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

for lunch on the way for steaks and red wine at a small restaurant among the
sand dunes. Then I boarded the RMS Alcantara for the voyage to Europe, calling
at Rio, Las Palmas and Madeira, before stopping off at Lisbon where I had
arranged to stay with Maureen and her family in Estoril – “Spring in Portugal”
was the currently popular fado song.
We had a very agreeable fortnight together; her parents took us all, including
her younger sister Sheelagh up north for a week - to Batalha, Viseu, Urgeirica,
Bon Jesus, Braga and Oporto. Urgereica was a [golf] hotel set in charming
country and encompassed by grassy glades and pinewoods; the scent of the resin
was everywhere. In Oporto we stayed in a large hotel, Infante do Sagres, and
explored the city. I got to know the family, including her father, Leonard and
mother, Bonnie, before her marriage Bonnie Dundee! Finance was a little
awkward for me, because in those post-war years the British foreign currency
allowance was still very small. I think I had to borrow some money from
Leonard. Then we drove back to Estoril, I went on to London by ship and
returned to Cambridge to finish my PhD research, but Maureen would soon be
coming over to London.
I was by now registered for a PhD, still with Sydney Smith as my mentor and
Supervisor, and my younger brother Michael was an undergraduate, reading
Natural Sciences, making him the third Laws brother to go to St Catharine’s. I
was awarded a Research Scholarship by the College (equivalent to a pre-doctoral
Research Fellowship now, and worth about £800 a year then, £13,400 now). I was
entitled to free rooms in college and occupied a comfortable set in a charming
small classical (modern) cottage standing in the centre of a courtyard just off the
main court and known as Gostlin’s House. All my meals were free. I was also
appointed a University Demonstrator in Part I Zoology; I worked in the Zoology
practicals with Anna Bidder (later first President of Lucy Cavendish College) and
George Hughes (later Professor of Zoology at Bristol University). In addition I
had my salary from FIDS (a princely £360 a year, equivalent to £6030 now) so all
in all I was quite ‘well off’! So much so indeed, that I decided to contribute to my
brother Michael’s costs as a student - £75 a year, which was quite a lot in those
days (£1256 now) – and a way of repaying my parents too.
I had consigned my larger specimens, including 73 elephant seal skulls to the
British Museum (Natural History) in London. In Cambridge I spent several
months finishing the laboratory work for my thesis entitled the “Reproductive
Cycle of the Southern Elephant Seal”. I was based in the Department of Zoology,
and allocated a large room on the ground floor of the Museum of Zoology, where
I had plenty of room to unpack and lay out my specimens. There was a great
deal of material to get through, without assistance, including estimates of age
from the seal teeth, preparation of slides for studying the histology of the
reproductive organs, including ovaries, uterus and vagina, pituitary, testis and
epididymus, and photomicrography. The sections had to be embedded in wax,
sectioned and stained with dyes to bring out the cell structures, from which I
analyzed the seasonal changes, including measuring tubule diameters, thickness
of epithelia, stages of spermatogenesis etc. I was now in the final stages of writing
up my thesis, as well as several papers for publication, work which could not be
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