We made the
return journey from Canada to the UK by ship; the venerable Polish ‘Stephan
Batory’, across a cold, grey, stormy Atlantic, following one great depression
after another. Icebergs towered in the mouth of the St Lawrence, awesome and
serenely majestic in the cold currents that swept down from the north but after
that there was nothing but the mountainous swell, in grey days and black
nights. Seven days without a glimpse of the sun and I’d loved every minute of
it. I must have been the only one.
On the third day Anne and the
children were languishing in their cabin, in abject misery, along with most of
the rest of the passengers and I was starting to feel terribly guilty that I’d
selfishly subjected them to this misery. I consoled myself with the fact that I
wasn’t to know - that the weather could have been much better. The restaurant
by then was nearly empty and they were running low on sick bags.
One awful night the old engines broke down and
we wallowed helplessly at the mercy of the elements, listening to the hollow
clanks reverberating up from somewhere in the bowels of the hull for hours,
before finally getting underway once more. I still preferred it to flying - I’d
rather swim than fly.
On the fourth night we were woken by a
commotion in the corridor outside the cabin. It was two o clock in the morning
and our bleary eyes were confronted with the bizarre sight of a funeral
procession - a rolling, staggering funeral procession – banging from one side
of the corridor to the other - uniformed officers of the Polish merchant fleet
bearing a coffin with enormous dignity to the open deck at the rear. I watched
in awe as they stood round the casket and conducted their moving ceremony,
against that backdrop of heaving, malevolent, mountains of Atlantic swell,
before sliding the flag shrouded casket into the black waters and casting their
flowers and wreaths after it. For a moment, a small agitated garden of
remembrance had danced in the elements before being swallowed up by the
blackness. All I knew was that the deceased was an old Polish national, on his
way home from the new world, one last time, to see his family. I wept with
those people who gave me an insight into realms of pride and dignity that I’d
rarely experienced before. They hadn’t needed to do that, but they’d done it
just the same. Since that journey I’ve always loved the Poles, as inhabitants
of a proud, courageous nation that is a credit to humanity.
Before the end of the journey one or
two more of the older passengers had also expired, either to be buried at sea
or taken off at Southampton in body bags. I noticed ironically that they were
accorded the dignity of being the first to disembark Seven days in all and at
the end of it even I felt unsteady on my
feet but it was a thousand times better than flying.
