THE MORNING YEARS

Chusan was quite modern for the time. Not air-conditioned but rather with forced draft ventilation, it got hot below decks but not unbearable. There were five of us 'colony kids' on board, although we didn't know each other at the time of boarding. Four of us shared a 4BC two up two down and the eldest was sharing with a homeward bound civil servant who very much liked the gin.

We had all done this voyage a few times and so we knew the rules and how to get the most out of each day. We knew that we were leaving a warm place and that day by day it would get colder until the Dover cliffs loomed out of a misty grey February morning a few weeks ahead. So, how did a day in the Chusan go for group of mini schoolboys?

0530: Sneak down to the bakery and stand outside the door looking pathetic. Result, freshly baked bread rolls with lashing of butter and filled with fried eggs, sausages and bacon. Trays of these were made and sent round to all the on duty crew. 0630: return to cabin grab towels and stuff and head for the showers at the end of the passageway - best to get cleaned up for the day before the adults started to stir. Some had been on foreign station for many, many years and could be a bit 'strange' - both men and women.

0800: down to dining room for breakfast (there were no deck buffets in those days). Seeing as we had already filled up with 'the good stuff only a couple of hours earlier we could pretend to be gentlemen and only eat a light meal - that always impressed the old Colonels and their Ladies.

0900 - 1200: Tricky, this is not the best time for a ship at sea. Adults did art classes, listened to very boring port lectures and even played Bingo. A lot of the males were in the early opening bar at 10 am for heart starters and to read the Radio News printed from the Radio Office. Then there was the daily tote, I don't know if ships do this. You bet on how far the ship has steamed in the past 24 hours. The captain put what he thought it would be and then you bet around it. The answer was given out during the noon announcement from the bridge, you know the old eight bells followed by "This is the Officer of the watch the time is 12 o'clock - noon. From Noon yesterday until noon today Chusan has steamed a distance of 367 nautical miles etc etc etc." The bet was a shilling and I once won 6 pounds (can't find a pound sign on the keyboard). All of this went in bribes to stewards to get us some beer, which we drank in various nooks and crannies on deck during the evening when the adults (dressed in their finery) would be dancing in the main lounge or in the makeshift cinema.

Lunch (again in the dining room) was a relaxed sort of meal. The food was pretty close to what you were going to get again for dinner that evening but the evening meal had a couple more courses and better desserts. (Mostly desserts were ice cream and something - just given different names. If you saw the words 'coup de' you just knew it was ice cream again. Because of the size of the ships, food smells did, at time, seem to permeate most of the vessel.

The afternoon saw uplift in the day's activities. Bridge and engine room visits for the adults, we could get away with going at anytime except when entering or leaving port. Then there were costumes to be made for fancy dress (real fancy dress balls where imagination ruled). More lectures, swimming in the small pool, eating the nuts, crisps, and munchies off tables in the bars - perhaps a movie (they were always new release). Mid afternoon the ship fell silent as people went for siesta or quitly read in the library in galleries. But then came the night, a time when all ships old or new come to life.

At six men and women would start appearing in the bars ready for the night. Men in black tie or dress uniforms (negative swords - they are not built to be worn in a ship plus it was plain 'bad manners') and the ladies - well what can I say, we fell in love every night with these gorgeous creatures in their ball gowns withfantastic hairstyles - these were not the mortal women we saw during the day, these, no matter the age or how pretty they were, were all out of fairytales. Some nights there would be horse racing and once a week a casino would be rigged with all profits going to the Mission for Seamen.

A string quartet played everybody to dinner - not us we had to eat earlier hidden behind a curtain (the night was not for children). One fact is that many officers attended children's dinner - they could make pigs of themselves and not have to bother with those confounded complicated table manners. I remember almost fighting a hungry second officer for the last fish finger.

Dinner ended around 10pm and then it was dancing, talking, partying, movies, cards etc. As for us, well by this time we had reached our favorite hiding place on deck and were sipping beer and munching stolen food. Crew members doing rounds pretended not to see us (it was an unwritten law that) and then later at night we got to spy on all those adults who had, shall we say, enjoyed more than a few drinks and got a bit amorous in their little deck places. We learned a lot from our peeping tom activities and could (if we had thought about it) earned a fortune in blackmail, as it was surprising who turned up with who, or is it whom, I can never remember?

We usually turned in around 2am, most people were asleep by then and the deserted decks were our little fantasy world as we stumbled down to our cabin. Tomorrow was to be another day. Perhaps a port - Cairo, Naples, Aden, Port Suez, Marseilles, Gibraltar, or Rotterdam - interesting places for a 12 year old with friends around him and money in the pocket. All too soon it would get cold and the voyage would end but there would always be another ship, another voyage and another and another ....