to emigrate; after all someone must go out onto the prairie and grow the wheat to keep old England going. Perhaps, like me, you have flattened your nose against the windows of Canada House, that building in London displaying a big sheaf of wheat in the window and a photograph of a young man ploughing the land with 20 horses moored abreast. How I have longed to be that man, but not now, not in eastern Canada. You have to be a special type of person to emigrate: fond of hard work, bronzed, and a lover of wide open spaces; a person capable of living and competing with Polish people and Armenian Jews, and of standing at the pier head in Aberdeen on a bitter winter Sunday without an overcoat and enjoying it. If you are really this type of person, then emigrate and good luck to you, but don’t lose the return half of your ticket! Even Mr W. J. Egan, the Canadian Deputy Minister for Immigration, wrote in the Sunday Express that emigrants had to be ‘men of courage’. He couldn’t have been more right!
For my second sailing from Canada, the Newfoundland Banks are shrouded in their usual fog and we have to sound the recognised fog signal for a ship underway: one prolonged blast on the ship’s whistle every two minutes, day and night, continuously for three days. This gets on even the strongest of nerves. We arrive off France on a grey and wet November’s day, but with the docks being full, we anchor in Le Havre roads for two nights. When we finally head towards our berth, regiments of soldiers and military traffic are delayed as we pass slowly through the numerous dock bridges. The congestion inside the port is beyond belief with the dismal and muddy quaysides stacked high with every possible description of war material.
Many different nationalities and professions can be seen inside the docks: kilted Highlanders, Chinese labourers, burly West Indians, Indian Sikhs, blue-trousered Gendarmes, smart French officers, and pretty English nurses, as confusing a jumble of people as the average crew of a British tramp steamer. Our cargo is discharged by the Dockers’ Battalion, made up mostly of Scots, who work unceasingly and probably more thanklessly than any other unit in the army. They don’t even pause for breath from their labours when a munitions factory blows up outside Le Havre; the terrific explosion shakes the ship, although she is inside the dock.
The ship’s bridge is like a salt shower as we battle our way down the English Channel in the teeth of a gale. It is Christmas Day 1915, and we have orders to take our cargo of flour to the Dardanelles and to act as a store ship out there. This news puts a dampener on the already damp crew.
We arrive in Gibraltar and berth in the dockyard under the shadow of the huge Rock. Just after midnight we are disturbed by the very loud sounds of gunfire. Dozens of searchlights flicker and blaze over the inky Straits whilst little spurts of flame can be seen coming from all directions. Shells moan and whistle overhead, sending up columns of golden spray where they hit the searchlight-lit sea. It is said a German submarine is sneaking through the Straits. Gibraltar in action is a fine sight.
A 12-pounder gun is shipped and we take on two naval ratings as a gun crew. I believe we must consider ourselves fortunate, for there have been several cases of a naval gun being mounted on a merchant vessel and then the ship being sent out to sea with her mercantile marine crew having but the vaguest notion as to how to fire the gun. We are now a fighting unit and may, quite fairly, be sunk on sight by the enemy.
For some strange reason a civilian, usually the second officer, is in charge of the gun crew and directs the range of fire. Two or three of the ship’s seamen are instructed to act as ammunition passers. Should the ship be sunk, no matter how, the wages of all hands, except the naval ratings, will cease automatically as soon as the vessel goes under. In spite of these conditions, these practically-untrained merchant service crews have been involved in some very creditable scraps against enemy submarines in which the gun has played an important part.
New orders are received to proceed to Alexandria instead of the Dardanelles. There being no naval escorts and with the convoy system yet to be formed, the voyage from Gibraltar through the Mediterranean is made without showing our navigation lights and with our portholes darkened. We arrive off the low-lying coastline 16 days after sailing from Le Havre. The ship is conducted through the breakwaters and into the harbour by a pompous Egyptian pilot carrying a childish telescope and wearing yellow gloves and a red fez.
The teeming harbour is a picture of life, colour, and bustle, with launches rushing about, old sailing craft lying peacefully at anchor under the lee of the boulder breakwater, and huge troopships landing Australian soldiers. A large hospital ship, snow white except for the broad green band on her hull, glides smoothly through the harbour entrance on her way out to sea; at night she will be a blaze of green lights from stem to stern with a big red illuminated cross amidships.
The Mediterranean has never before seen such a variety of ships. There is a fleet of North Sea trawlers engaged in minesweeping; a continuous procession of giant liners, tramps, colliers and tugboats that have puffed up the Thames and the Clyde; and south coast pleasure steamers that will probably never again take sweethearts for a sixpenny trip in the moonlight to view the shipping in the Channel.
After our cargo of flour has been discharged, the ship is moved to the anchorage abreast of the famous old yacht the Sunbeami to await further orders. One of those sheik-like fellows, who ply the harbour by the score in their fast sailing craft, will put us ashore for a shilling, but the curse of Allah will be upon us should we choose to ignore his demands for more money. The customs gate at the landing pier is lined with money changers pestering for business; immediately outside in the street one is surrounded by a yelling hoard of loafers, hawkers of postcards decent and indecent, hotel runners, curio sellers, cabmen, guides, beggars, and touts for whatever takes your fancy. You must push through and walk on for they will not follow for more than a quarter of a mile, and by then their prices are coming down with every step you take.
One persistent old cabman refuses to give up:
“See Alexandria, Captain, Pompey’s Pillar,ii the Catacombs,iii Kiedive Gardens,iv very nice place, Captain.” His fare has now come down from ten shillings to three shillings each. “You no like Pompey’s Pillar, Captain? No Sir, alright Sir. Very good, Captain, I know a nice pub, Sir! Plenty girls, fine young girls, Captain, only fifteen years old, very nice, plenty dance, plenty . . . . . . that’s right gentlemen, get in Sir, Kiedive Gardens, alright Sir, I come from South Wales near London, Captain, very good family Sir.”
His persistence pays off and we take his cab.
The Arab horses are woefully treated, with impatient drivers working their whips unmercifully to make them trot or gallop faster. Often the cab is overloaded with seamen or soldiers with little or no thought ever given to the tired old horse. They keep going incessantly around the streets with little or no rest between customers.
On our trip we see the local life: country carts built from wooden frames on enormously high and wobbling wheels, little donkeys ridiculously overloaded, and herds of skinny goats apparently eating the sandy road. We pull up at a small country inn on the banks of the Nile; the sand has given us a thirst and the beer is cool. We watch the dhows drift by on the sluggish brown stream, much as they have done for 2,000 years. Our cabman says it takes five days to get from here to Cairo on the river but, like the rest of them, he probably knows nothing at all about it. Very little has changed here in the past 2,000 years except the introduction of licensing hours and the beer which, I believe, was that much better than it is today and could be drunk from proper glasses and not the bottle.
We
