The fantastic voyage....Stuart Laird
I traveled on the Dunera in, i think in 1960, at 12 years old my first time away from home. This was the first time the Dunera was used to carry school kids in mass, must have been a few hundred of us.
My school was Dalmuir Secondary Clydebank Scotland. They came round with a notice witch I took home to my parents not thinking that dad would go for the idea. My parents had never left Britain at that time. The fee, because it was the first trip of this kind was reduced 50% to 20 pounds sterling my dad though it was a great idea "travel broadens the mind" he said.Thirteen of us left Glasgow from our school we all slept in a bunk room with bunks no less. The school sent the school church minister along as a chaperone he was to give us classes during our trip. The first night no one slept at all and at 9am were called to class. As the minister was giving his lecture we all started to fall asleep on our desks. He gave up, don't remember any more classes on the trip. Now these old ships tended to sway back and forth so as you can imagine 300 or so sea sick kids vomiting on a ship at the same time. They had not invented seasick pill, I guess. The place was a mess but it did pass.
Corunna Spain was our first port. 5 or 6 of us in our school uniforms were allowed on our own to walk up in to town we though we would go to a cafe for a coke and explore, as we approached the end of the long dock one of the boys, Jim Davidson I think, started talking and gesturing wildly, to who we thought was one of the locals, about directions to a café. The guy looked at him like he was a head case and said "you think I'm one of those bloody onion eaters "a term used I guess for the Spanish what a laugh. We did find a café but they saw us coming and charged 2 and 6 for 1 coke we shared it.
Back on the ship our next stop Lisbon but with no classes the minions were getting restless all the schools would have a boxing tournament
Bit brutal but in 1960 what's a little concussion to a teenager our school won, guess we came from the roughest area.
I only have 1 memory of Lisbon we visited a museum of coaches from the middle ages the most interesting thing to a bunch of 12 & 13 year olds was that when you lifted the seat in these coaches there was a round hole
The travelers would take care of there personal ablutions while reroute strange what sticks in your mind after 48 years [lol]
We had one day out of Lisbon with our group led by our trusty minister of the faith to the resort of Estoril to go swimming we traveled by train to Estoril took quite a long time to get there and our swim was late in the day. The water was nice and warm not like the cold water off the peer at Helensburgh. The beach also had big waves crashing on the shore. We were having lots of fun, til the minister noticed that we were having a hard time getting back to shore from the under toe.
I always thought that it was lucky we all made it back to ship that night.
Next stop Gibraltar the British property in the Mediterranean we walked through the town it was up hill and every one spoke English it was a nice town as i remember .then we went to the top of the rock and meet the monkeys there actions and manners were no better than the hundreds of monkeys on the good ship Dunera
the voyage home, that was long and boring i was more than a bit home sick as were most of the others no big adventures [ like picking up Commander Spock ] I remember some other details of the trip. We had to write an essay for school on our return and the best one would get a prize I did write that essay don't think I still have... It was a long time ago and far far away...
Stuart A. Laird Vancouver Canada stuartlaird@shaw.ca
