Part I: Seals teeth and whales ears - Scott Polar Research Institute ...

those pre-jet days. It was my very first flight and took us three long days to
reach Montevideo, including the long refueling stops at Dakar and Recife.
It was comfortable, though, with a kind of open club space at the rear
furnished with sofas, chairs and drinks tables. The Crown Agents had asked
me to take under my wing a German dentist travelling to the Falklands to take
up a contract with the FI Government Dental Service. But unfortunately the
vibration and noise was almost unbearable. Together with attempts to converse
with my German companion who spoke little English, it was very wearing, but
memorable.
The route took us to Dakar, West Africa, where we refueled and stopped
overnight, and I experienced for the first time in my life the velvet steamy dark,
diverse sounds and smells of an African night. Then across the narrowest part
of the Atlantic to Recife (Pernambuco), Brazil, experiencing a violent flaming
engine failure at the point-of-no-return, which was a hair-raising time. At
Recife we experienced the tropical heat even in the early morning and sat it out
for several hours in the frying pan under a corrugated iron roofed shed on the
airstrip. Then, we flew on over the endless dark-green Brazilian rainforest,
hitting air pockets and trying to go around the violent thunderstorms
characteristic of the region. We saw much more of the earth’s surface than in
later years, because in propeller-driven aircraft we flew lower – at some 10,000
ft. So eventually we landed, exhausted, ears ringing, at Montevideo in
Uruguay. After a day or two there we boarded the SS Fitzroy, captained by
Freddie White and sailed to Stanley, Falkland Islands. However, it was to be
two or three months before I reached South Georgia.
In August Maureen flew out to Portugal for a holiday: tennis, swimming,
dancing, walking and some sailing with old and new friends; she had great
fun, but kept in touch. That Christmas she went to Dublin (by then I was in the
Antarctic again) and stayed with Gaye's family for some of the holiday, instead
of going back to Portugal. It was enjoyable: they went to quite a few dances, to
the Races and saw some lovely country. However, she says that the voyage
there from Liverpool, 3rd class in winter, was awful, and her hosts were
horrified to learn that she had travelled that way; the ferry was packed as it
was just a few days before Xmas and she had not booked in advance. She told
me she had spent part of the night in the ladies room sitting on a clothes-basket
and part of the night on a companionway!
She had finished her secretarial course. In January 1951 [?] she was offered
a job as Assistant Secretary at the Triangle Secretarial College, so they must
have been happy with her progress. – although her pay was only £4.11.2 a
week ( c. £240 a year). Her rent was £3.3.0 a week, but fortunately she had an
allowance from her parents. [Meanwhile, in December I went off to the
Falklands and South Georgia (described later). But meanwhile I invited
Maureen up to Cambridge at weekends and we did a lot in London too –
restaurants, theatres, ballet, operas, concerts. She had a few other boy friends,
but we got on very well. ]
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