RANDOM AT LARGE

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 31983, 9 May 1969, Page 15

RANDOM AT LARGE

OFF QUAY

It is a minor miracle that a large liner can leave a port with the proper quota of passengers aboard, each in his proper place, with the right number of pieces of baggage, and without a handful of relatives or friends as unwilling guests, for the departure of an overseas vessel make's the Tower of Babel seem like the reading room in a gentlemen’s elub. Travel light, everyone is told by their friends and travel light is a policy nbone seems to adopt. There may be a welcome hint of nautical romance in the sailor’s parrot and cage, and this is denied the traveller by several of the volumes of regulations which govern his transportation and .conduct en route. But the average passenger seems to have just about all the remain-

der of his worldly goods when he goes up the gangplank. There is another minor miracle in the way a dozen people can assemble themselves in a cabin designed to hold two and, breathing in and out by numbers, conduct an animated but incomprehensible conversation based apparently on what to do and where to go overseas, the efficiency of a number of proprietary lines in warding off mal de mer, the health of their children, the magnificence of the ship, the extraordinary handsome appearance of the officers, the weather, the price of liquor, and a dozen related topics, while at regular intervals emissaries bearing bunches of flowers and telegrams fight their way into the throng. All madly, gay, gayly mad. Ships’ crews seem to

have extraordinary difficulty in ridding their vessels of visitors before departure: everyone seems as unwilling to move as the lady members of a bridge club after a particularly exciting night But somehow order, on board, is restored, and then there is the often prolonged business of leaning over a rail after the boarding party has retreated and re-grouped in a strategic position on the wharf. Conversation at this range should, if regard is given to distances and acoustics, be distinctly limited, yet enthusiasm can bridge even this sort of gulf, If somewhat unsatisfactorily. But, in ail honesty, It is not the time for the epigram, for the apt phrase by which the world will remember yeu when you ar A gone.