Conversation in Valetta

IT was one of the minor distractions of participants in the late great war in Europe to observe the fantastic evolutions of marine nomenclature. As an immediate example it was my own destiny to sail, first, in a ship named after a West African village, transferring a little later to one called after a Costa Rica river. A year or two later an elderly vessel, City of Oxford, became my home, only to be exchanged, at the armistice, for a fuel ship immortalising an ancient city of Asia Minor. And the return journey from Anatolia was achieved in a trim modern sloop‐of‐war bearing the attractive but unsuitable soubriquet of Delphinium. We were lucky. Some of our brothers‐in‐arms were serving or travelling on ships whose names they could barely pronounce.