Voyage through the Red Sea

9th March 1924

'The ship docked in Port Said on Sunday 9 March. The shops were closed and no swimming trunks could be found. Sandy was not impressed by the town and wrote to Alec, “Tell mother that Port Said is quite the ugliest, dirtiest least interesting town I’ve ever seen. Its only redeeming feature is that those long brown bean things that aunt Gertrude sent Hugh & E & me for swords when we were young grow on trees all down the main street.'

From Port Said the ship sailed through the Suez Canal and into the Red Sea. Here the temperature rose and the heat left them all feeling languid and limp. The ship was sailing at sixteen knots and the wind was the same speed with the result that there was no air on board and the cabins became insufferable in the afternoons.

From the deck they were rewarded with marvellous displays of ‘flying fish that looked like small swallows flying or rather gliding very close to the water and schools of porpoises quite 500 at a time, a fascinating sight especially as we got quite close to one lot. The Phosphorescence in the Red Sea was wonderful & I caught quite a lot in my bath once. No one fell over board’, Sandy added, ‘so the voyage was fairly uneventful — a mad man on board tried to commit suicide but unfortunately I didn’t see it!’