My first sight of Africa was in 1958 from Gibraltar while en route by liner to Australia. Then, as the ship started across the Mediterranean, we sailed between the Tunisian coast and the Galite Islands. I found the winter-brown African hills, dotted with a few fishermen’s cottages, strangely attractive; the Galites were the kind of place I wanted to explore. But the ship sailed inexorably on, leaving the islands behind as an often‑revisited memory.
After four or five days steaming across the Mediterranean we berthed at Port Said on the African side of the Suez Canal and were allowed ashore for a day. I teamed up with three fellow passengers and we hired a four‑seat calèche for a tour of the older parts of the town (a calèche is a type of open, horse‑drawn carriage typical of this part of Egypt and used mainly for short journeys and sightseeing). The driver, or cocher, gave us a running commentary on important features, including walls damaged by bullet holes made during the 1956–57 Suez Crisis when Britain, France and Israel invaded Egypt – an event then still fresh in the memory of local people. Port Said was founded by the French in the mid‑19th century as a base for the construction and administration of the Suez Canal, and the architecture and general character of the town centre were a mixture of colonial French and Egyptian.
After our ride we found an inexpensive but rather shabby restaurant decorated in many shades of faded grey and brown and ordered steak and chips. The steaks were very thin and we did wonder if they were camel rather than beef, but they tasted good washed down with Stella beer.
So ended our day on shore in Africa, but we subsequently had good views of the African and Asian landscapes as we proceeded southward across the Isthmus of Suez along the Suez Canal, the traditional boundary between the two continents. We passed the Egyptian town of Ismailia on the African side of the canal, but mostly the views were of scrubby desert dotted with the remains of broken and abandoned machines and ships. The canal had been closed in the 1956–57 war. It reopened in March 1957, so we were using it less than a year after the conflict.
The ship stopped for a short while at Suez, an ancient town on the African side of the canal, before we set off for the three‑day voyage down the Gulf of Suez and the Red Sea to Aden. It was spectacularly hot and from the ship’s deck we could often see the black rocks or distant grey hills on one side or the other. As well as Egypt, I may have observed parts of the African countries of Sudan, Eritrea, Ethiopia and Djibouti, though they all looked pretty much the same.
Opposite Aden on the western side of the strait of Bab el‑Mandeb the area may have been what the Ancient Egyptians knew as the Land of Punt and possibly the site of the mysterious biblical city of Ophir. At school five years before I had learnt the poem “Cargoes” by John Masefield, and in this strange, barren place the first verse – with its perhaps deliberately muddled geography – came back into my mind:
Quinquireme of Nineveh from distant Ophir
Rowing home to haven in sunny Palestine,
With a cargo of ivory,
And apes and peacocks,
Sandalwood, cedarwood
And sweet white wine.
