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ON LONG Pacific voyages, when progress was about half an inch on the chart every 24 hours, I would often feel a sense of ennui setting in. Usually it was at its worst about 0300 hrs in the morning watch. Nothing to see, with no land for a couple of thousand miles in any direction and ships spread out hundreds of miles apart along the interminable sea-road down to New Zealand. No storms, or tempests to break the monotony, the Pacific Ocean in those low latitudes being.... pacific. Nothing to do except walk up and down a darkened wheelhouse, chat to the helmsman and make sure the lookout (who was even more bored than I was) was awake, drink cups of coffee and smoke endless cigarettes. The only compensation, it seemed, was that I was not sailing in a tanker, where no sooner than you had got there, than you were coming back.

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