The Brotherhood of Mariners

The swell shows no let up and makes sleep uncomfortable. Wake to find my world rolling around on the floor. Sitting at a solitary late breakfast of coffee, toast and marmalade, I see only sky through the porthole, a moment later only sea.

It’s the Professor’s birthday, and I give him J. L. Carr’s A Season in Sinji, as it’s about cricket, which he is fond of, and is an excellent and absorbing tale. A clutch of letters from his family, all assembled unbeknownst to him at Tokyo, make his morning.

On deck the containers are groaning and wailing more spectacularly than ever. They sound like Stockhausen and the Professor thinks a symphony for containers should be commissioned. Simon, on the other hand, thinks they might be communicating something to the whales.

By mid-afternoon the flat, muggy, moist, overcast conditions which have prevailed since the weekend give way to sharper, clearer, cooler weather. Ideal, it is judged, for an initiation ceremony to mark the crossing of the Date Line. Such is the nature of my relationship with Passepartout, that when something potentially as unpleasant as this has to be faced, it is faced by me alone. The gulf between presenter and crew, normally the width of a fordable stream, becomes a Pacific Ocean. So it is I alone who represent the supernumeraries and gather down in the Radio Room at half past four to be prepared for this time-honoured and humiliating ritual. Fortunately there are members of the crew who have not been initiated – Francis, a 35-year-old Ghanaian, who served in his own country’s merchant fleet until Gerry Rawlings reduced it to only four vessels, George, a tall, languid, 22-year-old Burmese cadet and a small slim Malaysian who we know as Saatchi – his full name being Sachithanathan and a bit of a mouthful.

The four of us are lined up and the crew members, dressed in an odd mixture of handmade ceremonial robes, with cardboard hats and in one case a Korean flag worn like a toga, start to make us ready. Parek, the mild-mannered chief officer, has become a monster for the occasion. He has the role of Neptune’s High Priest, so he can shout louder and more abusively than anyone apart from the King. We are ordered to strip down to underpants, and are given only a thin strip of sacking to act as a loin cloth. Then our wrists are bound together with adhesive tape and a rope is looped round all our necks. Yoked thus, like the burghers of Calais, and proceeded by a pounding gong, we are half-led, half-shoved onto the deck and up two flights of steps to the Captain’s Bridge Deck.

Here is enthroned King Neptune, a cardboard crown and cotton wool beard barely disguising the dark Singaporean features of the chief electrician. He holds a trident and next to him sits the Queen – his wife Lily. Their little boy Rajiv, who is travelling with them, is not one of the participants but looks on in total amazement. We are ordered to kneel. Just time to notice there’s a handsome sunset behind us before being shouted at to keep my head bowed. A scroll is then unwound and charges read to the effect that we transgressors have strayed over the Date Line without asking King Neptune’s permission.

The King is then asked what punishments are required before he will be appeased. Already Passepartout, safe behind his camera and tape recorder, looks a little embarrassed at our predicament, but when the first punishment turns out to be that we must ‘shit and urinate’, I just have time to see four mouths drop open before being flung forward, and a small glass bowl (of the sort we have puddings in) placed beneath my groin. This is then rapidly filled with syrup from a tin of fruit salad, into which a frankfurter is then dropped. The next order, somewhat predictably perhaps, is that we should ‘eat shit and urine!’. This done we are dragged to our feet and daubed with tomato ketchup. ‘Hands above your heads!’

Despite the cold and the smell and general discomfort I keep my spirits high by thinking of Alan Whicker doing this. I think even Clive James might have drawn the line at eating his own shit and urine. The tomato ketchup having been liberally applied, particularly to the arm pits, we are then sprinkled all over with soy sauce, thrust to our knees again and flour rubbed into our hair, after which there is a momentary breather before an egg is broken over each of our heads. I feel the yolk, gratifyingly warm, as it slides down my back. Between all this there is much banter between the King and High Priest on the lines of ‘Have they done enough, O King, to atone for their crime?’. The King, of course, decides we haven’t done enough and orders us to drink something very nasty. This turns out to be a half pint of some bilious brown concoction which contains coffee, tabasco, curry powder, chocolate, raw eggs, soy sauce and mustard – to name but a few; we have to drink it in one go.

I think of Alec Guinness and tip the glass. George the Burmese gags halfway through and keels over, coughing violently. Saatchi, without an ounce of fat to protect him, is shivering visibly, and it’s still not over. More shouting, and we’re dragged up again to be stencilled on the forehead with a potato in which the red sign of a trident has been roughly carved. Something warm and red trickles down my face, but it’s only the dye from the potato. This is worse than appearing in a Terry Gilliam film. And still it goes on. Hoses are prepared to sluice us with cold sea water. But a power behind the throne decides that it’s gone far enough. We are ordered to shuffle up in front of the electrician (sorry, King Neptune), who after one last impassioned harangue, dubs each of us with his trident and hands us a scroll which confirms that, in my case:

‘On the 20th November 1988, A.D., at 20.20 hours GMT I, Michael Palin, crossed the International Date Line on ye goode shippe Neptune Garnet, and was humbled before the King Neptune, Great Ruler Of The Seven Seas, and thus accepted into The Brotherhood of Mariners.’

Except that I’m not accepted yet. Signatures have to be secured from both the King and the High Priest before the certificate is valid – these can be obtained at a separate ceremony this evening.

The evening ceremony turns out to be also a party for the Professor. Forfeits abound, and in order to get my signatures I have to impersonate a sexy model, a pregnant woman, a housewife and give a display of breakdancing.

It’s a very good party, attended by all except the two crew members on watch, and many games are played, a tug of war is pulled, which I’m sorry to say the BBC loses this time. The Professor reveals there is no end to his talents by singing a song in Russian to his own guitar accompaniment, and Saatchi having endured the afternoon with great dignity produces his guitar, and plays a long and rather mournful rendition of ‘Hotel California’.

A day to remember, however much one might want to forget it.