This site is a wonderful surprise. I am a retired teacher, nearly 61 now, I had one of the most incredible experiences of my life when I sailed on a the Dunera on a 12 day school cruise around N Europe from Liverpool in July 1961.

Some weeks before as the end of our First Year was looming someone came to school to talk to us about this cruise, and places were available even at that late stage – for £25.

I remember my father who had a good engineer’s job at the time, thought it would be great for me, but he couldn’t afford it so he asked his Mum, my Grandma, and she stumped up the money! I’m so glad she did.

The trip is still etched in my mind like it was yesterday. I remember going around the North Cape of Scotland in the stormy seas and everyone seemed to be throwing up. Bill Paterson, in the bunk below got up to be sick 23 times in the night! Why do I remember that?

There was an intercom early in the morning and we were all called to the deck to ‘smell’ the approaching land..it was the smell of PINE forests of Norway, before we could even see it. It was my first experience of a foreign land.

I was still 11 and I was the youngest pupil in my yeargroup. We saw the lovley sights of Bergen, and the ship anchored in a fjord and we had a race around the ship in the rowing boats, against some other schools that were on the cruise.

Onto Oslo, where we saw the saucy statue of naked intertwined bodies in Vigeland park. Down to Copenhagen (Tivoli gardens/The Mermaid) Onto Hamburg thro’ the Kiel Kanal.

Trips to see the Eastern German guards on the Wall, and to think..we were in Hamburg just as the Beatles were playing in the Reeperbahn!

Round the Amsterdam where we sampled food and ice cream, that wouldn’t make it into English shops for another decade!

Sailed back to Hull. No more seasickness.

We even went on local radio to relive our trip, and once home I couldn’t stop talking/thinking about it for months.

It was another 7 years before I could afford to go abroad again.

I never realised until now that the Dunera had had such an eventful career as a ship..not all happy by the sound of it.

Robert Dean also sent this note in on Monday, August 02, 2010 at 13:10:45 – quite rightly irritated by the slow addition of the message above. It WAS added to the old site eventually but I really thought it should be added again here

A couple of months ago, posted to you my long story about my experiences on the Dunera from late July 1961 for a fortnight to Norway, Denmark, Germany + Holland sailing from L’pool, BUT IT HASN’T BEEN put on this site yet..DISAPPOINTED

My sincere apologies and I hope you are able to see this post again now Mr Dean