Aged 12 and a pupil of Romford Technical High School I sailed on Dunera on a Baltic cruise. I have the standard Dunera badge and a dorm badge that says Drake.

We sailed from Tilbury and went to Oslo, Stockholm  (with a side trip on a hydrofoil to Copenhagen) and then Gdynia and Riga. Some of us then flew as an extra to Moscow and saw the Red Square, Kremlin, Lenin’s tomb and had a horrendous lunch in a restaurant at the side of the red square.

I remember that on the journey home we had to use the Kiel canal to make up time and due to being captured having a battle with water bombs using the sick bags we were obliged to perform exercises on deck coming back through a north sea that was doing it’s best to deposit us overboard. The teacher was Bruce Longdon  our R.I. teacher.