair-0haired daughters aged seven and twelve. The little one, Susan, was friends with everyone within twenty-four hours of coming on board. She is completely unselfconscious, but not at all spoilt. Finding two of the apprentices waiting outside the captain’s cabin on her second or third day on board, she enquired what they were doing. They said they were waiting to have breakfast when the captain had finished. Susan promptly darted into the cabin, and asked him whether he knew that the boys were waiting outside, and received instructions to tell them to come in.
This family were living in Greece, and got out with great difficulty. Jane, the elder girl gave us an excellent account of it, simple, direct and vivid. They only brought away the clothes they were standing up in. The ship that took them to Alexandria, had neither beds nor food. They had no money, but were helped to get to Cape Town, “Where we thought Granny might give us some”. Granny did, and father got a job in Rhodesia, so now “We have loads of suitcases with lots of things in them”. With a little questioning, Jane told us about their life in Greece, which she loved, and to which she would dearly love to go back. It is comforting to meet children who have been through so many adventures, and who have remained so calm and happy, and who have this great gift of making friends.
The gear for the life boats is much improved since we traveled eighteen months ago. We have a more modern type of life jacket, with a small red-lamp torch attached. We also have a bag containing large yellow oilskin trousers complete with feet, and a yellow oilskin cape and hood. Should one have the misfortune to be in the water, the cape floats out on the water, and can be seen from the air much more easily than the head and shoulders of a person.
Our PE classes go on satisfactorily. It is a great help to get half an hour’s good exercise before breakfast. It is difficult to do such things on ones own on board ship. It’s more fun doing them in a party too.
The weather is still wonderfully kind, and it has not been half as hot as we expected the last few days. So many people spend some time on deck after supper, and then go into the dining saloon to play cards and various gambling games, that the atmosphere in the lounge has been much less trying. We get the BBC news at 8:45pm relayed through one of the African stations, but reception is poor and we miss a lot. The wireless officer puts a short news bulletin up on the board each morning, but we do hunger for more detail in these stirring days.
To return to comments on the ship, I have never traveled on a boat where I have heard less grumbling, nor seen everyone looking so genial and happy. There is certainly no apparent feeling of tension or anxiety, and the officers seem to take it all in their stride.
Much love,
LJT
Family letter from HPV
Somewhere at sea.
July 8th 1944. Saturday.
My dear Annette (name handwritten)
The days pass, somehow. We are lucky in our surroundings, though not so unusually so as on our journey from India to South Africa eighteen months ago; and more and more I feel astonished at the superior attitude adopted on that voyage by many who felt that things were unworthy of them. I have reverted to the study of Malayan, if the attempt to memorize the few dozen sentences given me by Mary Ow can be dignified by so lofty a phrase. There is on board a man who used to be in charge of the ferry between Penang and the mainland and later was an air pilot based on Singapore. He gave me three quarters of an hour yesterday and answered a collection of questions about various difficulties which have occurred to me; and I found while he did this that I could follow a good deal of the Malayan spoken by him -- illustrative sentences and such. Joan remains speechless with amazement at my choosing thus to labour at a thing that will never be of any use; but when one has broken down nothing that one can possibly do can possibly be of any use and it might as well be dog Malayan as anything else.
She has been full of enterprise. She stands watches as do most on board; but not I. She vetoed the idea that I should have a shot at it. Humiliating, but it is true that I have not been up to much. The ship rolled like a mad thing the first few days; and I was wretchedly sick. All the accommodation being improvised, it has been necessary to have bunks arranged across the ship and not lengthwise; so that when the ship rolls one feels it badly in one’s bunk. In particular one feels as if the tummy muscles were being pulled out and forced back again in quick time; and besides there is a strange sensation that one is playing cup and ball with one’s head - luckily never missing.
Moreover she does physical jerks every morning. The class started with six and now has only four or three. The petty officer who holds them is too strenuous. But the exercises look good. Add that she washes and mends and knits; and unpacks at intervals only to repack because there is no room for stuff in the cabins; and realise that she does well.
I copied out the new all-alphabet sentences after verifying the fact that I was not using the same words as in previous sentences; and bound them in the book. Otherwise I do not do much. Not even read. It is a liverish thing to be on a small ship; but I imagine that it does one more good than to be on a large one, for one has to balance more or less the whole time as the ship moves so much more.
Sir Charles Rey said “I may have one foot in the grave; but, by God, I have the other firmly in the fleshpot.” A fine remark.
Told by a man from Jo’burg; there is a firm of undertakers there named Doves, who have adopted as a slogan the distich “Brought by Storks. Put away by Doves!”
New names for old parts of the ship evolved by one of the ladies on board: she divides the sitting accommodation into the poop and the stoop of the ship. Silly.
The professor has announced that he has an idea about maps which will make a difference to world-peace; if the British Empire were not coloured red on them people (and particularly the Americans) would not have the impression that the British “own” the empire. I suggested that if he was given to crusading, he might try to convert the empire to the correct use of the word “colony”; for at present we call the colonies (properly so-called) dominions, and the parts which might be named “dominions’ (as having been conquered and not colonized) colonies. Hatchards did well to class books on the United States under the head “Colonies”. In this contention I am clearly right, but people do not see it. Not knowing their Greek history. However there is not much profitable discussion of this or any other kind. With what assurance the doctors at our table talk about malaria, repeating the remarks out of the textbooks and disregarding the fact that much has been evolved by specialists but not yet included in the texts!
I have made a mess of the carbons by demonstrating on a stray piece of paper superimposed upon this how it is possible to make exclamation mark and “=” without touching the back spacer. Alas!
Much love
Dad
Family letter from LJT
At Sea.
July 27th 1944
My Dears,
The voyage goes on, but we are glad to know that it is drawing to its end. The last three days have been rough. There has been a heavy swell, which would have made most of us very sick earlier in the voyage. The nuisance has been general discomfort and the fact that it prevented so many of our usual activities, so that the days seemed long. A smoother sea last evening gave us a good night’s rest, and I was glad to get round to some ironing this morning. Did I mention that the junior ships officers have most kindly allowed us to have an ironing table in their smoking room during the day, which has been the greatest boon. One of the engineers came in this morning with a few of his own clothes that he was going to iron, so I took them from him. “This is going to be the barbers shop too, this morning”, he said, and off he went to get clippers and scissors. The second officer came in to have a trim. The engineer went about the job in a most professional fashion, and made a good job of it. It was a chance for me, and I got him to tidy up the back of my neck, which I had thought I must attack with nail scissors.
Just after I wrote my last letters, the weather became very hot, so a few of us decided to sleep on deck. Three women had hammocks lent to them. I made a comfortable bed with our two deck chairs, and I continued sleeping on deck in them till the weather turned bad three days ago. It was delightful on deck, but hot and stuffy in the cabins.
There have been amusing little things to do now and again. One morning we saw the old boat’sun painting the railings of a bit of deck amid-ships, where we sit a god deal. I asked him to let us have the paint pot and brushes and let me do it. Herbert joined in and we spent most of one morning, and a bit of the next on the job, to the great pleasure and amusement of officers and crew. There were many rude criticisms of our work, but now that the rest of the ship has been painted by the crew, we find that our standard was distinctly high. On another day some of us spent an afternoon and evening mending the ships flags. Its nice to do little things to help.
The Fourth Mate, a lad from Manchester, gives everyone a great deal of entertainment. He is an able boy, but a born buffoon. When Herbert and I were having tea with the Captain the other Day, we spoke about “Sandy”, and the Captain to whom we had been talking about his home in Lichfield, and the old man we met there who told us so much about bell-ringing, said that if we were interested in bell-ringing, we should ask Sandy about it. The said Sandy was most interesting on the subject, and told us lots about the technique, and stories connected with the art. He was one of the ringers of the peel that was broadcast by the B.B.C. on the first Sunday when the bells were rung again. For all that Sandy looks like an illustration to a W.W. Jacobs book, and talks like Stanley Holloway, he knows a great deal about music, especially church music. Both he and his father are keen organists. He told how lucky he was when one time his ship was a whole month in the London docks, and he was able to shift his watches so that he got all four Sundays off, and could go to Westminster Abbey. He hung round and got into talk with the bell-ringers, and on the third Sunday he was allowed to ring with them. He told an amusing tale of an experience in America. He heard a church bell ringing, and went to the church, to find a children’s service going on. He stayed and afterwards went to look at the organ. A woman was playing it, and asked if he would like to try it. Then she asked if he would like to play for a parade service which was to take place at 10.30. He accepted, and as he sat at the organ he wondered what he should play for a voluntary, he thought of “Land of Hope and Glory”. “How did the Americans like it?” we asked. “Oh Alright” said Sandy, with a gurgle of laughter.
The Captain has been having little parties of us up to tea with him in his room on the bridge. He says its the only way he can get to know his passengers. He is such a pleasant, kindly man, and I am sure his influence makes the whole ship’s company so obliging.
The conversation amongst the passengers on some days is swooningly dull. There are quite a number of people who spend hour after hour discussing 1) On what date we shall arrive. 2) At what port we shall arrive 3) How the customs officials will behave 4) How much luggage we shall be able to take with us by train in England. As n-one knows the answers, nor will do so till close on the time of arrival, it does not seem to be a profitable way of passing the time. There are others whose talk is interesting, notably the Professor and his wife, and a lad just going home after his first spell as a Forest Officer in Sierra Leone. There is another man who has told us interesting things. He was running a ferry service between Penang and the mainland, joined up with the Navy in Singapore, was there almost to the end, got away to Java in command of some small mine-sweeper, or something of the sort, and was with some of the last boats that got away from a port on the south coast of the island. Seven out of thirteen were sunk. Mr Evans said he was sure their number was up, but they were saved by one of those terrific rain storms, which came down like a curtain in front of them. One of the ship’s arch-bores is an old Dutch woman, married to an Englishman. She has an over-bearing manner and a penetrating voice. Her method of conversation is to come and sit beside you, try to discover whether you have ever been to any place she knows or where she has relatives or friends. Her other topics of conversation are those mentioned above in the numbered sentences. She is a huge rumour-monger of the ship, so much so that the crew delight in giving her the most improbable and contradictory information.
Little seven-year Susan continues to be a great favourite. She is specially friendly with the Butcher, who is a good-looking, well-set-up man. There was an amusing scene one evening. On one of the hatches on the after-deck, where the crew mostly congregate when off duty of an evening, Susan was sitting on the Butcher’s knee. On either side along the edge of the hatch were two cooks, the baker, and various stewards, all doing their bit to entertain the small girl. Presently a burly stoker, well washed and dressed in clean clothes, joined the group, and started doing simple slight of hand tricks with an orange, to Susan’s huge delight and mystification. Whether it is good for Susan to have so much attention, is doubtful, but she has certainly helped to entertain the men. She has a serene confidence in all of them, which should be good youthful training for getting on in the world. I cant imagine that she will feel shy or awkward in any sort of company. Its satisfactory after more than four weeks on board to see that she is not badly spoilt, though her accent has suffered somewhat.
Herbert found the rough days trying, chiefly because, like many other people, he slept so badly. He looks different to-day after a good night. I had been afraid of this journey for him, and I am thankful that conditions have been as good as they have, and that the food has not upset him. We have got tremendously sunburnt since the awning came down. My legs are a sort of mahogany colour, and Herbert has lost a bit off his nose, just where his hat does not shade it.
It is a great boon that black-out comes so much later, and that it is no longer tryingly hot below-stairs after the ports have been shut. To me those few hours of the evening were the worst of the day so long as the weather was still hot. They still are in some ways, for the smoke makes my eyes smart, but since people do not go into the lounge so early, the atmosphere does not get thick so soon.
During the bad weather the news came through badly, which was dreadfully tantalizing. The radio which is for the use of the ships officers and passengers, is in bad condition, and could not be repaired in Cape Town. This morning a B.B.C. news was put through at 8 a.m., and was absolutely clear. With no newspapers, we are glad to hear the commentaries too. Professor Roberts told us a good thing, after Pskov had been figuring in the news. He said he was once giving a lecture on the Fall of the Romanoffs, and at a certain point he was inspired to make the following remark apropos of the last days on the Czar, when the revolution broke out and he tried to get back to St Petersburg(?) “The Czar came to Pskov, and remained to pray”. It seems that he did indeed have his special train stopped at Pskov for the purpose of praying. The Professor’s friends refused to believe that the joke was not premeditated, which he vows it was-
I am writing on the dining saloon table, and the stewards have just appeared to lay the next meal, so, at any rate for the time being, I must stop.
Love to you all
LJT
Family letter from HPV
Highways,
Great Leighs,
Near Chelmsford.
(At sea.) July 29th Saturday.
Dear Annette (name handwritten)
When years ago I determined to give up the habit of bad temper, it was arranged that at the first signs of a relapse the family should cry out to me to remember my blessings. This is the chief feature of the voyage; it causes me to reflect often how infuriated I should be were I married to any among many of the women. “It is not” said the captain when he apologized to Mrs. Fay in the Memoirs “that you are such a bad sort of a woman, but whenever I hear your voice, By God, Ma’am, it is as if a knife were thrust into my back.” Even so with a certain giggle. Even so with certain conversations; often repeated, not once worth hearing. Yet the consolations are effective. For the Professor asked me to other day how it was that I remained serene and unaffected by the tedium of the voyage. A triumph! but I must confess that the naval doctor obviously regards me as one of the habitually glum.
The days pass. Lest I should lose all sense of time, I note in my pocket diary whether there is rain or sun and so keep count of its passing. If the ship’s scales, in the butcher’s department, are right, I have lost nearly a stone on board. I am sure that they are wrong, but I have certainly lost weight: the fit of my trousers is a guarantee of that. This I ascribe to the necessity of balancing myself all day and for that matter all night too against the movement of the ship. If on dry land one spent the whole day bending slightly this way and that, and at intervals gave a violent jerk to the body, one would expect to be exhausted by evening; and it is absurd therefore to be astonished as I have been by my inability to sit up after a certain hour at night. There are some who remain talking till one o’clock everynight; I am usually in bed soon after 10.30. With a bandage over the eyes I do not do so badly these days; but the noise and the movement are sufficient as a rule to wake me a dozen times and my best record was waking thrice only.
On a certain day, before I was sunburnt at all but after most people had been sun-bathing two missionary women (good souls but boring beyond imagination) came up and sympathised with me, saying “Oh! your poor face! how it must hurt you!” Kind of them; yet it was my ordinary face, and it is other people that it must hurt. Such a thing it is to suffer from chronic indigestion! Which reminds me that the other day I had the inspiration to remark on the necessity of smelling oneself as others smell one in preference to seeing oneself thus; and it seems to me that there are possibilities of money-making in this slogan, . . . in the U.S.A., say.
We have not had it really hot, though some folk have been complaining and the ship’s cat, an evil-looking nondescript black, called Nigger in the kitchen and Tom by the crew generally, felt it badly through the tropics. This cat lacks sense, in that it persists in rubbing up against recent paint and so cannot wash itself to any effect; but it must discourage any cat to live among surroundings so dirty and this one has abandoned the unequal effort. It lay during the hot days on its back with its head on one side and its tongue out, most pitiable for to see.
The ship’s cook, as opposed to the passenger’s cook, an enormous red young man named Ginger, was challenged by one of the Stewards when he loitered near the steep steps which lead down to our part of the ship: “Hullo! Ginger.” he said, ’and what may you be doing here?” “Slumming,” replied Ginger, “merely slumming!”
He reminds me of the flaming Gold Mohur, full-size forest trees ablaze with red blossom, of which Mrs. Pearce told us a tale the other day. A Singhalese babu (or equivalent) exclaimed to another on seeing one such “But what tree is that?” and the other replied “Sometimes maybe wiolets.” Which is just what Ginger is not.
Percy, the cabin steward on the men’s side, has been holding forth at intervals. He has been almost everything since he ceased to be a jockey in France. At one time he was in a sailors’ home, under an old padre who according to Percy had a rake-off on everything; “but he was holy as a sieve.”
A good remark quoted as a sailors’ proverb by Morley Roberts in a book that I read the other day: “sixpennorth of ease is worth a shilling.”
Susie goes from strength to strength. One would not have believed that even by taking thought one could have developed so appalling an accent on any voyage however long; and this has not been so long after all. In the lounge or smoking saloon (for it is always thick with smoke) I perceived her mother who is the gayest of jolly young women pulling a wry face as Susie produced a series of “niaow, niaow”s to someone who was teasing her; and I said severely, “Susie, did I not tell how you should say “no” with a round mouth?” . . . . “No!” said Susie firmly with the roundest of round mouths, putting me in my place. I do not altogether lack authority with Susie, having shown her how to play the simplest form of patience known: she sits near me in the dining saloon after dinner and demands occasional help, necessitated partly because she cannot count and partly because there are certain cards missing from her pack. She overheard one of the ship’s officers lamenting that his white shorts were dirty and intervened with the query “Can’t you turn them inside out?” A precept which a few days later she put into practice; someone said to her on a day when she had been crawling round in the less clean parts of the ship (and all are more or less dirty) that her knickers might well be cleaner; “all right” said Susie, and there and then took them off, turned them inside out and donned them again. Any evening she may be seen through the door of the men’s bathroom doubled up inside a bucket of fresh water which is placed on a board across the bath: an improbable sight.
There is in my cabin among the six of us a little doctor, but broad and with a big head. Made comic by a small mouth, and just now more comic by his having attempted to cut his own hair with a safety razor only to make a broad furrow down one side. Feeling responsible, for I had encouraged him to make the experiment by declaring it to be easy and assured of success, I recommended various expedients or palliatives, such as affixing a square of sticking plaster to make people think that he has had a boil or maybe eczema: but he merely grunted. A young South African woman remarked the other evening, Joan says, “I should like Dr. Thomas as a paper weight!”, and there is a wild sort of common sense about the remark which pleases.
Joan was delighted by an absurd tale told by some officer man about a fellow who accidentally shot and killed his own father while out shooting and who ever afterwards was addressed as “Bagdad”. The cause of her appreciation of ridiculous puns is that Idris Matthews loves them.
My chief provision for the voyage was medicines and in particular this acid to be taken after meals: but I have not used them. During the first few days of the voyage I had toothache or rather a sensitiveness of the teeth that made it a pain to eat; then the Naval Doctor who is in my cabin asked me one day whether it was not a mistake to take the acid except through a straw and whether on my method I did not find that it affected my teeth. Neither doctor nor dentist had told me about the need for a straw; but I at once renounced the use of the acid and have had much relief. It has not made any particular difference to my digestion either, and that although the food is not precisely what I should have. Not noticeably good, my digestion has not been very bad either; a bit bloated maybe.
Badly as this ship rolls she did no worse than others during the rough weather of recent days, probably because the swell did not hit us at right angles. But it was bad enough one morning to send a woman flying; she caught at my deck-chair as she passed, swung round on top of me, broke the chair and came down plonk. I merely sat down on the deck; and she was not hurt. Sad to have our new chair broken but it was made of very inferior wood and would not have lasted us long anyhow.
Talk last night (but this page is dated a day later than the first) turned at the particular request of the Professor on the Abominable Snow Man, and thence to the existence of the sea serpent and such. It led Evans who has instructed me in Malay as I told before to tell of the habits of the Malays as regards fishing in the sea; they have on each fishing boat one man whose duty it is to leap overboard and dive beneath the surface; when he comes up he points in the direction where fish will be found and they move off there; if no fish, he dives again; and, says Evans, he does guide them to the fish before long. It is done by listening to the fish under water; such the tale. Also he says that the Malays say that a kriss can be made only if the maker follows the celestial fire and digs where it falls; and the reason why a kriss does not rust is because the meteorite from which it is made is not pure iron but contains nickel. Its strange wavy shape is to remind one of its celestial origin. They do not hammer out the krisses, he says, but “draw them”; their edges are like saws and not sharp; and nowadays owing to the lack of celestial iron there are no makers of real krisses. Perhaps some of this is true.
In my last letter I told how the ship is divided into the poop and the stoop. To these have been added the coop, which is the small and very narrow bridge-place on this deck. The captain to whom this was revealed was not really amused. A pleasant man and his tea-party was an agreeable interlude. It is a mark of our ignorance of the merchant navy that we were amazed to find so cultured a man in charge of a cargo-ship. Perhaps we were expecting something like Captain Kettle.
Joan’s letter tells how Sandy at Galveston played Land of Hope and Glory as the voluntary for the parade service of the U.S. Army Air Force; he did better according to his story, for, finding a little keyboard alongside the organ, he played on that also, now knowing that it was connected with the peal of bells; so that the Air Force marched through the streets to the tune of prayers for England’s expansion blared out on the church bells. It was fine, says Sandy who is one of the noblest characters ever met. Similar is his tale of going up in a New York movie house in response to a call for someone willing to condust the orchestra, a swagger and famous outfit. He got two dollars for it, and what pleased him more got considerable applause for stopping orchestra and rebuking the chellist for being out of time; he ended, so ran the tale, by stopping the orchestra again when they started swinging (for they really paid no heed to his conducting) and saying “Gentlemen, for Rachmanoff’s sake, let’s stop!” True? yes, I think so; he is from Manchester and full of self-confidence.
Yet another day.
Do you know that when a ship rolls badly they wet the table-cloths to prevent the plates and such from sliding off the table? So it was for the first three or four days and again for a couple later; and I know nothing more calculated to spread gloom.
The gloom is not widespread really; but old Mr. Hall, retired coal-royalty receiver and convinced that the world is already with the dogs, exudes it. Conversation yesterday; we shall be so late eventually when we get to land that we shall be set ashore in a blackout (why? who knows when we shall arrive anyhow and why anticipate a night-arrival?), the Customs people will insist on opening every single thing, there will be no taxis, there will be no room in any hotel, no porters, no possibility of getting seats in trains, it will be raining, we shall not be able to change travellers’ cheques -- and when we do get home at last the house is sure to have been bombed or burnt unless Government have commandeered it. I remarked that we had lost our chance when the whale went past the other day: we should have thrown him to it and might then have escaped the rough weather.
Conversations heard. Retiring from the lounge the other night the severe old Dutch lady said “Now I go to my kennel!” and Commander Bridport (Viscount, descended from Admiral Hood) commented “Dr. Pollard, just take Mrs. J for a little walk.” ---- One apprentice to another “If you leave your stuff lying about, I’ll knock the stuffing out of you.” The other: “Like bigamy you will!”
In a speech when the Captain came into the lounge I remarked on the harmony that had prevailed during the voyage, as it does not on most; loud applause. Then last night a merchant seaman, disguised in liquor, meeting me in the alleyway, embraced me and exclaimed how pleased they were at my having had this crack at a certain group of exclusives (they did not feature thus in his discourse) and how by comparison with them I was really tolerable. Such is unity.
Quotation from a book; it pleased me. Texan colonel who had dined with a Texan judge to friend who asked what he had had to eat; with intense dignity, “Sir, we did not eat: we drank.”
General gloom this morning in spite of what I said above. Some of the rough tough and hearty threw a party I the lounge last night, which did not break up till 3.30 and of which the parts did not get to bed till 5.30 this morning. A beer party and loud to correspond; girlish laughter. Among them the little doctor who did come in to bed at 3.30; he lurched in, knocked against the left hand bunks, swerved against the right hand, and ejaculated “Hello, everybody! is anyone awake?” One of the less popular cracks. This morning he is very dignified.
Much love
Dad
The following are two handwritten letters, written on scraps of airmail paper, but undated, and detached from any other letters.
My darling Annette
To-day I have posted a parcel containing an old brown marocain frock of mine, the skirt of which I picked to bits with the idea of re-making it from a long, very narrow skirt with a tunic, into a short and fuller one – When it was in bits I found that on my plan, it was going to work out too short for me – but it might make up alright for you, as I expect your skirts are at least a couple of inches shorter than mine – The plan was to use the two bits which had been the lower part of the skirt, for front and back panels and join the 2 tunic bits on to hip-yokes for the sides – The only pattern I could find in Cape Town was a tiny size, but I thought I could enlarge it – It is enclosed and also some scraps that might do for facings, false hems or such. If no use to you, pass it on to Joey or some one. Material is so hard to get and so expensive out here, that it seems worth useing up old things. The frock is the old nigger brown marocain one, I had in Brittany, but I have never worn it much – Best love – Mother
Mu darling Annette –
This is only just a little message of love and greeting – I’ll be doing an air-graph to you later to-day – or to-morrow –
All this past week I have been feeling a tremendously strong longing to be home – The longing is always there, but its been more insistant than usual. Dad feels it too, I think – but his fear of the cold, makes him frightened of the English climate – I am going to get him over hauled by a doctor when we get back to Pretoria, and I am inclined to think that, if his blood pressure has improved, it might be a good thing to ask that our applications for passages as soon after the end of the war as possible, might be changed to April or May or next year, regardless of whether the war is finished or not.
Best love – Mother