Low life
Pilot error
Jeffrey Bernard
Travelling has lost most of its charm for me unless, that is, everything but every- thing is laid on and at hand. I can't cope with curbstones, cobbles, etc., and I must have disabled access to lavatories, washing and bathing facilities.
A luxury cruiseliner presents no difficul- ties and inconveniences, and on these expensive cruises there is nearly exactly one crew member to look after every two pas- sengers which is an excellent ratio even if you consider Chinese laundrymen and las- cars keeping things highly polished in the engine room. On the other hand, it is doubtful whether there has been a single lascar in an engine room since the days of Joseph Conrad although, as far as one can tell, the entire crew of the Sea Empress, which leaked all that oil in Milford Haven, were Chinamen whose every utterance had to be translated by the chef of a Chinese takeaway in the port of Milford Haven itself.
Since the Sea Empress ran aground, I have read here and there that it was due to pilot error which surprises me since I don't think that the entrance to Milford Haven is surrounded by constantly shifting sand bars and banks as, say, the Ganges where the pilots really earn their serious money. No, I have a nasty suspicion that the Milford Haven pilot is an Old Pangbournian called Coles who took to bullying me when he made it from Cadet to Cadet Captain. Mind you, I can't imagine other Old Pang- bournians like Ken Russell and Beverley Cross being so slipshod as to steer a super- tanker on to the rocks. Ken Russell would have simply blown it up and used it as a cutaway in a film about John Masefield, whereas Beverley Cross, who, I never tire of telling people, once caned me at Pang- bourne for reading during prep, is inca- pable of such violence now that he is married to Dame Maggie Smith. So she told me when we last met, anyway.
It was an oil tanker, incidentally, that first made me lose faith in the capabilities of the British Armed Forces. When that tanker was wallowing wherever it was, it was thought best to sink it, and so a couple of Royal Air Force fighter-bombers were sent after it armed to the teeth to put it out of its misery. If I remember correctly, the time between it being hit and it sinking was long enough for the ubiquitous Chinese chef to rustle up 70 takeaways for those abandoning ship.
It was Pangbourne, incidentally, that put me off going into the Merchant Navy — I wanted to be a marine engineer and Pang- bourne on Thames is the wrong place to learn that trade — but if I had made it I would certainly have picked tramp ships with Chinese chefs and not ships crewed by Indian ones. This is not some form of racial prejudice on my part, but I did spend some time one year in the 1950s doing up and repainting Indian restaurants in Soho. There isn't room left in the Natural History Museum to exhibit the animals I saw in those kitchens which ranged from the size of a grain of rice to the sometimes massive proprietors.
The only other Old Pangbournian that I ever come across is called Victor Gordon. At the end of one term he played the title role in The Admiral Crichton and he has since written an excellent cookery book. No one with such a background could pos- sibly pour 70,000 tons of oil into the sea. But what does stagger me if I stop to think about it is that I was once told that no fewer than five of my contemporaries ended up as admirals. Readers with time on their hands might care to reflect on the present-day political situation had I, too, become an admiral on board a Polaris sub- marine with my finger on the red button.
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