MV Arbitrator

In the summer term of 1962, having taken my A levels at 17, I applied to the Voluntary Services Overseas organisation for a place for a year on one of their schemes before I went up to university. In those days, VSO largely dealt with what were later called 'cadet' VSOs, young men and women in their late teens. I was interviewed but failed to get a place.

Instead, I was persuaded to stay on at Bradfield to become head of house - picture shows members of the JCR in the autumn term 1962, with me second from left, front row. I enjoyed the term but didn't want to waste a year, so the headmaster, Anthony Chenevix-Trench, who had a contact at VSO, found me a placement, at Bernard Mizeki College, Southern Rhodesia, on the same terms as a VSO - if I could find my own way there and back.

My father, although retired, had contacts in the Harrison Line, and they agreed to give me passage, as a supernumary on the grand pay of a shilling a week, from Tilbury to Cape Town.

I travelled on the Arbitrator, a motor vessel built in 1951 by William Doxford & Sons in Sunderland.

We left Tilbury in the first days of January 1963 during a bitterly cold winter. We made our way up the North Sea in thick fog, and needed an ice-breaker to cut our way up the Elbe to Hamburg. By the time we reached the English Channel a full gale was blowing, and the weather deteriorated further as we entered the Bay of Biscay.

The rest of the passage was slow because the Arbitrator kept breaking down. However, it was a pleasure to be back in the warm trade winds. I spent my mornings working with the two officer cadets, doing anything from refilling the lifeboats' water containers (in the Biscay storm - the first officer had a sense of humour) to painting the ship, from lubricating the propeller shaft where a bearing was running hot, a horrible job, to steering the ship, a job I loved.

I arrived in Cape Town on 2nd February and spent two nights in an hotel. On the evening of 4th February I climbed Table Mountain and sat at the top looking down on the harbour, where the Arbitrator was making a wide turn as she left port. I remember feeling both terribly alone and very excited.

I was in Southern Rhodesia by the 7th February, having travelled up on the sleeper train from Cape Town, a four day journey.  I then spent two terms at the school - see earlier blog post here.