TOMORROW - 80TH ANNIVERSARY OF SPECIAL DAY

THANKS, Barbie Sandler, for your generous comments in your letter to the Editor last week.

- BRIAN INGPEN

Despite your confidence, this oubroek of three score years and eighteen will find it tough to break government lethargy to engender productive oil wells off the coast, to entice more cruise ships to Cape Town, to attract armadas of ships to the South African register, and to complete other interesting maritime projects.

Filling a gap for the term, however, I have returned to teaching the ways of ships to youngsters at Lawhill Maritime Centre. Although those pupils are more than three score years younger than me, this, for me, is a most rewarding experience as I find young minds are eager to learn about maritime matters. And there, Barbie, rather than this old dude, might lie the success and blooming of the local maritime industry in the future.

It reminds me of my first teaching post at a local boys' school where, besides teaching geography, I umpired all-day matches of the First XI, coached rugby teams, and even played the Second Gravedigger in the school's production of Hamlet!

In the adjacent classroom was a seasoned English teacher with whom I shared a pool of sunlight as we chivvied the boys along the passage between lessons. He was a real gentleman, an erudite man of calm disposition who never let the boys ruffle his feathers.

Paging through A Pictorial History of World War II in the staffroom one day, the librarian had the book open at a large photograph of the cruiser Dorsetshire sinking after being attacked by Japanese planes, south-west of Ceylon (Sri Lanka) on April 5, 1942.

At that moment, my English colleague walked past and stopped. "When that photo was taken," he said quietly, pointing to the ship's afterdeck, at a frightening angle as she was sinking by the bow, "I was about there."