Paperback, 150 pp. Price: £7.50 (including postage to UK destinations), Published September, 2000.

UK orders Please use our secure shopping basket facility below.

Overseas orders Please send us your order details by email and we will advise you of the total cost including shipping. On receipt of confirmation of your order, we will send you the book(s) and you can use the Donate button below to make your payment.

DONALD ORDE recalls a long and eventful life in these memoirs. After serving fifteen years in the merchant navy he transfers to land-based employment in the Persian Gulf. Whether at sea or on land, he always has the uncanny knack of attracting the sort of adventures that most people would rather read about than experience.

As a descendant of Admiral Duncan, Donald Orde is destined for a career at sea from an early age. He describes the rigours of life as a boy aboard the training ship Mercury, where he is made to scrub the decks on hands and knees and to watch his classmates being flogged while lessons continue uninterrupted in the same room.

In 1932 he joins the merchant navy as an apprentice on the Fernmoor. Soon afterwards he is shipwrecked in freezing December seas off the coast of Newfoundland. Undaunted, he is assigned to a new ship and quickly rises through the ranks until he is appointed chief officer of the Pampas in 1944, taking part in the D-Day landings. A wartime shipboard romance has a happy ending, despite the heroine being torpedoed in the Atlantic and interned in Germany. Tales that involve colourful captains, unusual cargoes and miraculous escapes from certain death are recounted with cheerful good humour.

After the war Donald Orde leaves the sea but not the world of shipping. He joins Gray Mackenzie in Bahrain as a cargo superintendent and eventually becomes general manager. During his time in the Middle East he sees the landscapes change from near-biblical appearance to replicas of Wimbledon-overseas and witnesses the development of transport from camels to Cadillacs. More adventures follow, such as the mystery of the disappearing planes and the incident of the exploding ships.