M.V. Clarkavon

1954–1971

No telephone, no news

There was no way to call home. Letters were sent ahead to the agent at the next port, and if the ship was diverted the mail chased her round the world for months. A man could sail knowing his wife was expecting, and learn he had a child from a telegram handed up a gangway in another hemisphere.

1954–1971

Two years was a normal voyage

Foreign-going Articles could run for up to two years, and often did. David's longest unbroken spell in this logbook runs seventeen months, from June 1960 to November 1961 aboard the Scotstoun. Leave came at the end of it, not during.

1960–1971

The ships get very much bigger

In the 1950s a large tanker carried around 16,000 tons. By the mid-1960s the new turbine tankers carried three and four times that, and they were built too big for the Suez Canal to take them fully laden. Ports had to be rebuilt to match: Europoort was dug out of the sea off Rotterdam, and Kharg Island and Khor al Amaya were built out into deep water offshore.

In the log: David moves from the 1956 Norscot to the Naess ships, and the ports change with them — Europoort, Kharg, Khor al Amaya and Ras Tanura take over the log.

1964–1965

The long way round, by choice

A very large tanker could pass through Suez empty but not full. So she would load in the Gulf, steam all the way round the Cape of Good Hope to discharge in Europe or the Caribbean, and then come back light through the Canal. It added around 4,000 miles and three weeks to every laden passage.

In the log: In 1964 the Naess Spirit twice passes through Suez in ballast, then makes her three long hauls between the Gulf, Trinidad and Rotterdam the other way, round the Cape.

1967–1971

Suez closes again — this time for eight years

The Six-Day War in June 1967 closed the Suez Canal once more. Fifteen ships were trapped in the Great Bitter Lake and stayed there until 1975. Every tanker between the Gulf and Europe now went round Africa as a matter of course, and the Cape Verde Islands and South Africa became refuelling stops for a whole generation of ships.

In the log: David's last passage through the Canal in this logbook is on 18 February 1967, four months before it shut. That August the Naess Endeavour is bunkering at St Vincent in the Cape Verde Islands instead — out in the Atlantic, on the long way round Africa.

1967–1968

The end of Aden

Aden had been British since 1839 and was one of the busiest bunkering ports on earth, largely because of the Canal traffic. When the Canal shut in 1967 that trade collapsed, and in November 1967 the British left and the People's Republic of South Yemen was declared.

1954–1971

The map keeps changing

The place names in this log are the ones David used, and many of them have since changed. Bombay is Mumbai, Madras is Chennai, Bône is Annaba, Bougie is Béjaïa, Ceylon is Sri Lanka. He sailed through the end of one world map and into another.