Dave's blog

I was extremely privileged to have been able to take part in the AGS school cruise around the Baltic at the age of 15 on the SS Nevasa. My memories of the cruise are very patchy as it was so long ago but I do remember having a lot of fun. I must confess to not have been particularly interested in the lessons that we had to attend which was probably to my disadvantage as there was an opportunity to learn about the fascinating places we visited. I think I was more preoccupied with larking about with my good mate Waggy (Paul Wagstaff). The cruise consisted mainly of pupils from Staffordshire schools (including Brewood Grammar, Shelfield and Streetly in addition to AGS), although there were a few southern interlopers from Kent, whose accents stood out strongly from our Midlands twang.

The ship sailed from Tilbury and there were four destinations. I am pretty sure we navigated the Keil Canal and the first stop was Travemunde, port of the historic Hanseatic city of Lubeck, Germany (then of course, West Germany), with its marvellous architecture and churches.

The second destination was Leningrad (formerly and now St. Petersburg), Russia. This really was a fantastic opportunity to visit cold-war era Soviet Union. At that time I was in the Air Cadets and fascinated by anything military, so to be able to see Soviet military installations and hardware at the height of the cold-war was amazing for a naive 15 year old like me! The whole experience was quite surreal. We were escorted by young communist party ‘guides’ wherever we went although we were under no illusion that their guiding was a secondary activity to keeping an eye on our western imperialist behaviour. Despite the talk of being sent to the salt mines in Siberia for any transgressions we treated it with a typical British disdain for all things foreign and pushed things as far as we dared with our hosts. They were actually remarkably accepting and tolerated our childish cheek. I remember one discussion in the back of a bus where our minder was asking if the Beatles were still number one and the responses were sarcastic to the point of being offensive. Makes me feel quite ashamed now I think back. That was the same girl I sold a pair of my Levi jeans to as they were very hard to come by in Soviet Russia!

Copenhagen, Denmark was the next stop where my memories seem to be mainly about the famous mermaid statue and an evening at the vibrant Tivoli Gardens. I remember thinking the mermaid statue was a lot smaller than I thought it would be. The final stop was Visby, Gottland, Sweden which I vividly recall being very hot with a marvelously bright sun beating down on the grey stone walls and red roofs of the medieval architecture. It was a magical place which could have come directly from the pages of a Viking saga.

The SS Nevasa had an interesting history. She was commissioned by the British India Steam Navigation Company as a troopship and built on the Clyde. She was launched in 1955 and served in this capacity until 1962, including transporting troops to the Suez Crisis in 1956. In 1965 she was refitted as an educational cruise ship along with a sister ship the SS Uganda and operated in this role until December 1974. She was scrapped in Taiwan in 1975. I recall the immaculately attired British officers of the ship sauntering about in a relaxed manner whereas the hundreds of disheveled and impecunious foreign crew scurried about like ants. They did look after us very well though and took no end of cheek and nonsense from us in good spirit.

The following photographs were ironically taken on my Russian made Zenith E 35mm SLR camera. My photographic skills with that completely manual film camera were clearly not the best and the resultant slides were stored away for years and transported around the world several times as part of our travels. Consequently they have not survived particularly well and they have required some restoration. But they still offer a fascinating insight into the trip. I wish I had kept my diary of the trip because I have no idea where some of the images were taken. Because they were originally slides I would have to take them apart one by one, destroying the mounts in the process to be able to use the film frame number as a guide to sequence, which I am reluctant to do. I also wish I had taken more photographs of the people involved rather than them predominantly being of the places and things we saw. That is possibly a sign of the times. These days it is easy to look up the Peterhof Palace on the internet and be presented with endless high-quality images, but back in 1974 it was very different so we took photos to remind us of where we had been rather than today’s preoccupation for ‘the selfie’.