At other hours, the Shanghai Christian Broadcasting Association broadcasts in English and Chinese language programme of music and talks, Atlantic has made me think wife and I recently made across a lot about the trip which my that ocean, writes Michael Terry in the "Sydney Morning Herald."
When we went aboard "somewhere in England," the freedom of the seas, which peacetime passengers have been used to interpret as it suited them, was obviously interned for duration.
We could not come and go as we liked; there were rules and new customs to be observed. Moreover, they were given as orders. Wartime Lad brought discipline to passengers who had hitherto enjoyed complete freedom.
Once aboard we had to stay aboard. That final trip ashore, although sailing Was postponed 24 hours, was as verboten as anything in Naziland. Military police were at the gangway, and once boarding cards had been given up, we could not step ashore till "somewhere in America"—if Fritz did not stop us on the way.
With night came the first discomfort of wartime ocean-going. Ait sundown all portholes were screwed tightly into place,.so that, thick black paint being over them, not a fraction of light showed. Further, the cabin displayed a notice that if anyone opened them after putting out the light, then all blacked-out portholes would be screwed home day and night. and so screwed home that no one could ever open them! It had been found that some people, longing for a fresh breeze during sleep, had started, on the voyage home, to open them without realising that a faint light from the ventilation grill above the cabin door was leaking through from the passage way.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.