Men and Ships

New Zealand Listener, Volume 18, Issue 452, 20 February 1948, Page 5

Men and Ships

T is good to be reminded at ini tervals that a loaded ship is still the most astonishing thing in transport. That is why we print in this issue a condensation of Sir Patrick Duff's prose poem to the ship that brought him the other day from London. We regret hav-. ing to mutilate the address and rob it of both content and grace; but: impressive passages remain. There were first the things seen on deck-2 blood horses, 14 dogs, 2 crates of pigeons, 3 canaries, and a small group of passengers (for this was one of those ships on which the passengers were not all-

important). But the deck of a ship is one thing and the holds another, When Sir Patrick let his fancy loose on the cargo-but not too loose, since he kept to the manifest-the ship became something for which there is no single word; something that most of us forget; something that the years make more instead of less incredible; in times of peace the safest place in the world; at all times one of the most exciting. As we

have confessed, we have spoiled the poem; but we have tried not to obscure the moral, which surely is that every ton of cargo cried out for better understanding of man by man the whole world over, for more active gratitude of man to man, and a more constant awareness of each man’s dependence on another man somewhere whom he will never in his lifetime see. There was this point toothat not all shipping is exchange. Desperate though the need of cargoes is both ways between Britain and New Zealand, Sir Patrick’s ship went back to London with some tens of thousands of parcels for"which no return will be made in cash or kind. It is good to recall that too-not in contemplation of our own generosity but of Britain’s urgent needs.