It appears that Al Staehle and his wife, Lois, were not on board Caronia for her Suez Canal transit. Instead, they rejoined the ship at Port Sudan, or even Aden as part of their extended visit to Egypt.

Whether or not this was a conscious decision on their part is moot. It's clear from his notes that Al holds a very negative view of both Gamal Nasser (Egypt's 2nd President) and of Communism.

I'm in no position to disagree with him! Back then, I was a spotty teenager not quite 14 years of age. The “formative” influences of the wider World at that time would be the radio, or the “wireless” as we called it. Accordingly, the progress of Communism was always conveyed as something to fear, even though few of us knew what it really was!

The diet was endless and after a while it got tedious. A bit like an unlanced boil that simply would not heal. This would form a belief in the West that helped condone atrocities carried out in our name, in countries so remote that we barely knew where to find them on a map.

It also formed the basis of anyone being able to gauge your level of patriotism. The negative impacts of WWII had cast very long shadows!

Within Al Staehle's notes is a gap between his leaving Egypt and Caronia's arrival in Bombay. I'm unsure about readers being comfortable with Al's reporting. I need to assure you that it is an accurate account of that time!

In a history of a ship, it's all very well that a certain number of “Cruises” be recorded as completed in a service career, yet it's important to remember that none of them happened within a vacuum! If you have found Al's reports a little challenging, then they are fulfilling their purpose of being posted here.

I would contend that Caronia was as important to the British (and possibly the Americans) as the Royal Yacht, Britannia in rebuilding relations with foreign powers. She was among the first British ships to visit ports in Egypt just 3 years after the disastrous military adventure that was the Suez Crisis.

Her regular returns to these ports showed that this was no fickle flirtation. It recognised that tourism was a rich source of revenue on both sides of the divide. All the while that the 1961 Great World Cruise was in progress, so tensions were building in other parts of the World.

Whilst I may personally look back on the 1960s with some fondness; after all as a teenager, it was the decade when “rock & roll” took the World by storm, we were able to shake off the shackles of a devastatingly long austerity period.

However, in the wider World, political tensions were building to a point where it's no exaggeration to say that the future of the entire planet was at stake!

In the media back then, the emphasis was mainly over the tensions between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. However, among other serious World events was much wrangling over a change of political power in China and its effects upon occupation of a key seat on the U.N. Security Council.

This was strongly opposed by the U.S., though the U.K. and others were a little more sanguine over what seemed to be an inevitability. The previous Nationalist Government of China had been forced to retreat to Taiwan as the new Communist regime grew stronger, after a resurgence of civil war in the country.

The media in the UK, always anxious to solidify their approach to a situation was to coin the phrase: “Communist China”. The American media, keen to find an abbreviation, took the name a step further, and so their term “Red China” came into being.

Obviously, there was plenty of emphasis attached to the first word, to ensure an inferred conveyance of thought toward an enemy. Whether true or not, it was to be feared, and of course having set this scene, it helped to hold attention and sell copy.

It should be noted that all of the views expressed by Al Staehle are his own and this does not mean they are also mine. That would be absurd! His was a generation who had survived 2 World Wars; by comparison, I was a post-war child. I'm happy to publish his writings on the basis of how he saw the World, given the media pressure of that time intended to “help” you get your political bearings.

Having said that, I will be editing some of his reflections in a few of his future notes, in case readers don't fully understand their real implications. For example, there never was a “red” China, any more than there was a white or blue one. So any references to that country will leave out its media soubriquet. I'm more anxious to record things as they were.

My editing approach has always been clear, and in these times where almost every published word is viewed as “having an angle” I'll not allow what could be seen as inflammatory language get in the way of an important viewpoint, expressed by one American tourist with a keen interest in politics, and sent in private to his family and friends.

My belief is that we are fortunate to have the benefit of Al's commentary. As the modern World continues; I hesitate to use the word “progresses”; there's little evidence that humanity learns from its past mistakes. If Al's remarks help to reinforce that belief, then so-be-it!