Ik ben aan het zeilen

Dutch for "I am sailing". Not sure how much Dutch I learnt in the week or so it took to get from Trinidad to Southampton.

The ship didn't have a great track record. It's the SS Flandre, the first post-WWII ship built by the French "Compagnie Générale Transatlantique", better known as French Lines.

On her maiden voyage in 1952 from Le Havre to New York, her steam turbines constantly broke down and when embarrassingly towed in to harbour to be greeted by the traditional fireboat welcome, she couldn't even manage the ship's whistle reply but had to use the emergency siren. The New York harbour workers renamed her the "SS Flounder".

Sold in 1967 and became the SS Carla C and was quickly chartered to Princess Cruises and marketed as Princess Carla but the name was not officially changed. At this time some TV people were travelling on her and came up with the idea of "The Love Boat", the very popular TV series. No scenes were filmed on her but she got to be a background star in a 1964 Perry Mason episode.

In 1970 again SS Carla C until in 1975 she got new diesel motors and became MV Carla C but then that got changed in 1986 to MV Carla Costa, 1992 sold to a Greek line and renamed Pallas Athena before she was written off in 1994 following a fire in the Med where luckily all passengers and crew were saved.

My parents and I were on our way to introduce me to the idea of English boarding school and to get all the school uniform at the appointed drapers "Gorringe's"  on Buckingham Palace Road in London, giving them enough time to have my cloth name tapes made and sown on all the shirts, underpants, socks, shorts, jacket, tie, cap ... and to send the package to the school in Somerset prior to school begin in mid September. My parents had come equipped with the school list of items and including my pupil number "15" which also had to be on the name tape. To this day I use it as my lucky number and that's probably why I have never won the lottery.

I didn't enjoy the trip mainly because I found it difficult to make friends with the other children, although as can be seen from the Blip, there were enough of us. They were all Dutch, having boarded prior to us at Curacao. In the photo my father standing protectively behind me.

Here a rather nice video of photos of the lady.