Arcadia is an adults-only ship that carries about 2000 passengers.

Picture: Accusoft Co Source: News Limited

Something as simple as a computer is one example. Such things were unknown in my day; even personal calculators were the stuff of science fiction movies. It would have been invaluable, for example, in calculating a porterage (pronounced portage) bill at the end of each voyage. This is a balance sheet that summarises everything connected with crew wages. Back then it hardly ever balanced first off, and if it did you knew there was something wrong. Today I suppose it is called a spreadsheet and produced by using a keyboard.

Computers also help in steering big liners such as the adults-only Arcadia, which carries about 2000 passengers. A set of propellers fore and aft that rotate 360 degrees enable the vessel to turn on a sixpence.

Such technology would have proved invaluable on one occasion long ago when,  mid-­Atlantic, we couldn’t find a passenger suspected of stowing away. Despite many attempts at locating him, the captain eventually decided to take a calculated risk and, assuming he had jumped overboard, duly announced the ship would be turned mid-ocean to execute a search.

Stopping a ship and turning it 180 degrees in those days would have taken a considerable amount of time, not to mention the danger involved. Fortunately the stowaway gave himself up before that could happen.

But travelling back then was not always so irksome. One of the pluses was being allowed to mix with the passengers at night. All officers had their own table in the formal dining room where we were expected to entertain a diverse group of passengers. Later we’d usually join them in one or other of the public rooms and dance the night away.

That, alas, sometimes led to complications.

A passenger once falsely thought I was showing too much interest in a lady he wished to impress. One night he decided to hunt me down, even demanding to know which cabin I occupied in the hope, one assumes, of catching me in a compromising position. Fortunately his attempts proved fruitless. The troubling part was that he carried a knife.

Occasionally, in a fit of mischief, we’d play a few tricks on the passengers. Nothing malicious, of course.

Sometimes we’d make out there was a stairway behind the counter of the purser’s bur­eau and we’d all start moving forward while bending our knees progressively lower.

Other times we’d hang a pair of trousers on a hook in full view in the hope that an observant passenger would become curious and try to discover which one of us was walking around in his underwear.

Once, in a particularly mischievous mood, we all decided to make out we’d lost our voices and requested passengers to move closer (intimately closer) so they could hear us. Trouble is I got a fit of the giggles, I tried to suppress it as an elderly man approached the counter and shouted: “I’m very sorry, young man, but you’ll have to speak up. I’m a bit deaf, you see!”

Flash forward and the stewards and waiters on the Arcadia are top class. Which is more than I can say for those I encountered on the ships I sailed on. Whenever we found one who was ­efficient and sociable he was whisked away from us. We had one who was so good, he was promoted to captain’s tiger (the captain’s personal steward). We finally cottoned on and never praised anyone, whether they showed promise or not.

But we had a waiter who believed in thwarting us at every turn. He’d continually bring the wrong order and on one occasion when there were peanuts on the menu, he refused to fetch them. I like my peanuts so I persisted, and still they failed to appear.

Finally he went into the galley in an obvious huff and returned with a giant bowl of nuts that he proceeded to fling on the table. The jarring forced a few nuts to leap from the bowl and land in my soup. That was one person who didn’t get a tip at the end of the voyage.

Arcadia doesn’t employ bellboys. In my day these lads answered to the call of “bells” and were expected to run errands during office hours wearing a distinctive brown uniform with a pillbox hat. Fresh from secondary school (British O-level standard presumably) they came in all shapes and sizes. Some were sullen, some were keen and some just plain cute and cheeky, such as Jack, to whom the ladies aboard would often take a shine.

In fact, one ample-proportioned lady would often come to the purser’s bureau just to have a chat. One Mother’s Day she remarked to Jack that she wouldn’t mind being his mother. To which he replied, in his broad Scouse accent: “I wouldn’t mind making you one!”

Checklist

Arcadia has a 23-night US, Pacific Islands and Australia voyage from San Francisco to Brisbane departing January 31; from $2809 a person twin-share. More