ATLANTIC DEPRESSION

         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.