The Bendoran.

We had almost a week at sea without seeing land. The days were taken up playing quoits although it was hot on the weather decks. Henry, a young black labrador, was carried as live deck cargo. He was heading for Singapore where his owners, an Army family, were already resident. Henry too had been delayed by the shipping strike. Two of the young cadets had been given dog feeding and exercise duties on the boat deck twice a day and they let sister Linda do the ‘walkies’ most days.

The ship had regular film shows about every five days to break the monotony. We saw a Bob Hope film and the new Bond film Thunderball.

We spotted thousands of flying fish on this sector and every time Bendoran’s grey bow crashed into the swell scores of them scattered left and right and glided many yards before flopping back into the sea. One day I spotted a couple of large sharks in the water maybe only twenty or thirty yards away. I mentioned this to the captain who said he had seen them too but he thought they were dolphins. If they were, they were damned big ones.

This was the only sector in which we suffered rough weather but it was more of very heavy swells than anything else. There was no rain or squalls but we were lucky as in another week or two the Indian Monsoon would have arrived making life very unpleasant. Unfortunately I parted with my lunch on more than one occasion within minutes of consuming it, one of them being a particularly tasty Lancashire Hotpot as I recall.

Several days later Bendoran turned right and, leaving the Indian Ocean behind her, headed into the Straits of Malacca. I was truly in Asia for the first time in my life.

Another two days later shortly after breakfast the tall buildings of Singapore came into view in the distance. They looked massive to me but were probably only about eight storeys high. How puny they would have looked against the glass and steel behemoths of the Lion City today.

I couldn’t wait to get ashore but I was told that clearing immigration and port health authorities would take some time and that we would be lucky to be ashore by lunchtime. I was appalled. It was about noon when we finally tied up alongside a berth.

‘Woof woof! Woof woof!’

It was Henry the Labrador getting excited about something. And then we spotted them on the quayside, Henry’s family coming to meet and collect him! There was a man, his wife and two girls aged about ten I guess.

Linda shouted out to them, “Is Henry your doggy? There he is up near the lifeboats”.

The two girls shrieked out Henry! Henry! and he responded with even more barks. A short while later and the first gangplank was in place. One of the cadets had a lead on Henry who almost pulled him ashore as he raced to be reunited with his family. It cheered us all but within a short time we had to say our goodbyes to Rosina and Evelyn. They were met by a flunkey from the Foreign Office who whisked them off in a car. They were headed for Kuala Lumpur and Rangoon. Sadly we never heard from them again. It would be nice if I could track them down and give them a copy of this story.

It was early afternoon by the time the remaining five of us got ashore. We were effectively a family of five now with Paddy almost a surrogate father to me and a brother to Dad. Paddy obviously knew Singapore quite well and took charge.

“I’ll take you to Connell House, you’ll like it there. There’s a pool and Mark and Linda can have a nice swim, so bring your swimming togs.”

I noticed a chap in the pool canoodling and kissing with a pretty Chinese girl in a tiny bikini. This was new to me and a little while later I innocently asked Dad who she might be. A waitress on a ship maybe? It was Paddy who told me she was a ‘good time girl’ and I asked no more questions. I had seen my first hooker!

Another thing I remember vividly was an Australian chap with a cockatoo in a cage. It had been trained to say humorous things and would copy almost anything you said to it. Later we saw some of the colourful street life, open air restaurants and markets. I saw a large python being butchered and sold as steaks at one stall. It was quite an eye opener. Dusk then darkness came quickly which took me by surprise It was dark shortly after six which showed just how close to the equator we were. Less then one degree north I think.

We visited the huge cemeteries that contained the graves of thousands of allied troops lost in the defence of Singapore in 1942. The huge naval guns designed to protect Singapore against the Imperial Japanese Navy were pointing out to sea so the Japanese Army came in the back way instead over the causeway. Churchill had sent the battleship Prince of Wales and the battlecruiser Repulse to defend Singapore but the Japanese air force caught them without air cover and sank them. Surrender followed within days and it effectively marked the beginning of the end of the British Empire. Hong Kong had already surrendered to Japan two months earlier. At the time it must have seemed that nothing was left between Imperial Japan and Australia.

It was four days sailing from Singapore to Hong Kong and I wanted to learn as much about my home for the next three years from Paddy as I could. He did not disappoint me. I could tell you a thousand things that Paddy told me about Hong Kong and by the time I got there I felt almost at home.

The next four days were somewhat uneventful. The only highlight that sticks in my mind is that about halfway up the South China Sea we were buzzed on more than one occasion by American fighter jets who had probably picked us up on radar and came out to see who we were.

The Vietnam War was in its early days but already the whole area had become very sensitive. Bendoran chugged north at seventeen knots riding quite high in the water with much of her cargo now behind her in Singapore. My great adventure was slowly drawing to its close. We would soon be in Hong Kong, the Pearl of the Orient.

Dad had told us that he always wanted to follow his father and go to Hong Kong. Earlier that year he had the opportunity to opt for another tour to Malta (he had already done three) or go to Singapore, Melbourne or Hong Kong. He was almost posted to Melbourne after getting married in 1952 but the Admiralty switched it to Malta at the last minute due to staffing shortages. So I could easily have been born in Australia had fate not intervened. I had done no Asian geography at school so I read up on it as much as I could once we knew it was to be our home for three years.

It was always referred to in books as a Crown Colony and never a Territory as were many British possessions. Ceded to Britain by China under the Treaty of Nanking in 1842 it comprised Hong Kong Island of about thirty square miles and, facing opposite on the mainland, the triangular peninsula of Kowloon of about four square miles. But the prize that belonged to whoever owned it was not the land but the stretch of water that gleamed between the two. It was named Victoria Harbour, after Britain’s monarch, and ranked alongside San Francisco, Valletta and Sydney as one of the great natural harbours of the world. I consider myself very privileged to have seen all four in my lifetime. I would not like to offer an opinion as to which has the best attributes but they all offered shelter and square miles of deep water for anchoring and loading and unloading cargo. Hong Kong had the added advantage of being on the very edge of the most populous country on earth with all the opportunities for commercial growth that went with it.

It was the afternoon of the day of our arrival. Originally scheduled to dock in mid-afternoon we were told that the tail end of a typhoon had delayed the departure of other vessels from Hong Kong and that the Company’s wharves were not yet clear for our own arrival.

By about tea time we started to spot some hilly, forested islands to port of Bendoran. “Communist”, said Paddy without further comment.

In the passenger lounge Dad had fiddled with the radio and was already tuned in to Radio Hong Kong on FM.

We listened to the News and the Weather Forecast on the radio. It was like being in another world which of course it was. Soon we were told that we were now in ‘British waters’ which looking back sounds silly but at the time Hong Kong was regarded as being as British as the Isle of Wight. We passed Waglan Island to starboard which had a weather station on it and which supplied detailed meteorological information to the Royal Observatory. Dusk was falling, but ahead in the west we could make out the hills of Hong Kong Island and Victoria Peak, the tallest of them all.We were nearly there, passing through the narrow Lei Yue Mun channel that separated Hong Kong Island from the Mainland. Pointing to the left, Paddy showed Dad where his ‘Radio Station’ was. Dominated by numerous masts and aerials and fronted by a cricket pitch, a football pitch and a Yacht Club it looked more like a Country Club than an outpost of GCHQ. It was known as Little Sai Wan. Within a few minutes Paddy also pointed out his school perched on a steep hill. It would be easy to find when we went to visit him.

I was amazed to see planes taking off almost towards us they lifted off the runway at Kai Tak Airport from the ribbon of concrete that extended out into the harbour from Kowloon on our right hand side. About a week later I would discover just how close my new school, St George’s Army School, was to the airport. Directly under the flight path and less than a mile from touchdown many a boring Latin class would be pleasantly interrupted by a screeching Cathay Pacific Convair Coronado rendering the teacher inaudible for at least thirty seconds whether the verb was at the end of the sentence or not. Julius Caesar must have been laughing in his grave to think that Britannia’s sons and daughters were still learning his mother tongue in another Colony eight thousand miles away and two thousand years later. That is quite staggering when you think about it.

It was dark when the whole vista of Hong Kong harbour came into view. It was breathtaking. A million neon lights of every colour in the rainbow illuminated the whole panorama. There were boats and ships of every description everywhere you looked. Bendoran slowed to less than walking speed and we tied up to a buoy where we had to complete Immigration and Quarantine checks. It must have been ten o’clock before we eventually moved into No.3 Kowloon Wharf.

From memory I think we arrived on a Saturday night exactly four weeks to the day since leaving London. It had been the most amazing four weeks of my life. The next three years would prove to be just as exciting.

I forget who said that in a person’s life only five people leave a truly lasting impression on you. It may have been an American President, I’m not sure. But whoever it was I can tell you that beyond any doubt whatsoever the late Father Patrick Corcoran was one of them.

Looking back, my voyage on the Bendoran did, I think, have a major influence on my life and the way I look at the world. I mentioned the internet which has revolutionised communication. I would like to think that my ‘Voyage to Hong Kong’ will last forever. If this publication reaches any former crew of Bendoran whether they were on that particular voyage or not then I would be delighted to hear from them. It would be fascinating to get hold of the Ship’s Log but the demise of the Ben Line in the Eighties makes that a difficult task, unless somebody out there can advise me differently.

The Bendoran seems to have followed me around in many different ways. Crossing the harbour to school every day from 1966 to 1969 I spotted her several times although she was easy to confuse with her sister ships the Benlomond and the Benreoch. Sadly the Arab-Israeli Six Day War in 1967 resulted in the Suez Canal being closed for eight years. Sailings from UK to the Far East thus had to be via the Cape of Good Hope. This was bad news for the Ben Line whose vessels were designed for as fast a time as possible to Aden to bunker followed by as fast a time as possible to Singapore and beyond. It was their core business with ships like the previously mentioned Benledi and her sister Benloyal being designed and built to do London to Singapore in sixteen and a half days. That’s shifting! Profits were badly hit and the Company never regained its former status and reputation. Ever mindful of the future the Company went into joint container ventures with Ellerman and others. Futuristic looking vessels like Benavon and Benalder powered by massive English Electric turbines were ordered from German yards but the die had been cast.

In the late 1980s I met a chap called Peter Skelton, a Merchant Navy Engineering Offer from Robin Hood’s Bay. We struck up an immediate accord and by an amazing co-incidence it transpired that he had done his elementary engineering training on the Bendoran. He told me that her engines were of a brand-new design and that ‘she was as quiet as a mouse!’ I’d heard those words before. We also talked about Aden where he had been many times and on recounting the tale of our brief but unforgettable stopover he said he thought that the demonstrative Army officer had almost certainly been none other than Colonel ‘Mad Mitchell’ officer commanding the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders. His tactics of dealing with FLOSY fell foul of the Foreign Office and after one particular bloody episode he was recalled to the UK. Leaving the Army he went into politics and became the Member of Parliament for Aberdeen. He stood on a ‘save the Argylls’ ticket and in that he succeeded. Today the Argylls are a single battalion within the Royal Regiment of Scotland. They don’t make ’em like Mad Mitch anymore.

In mid 2,000 whilst shopping in a branch of WH Smith, I spotted a copy of a magazine on a shelf with a ‘Benboat’ on the front cover. The magazine was called Model Boats and the cover depicted a fine model of the MV Benarty. I bought a copy and read the inside article by a Jim Wood, the modelmaker himself. It was fascinating and I resolved to have a model of the Bendoran built for myself one day. In 2012 I saw an advert from a firm called Classic Ships Models and after discussions with the proprietor Keith Park I ordered my model of the Bendoran. It is superb and takes pride of place in my dining room. I doubt there is another like it in the world. Amazingly Keith Park had been a cadet on the Bengloe that left London bound for Hong Kong a week after the Bendoran. How’s that for a coincidence?

But the story doesn’t end there. A year earlier I contacted a Kent based company called FotoFlite who claim to photograph every ship in the Channel in daylight. I dialled their number:

‘Do you have a nice photo of the Bendoran please?’

In fact they had two. One taken in 1956 the other in 1966. The pilot’s log revealed that the 1966 photo had been taken on the morning of Sunday 24th July as the ship was about ten miles offshore from Dungeness. I was onboard at the time and probably hadn’t even had breakfast!

Today, sadly, the British Merchant Marine is a shadow of its former self. If the post-Brexit Global Britain is to be the success it deserves then much thought must go into its resurrection. I can think of no aspect of British commerce that deserves greater attention and investment.