From Biswajit Basu:
MY FIRST SEA VOYAGE
I can still remember. It was July 1955 on a hot, sunny and humid afternoon. I was at the Ballard Pier in Bombay with my two-year old sister and my parents. My father was going to study in London; courtesy the Indian Army and we were accompanying him. I was all of six years old then. There were thousands of people milling around us – fellow-passengers, porters, ship’s crew, government officials, shipping agents etc. The sounds, smells and colour swirled around me in a kaleidoscope of sensation. The sensory overload was stifling and yet the moment seemed exhilarating. But one thing before us was overpoweringly awesome to my schoolboy eyes. Big, shimmering and a stately black in the afternoon sun was S.S. Batory, the ship that was going to be my temporary home while transporting me to a new land and a new way of life. She belonged to the Polish Ocean Lines and did Bombay to Southampton in about twenty days. She was truly an awesome sight to my childhood eyes.
(Blogger Note: MS Batory was a truly iconic ship!)
The first hours on board was a flurry of activity getting all our small bags into our cabin and our steel trunks into the baggage hold. We carried with us all our clothes, shoes and pots and pans in anticipation of a full year abroad. We then settled down to our tiny cabin below deck. When you entered our cabin, there were four bunks in two tiers to the right perpendicular to each other along the walls and a solitary desk on the left with a tiny round porthole above it framing a small piece of the blue cloudless sky. It was gloomy like a prison with steel beds, steel walls and a steel floor. The fan less cabin had an old and weary slightly mildewed smell. I fell into fitful sleep that evening.
Sometime next morning, the engines of the great ship came to life and she slipped her moorings and turned; passing Butcher Island to the left as she, seemingly silently, carried a thousand souls into the Arabian Sea heading towards Karachi in the newly formed country called Pakistan.
Very soon we were there. My father decided to take me ashore with him to visit an old friend of his who was now in the Pakistan Army. It was like two long-lost brothers meeting, though the two armies had already antagonistically faced each in battle in the distant beautiful mountains in Kashmir. My dominant memory of Karachi is sand. Yes, miles and miles of yellow sand through which we had to trudge to get to the city. We stayed a day in Karachi and were on our way again: our bows slicing the Arabian Sea as we headed towards Socotra and Aden.
Aden was a shopper’s delight. I remember that my mother wanted to buy everything in sight from a Parsee’s shop there. My father gently restrained her and to his relief, we were soon on our way again. Next stop was Port Said in Egypt on the southern side of the Suez Canal. What I remember most about this place were the flies. They were everywhere – millions of them. I wished I had a tail like the camels that stood around, that I could use to flick them away. The ship was also overrun by hawkers and they seemed to sell all kinds of knick-knacks like pens, souvenirs, watches, leather wallets, knives and suchlike wares. My father, who was familiar with North Africa from his war- years, told me that they were known as Gyppos as they could dupe anyone out of his hard-earned money. We went ashore to visit the city.
The passage through the Suez Canal was truly a memorable one. I could hardly believe that such a huge ship could wend its way through such a narrow channel. On both sides were wide expanses of sand with a solitary railway line on the African side. My young mind then could never have understood the politics that would delay our return to India because of the differences between the Egyptians and the British over the control of the Suez Canal. We finally returned to India on the fast and relatively luxurious Anchor Line Ship S.S. Circassia in 1957 – but that is another story.
The journey through the Mediterranean Sea was smooth, placid and beautiful with bright sunny cooler days and starlit skies. Then suddenly through the morning mist, I saw Gibraltar. As we sailed through that historic strait, I saw the great Atlantic Ocean for the first time. The sea was getting rough.
As we entered the Bay of Biscay, we literally sailed into really stormy weather. I began to feel queasy in my stomach and threw up everything I ate and seemingly more. My father felt that I would feel better if he took me to breathe some fresh air on deck.
For the first time in my life, I saw the fury of an angry sea. I was spellbound as I emerged into the open. Howling and blowing furiously, I tasted the sea-salt in the wind which whipped my coat as I looked up to see the unending grey sky above. The sea was rolling slowly in mountainous waves of inky-blue, streaked at their crests with wind-whipped white foam which crashed against the side of our ship struggling to ride it. Cascades of seawater flew up along our sides as each wave hit us with the sound of distant thunder and showers of diamonds flew up into the sky. I was transfixed and realised how small I was in the face of this awesome fury of nature.
All along the length of the deck they had tied a rope about a yard from the ship’s railings to prevent any passenger from going too close to the railings at the deck edge. Suddenly, the ship rolled jerkily and viciously and I felt myself toppling as I tried to grab, but missed, my father’s hand and slid along the deck towards the railings. I felt my legs go overside as I came up hard with a vertical railing stanchion between my legs. In that terrifying moment, I heard my father shout over the howling wind as I teetered on the edge. I was suspended precariously over those heaving white-flecked grey waves as Hydra-like, they rose to engulf me to a watery death. Relief was when I felt the comforting hands of my father pulling me back from the brink with the help of a crew-member. As I groggily walked back to the accommodation entrance, I was positively terrified, shaken and numb with fear. Little did I know that despite this terrifying experience, my destiny would lie in sailing these tempestuous seas, as a profession. I noticed that my father did not tell my mother about my fall. I did not either. It was as if we shared a lovely secret which we never spoke about till he died many years later. I suddenly also realised that I did not throw up any more!
The rest of the trip to Southampton was dominated by grey skies and the unending heaving and roiling of the tempestuous sea.
I do remember the meals were nice on the Batory and I had a special liking for their breakfast. The omelette they served was absolutely perfect! Another thing that fascinated me was the view through the portholes of the dining room which lay well below the main deck. On a rolling ship, one moment we would be looking up at the grey sky overhead that swung rapidly till the porthole was submerged into green waves below. The table edge stoppers would be up and I loved seeing the crockery and cutlery journeying across the tablecloth as the great ship swung wildly. An occasion of mirth would be when some unsuspecting soul fell off his chair despite it being tightly chained to the floor.
Finally we were there. I felt like kissing the rain-swept cobbled wharf which gave me a steady platform to stand on that I had not known for many days. But, at the same time, there was a foreboding sadness on that sombre day. Wrapped in a warm coat, I shivered gently on that icy, damp wharf as slowly the cold permeated to chill me to the bones. I wondered whether I trembled because of the cold or because I was terrified of my uncertain future in a new land. I tightened my hold on my father’s fingers.
It was August in England.
When would I see my bright, sunny and colourful India once again?
Context: Basu family trip India-UK-India, 1955-57
Post Script 1 by Biswajit Basu, January 2021:
We went by Polish Ocean Lines MS Batory that took us from Bombay to Karachi, Aden, Port Suez, Port Said, and finally, Southhampton (we went through the Red Sea). So, through the Arabian Sea, Red Sea, Mediterranean Sea, Bay of Biscay, English Channel.
On the return, the Suez Canal was closed so we went by SS Circassia of the Anchor Line non-stop, (if I remember right), from Liverpool to Bombay, but maybe we stopped at Cape Town to refuel, but were not allowed ashore because of apartheid. So the route was Irish Sea, North Atlantic Ocean, South Atlantic Ocean, round Cape of Good Hope, Indian Ocean, Mozambique Channel & Arabian Sea.
(To read more about the return voyage, click here.)
Post Script 2 by Biswajit Basu, January 2021:
I wrote this maybe 20-25 years ago. But the colours and smells were so exuberant and exciting that they still linger in my memory.
The Bay of Biscay was terrifying. Later in my career I sailed through it many times and it was never calm. Sometimes it could rival the storms around the Cape of Good Hope. In fact the stupendous waves that batter the northern coast of Spain, which were like the jaws of hell for us are a tourist attraction today!
I remember the four of us in Southampton Station waiting forlornly for our train to London. The despondency of the grey skies, the incessant drizzle and the faraway alien land is still in my heart and memory. It was a terrible day.
*Picture Credits: MS Batory, Wikipedia
