(Post by Paul Fitzpatrick)

There are certain things in life that you realise are entirely out of your hands.

Small things, like the weather. Big things, like your genetic gene pool and life defining things, like were you one of the fortunate few to get picked out of the hat to go on the annual school cruise.

It’s at this point in your life that you accept whether you are one of life’s ‘winners’ or ‘losers’ or at least that’s what it felt like at the time.

Were you a Charlie Bucket with a golden ticket to Wonka’s chocolate factory, or a Costas Mitsotakis?
Mitsotakis was the only person in the Spanish village of Sodeto, who chose not to join the village’s lottery ticket syndicate – the other 239 residents got to share €750 million.

As we assembled in the school hall to witness the names being read out, the tension was palpable. At the end of the session the fortunate few were united in joy whilst the unfortunate few did their best to put a brave face on things.

The school cruise was an annual lottery reserved for fourteen to fifteen year olds on the SS Uganda, a steamship built on the Clyde and launched in 1952 as a luxury 300 berth cruise liner, sailing mainly from the UK to East Africa. The stories passed down by previous tourists were legendary and everyone wanted to get on that boat if they could.

The SS Uganda’s original purpose as a commercial cruise liner had been reviewed in 1967 after aviation took over as the prime means of intercontinental travel and she was subsequently transformed into a 1250 berth, educational cruise ship, sailing primarily in Mediterranean or Scandinavian waters and powered by teenage angst.

After the initial excitement the details of the cruise were duly released, and we were scheduled to set sail in May from the Clyde and berth at La Rochelle, Casablanca, Malaga, Vigo and Oporto.

I seem to remember we boarded on a sunny Sunday afternoon in Greenock and the first thing that struck me was the size of the thing. I’d been on many a Clyde steamer as my Grandpa was a chief steward on one, but this was a different proposition, it was humongous.

Once we settled into our berths, we were beckoned en masse to a meeting with the Captain who told us all how privileged we were, what a great adventure we were embarking on and signed off by assuring us that there would be a smooth start to the journey.

Fast forward 12 hours and two thirds of the ship were hanging over the railings hurling-up for Scotland.

Suffice to say breakfast the next morning was very quiet.

Life onboard was generally fun, despite the obvious tribalism with so many schools involved. There were lots of activities to keep us occupied like the prestigious tug of war competition which our school won, much to the delight of one of our teachers who’d been dying to win it forever, but more on him later.

Our first stop was La Rochelle a charming olde worlde French port on the Atlantic coast. There’s not much more I can tell you about the place, but I do know that takings in the little backstreet bars must have gone through the roof that day.

Everywhere you went you’d see peely-wally Scottish kids with rubber legs staggering along the cobbled paving, trying to work out why the rocket fuel they served as beer was scrambling their 14–15-year-old brains in a way that good old Harp, Skol or Tennent’s lager never did.

If I’m honest, the sightseeing aspect of the cruise is all a bit of a blur which is remarkable considering some of the sites we visited. For instance, I’m reliably informed we made a trip to the stunning Alhambra Palace in Andalusia, but I’m ashamed to say that I have no recollection of this whatsoever, which is ironic, as this is exactly the type of landmark that I spend a fortune visiting now.

There were teachers from every school acting as chaperones including a PE teacher from my school (Bearsden Academy) who went every year and truth be told, was getting on a bit. He was an ex-military guy, very old school, the type you didn’t mess with and if I had to do an identikit picture of him he would look exactly like Jack from Still Game.

Like I said, you didn’t mess with Mr Graham and there was one difficult moment on the cruise when I thought for sure I’d feel his wrath.

One of the golden rules of the cruise was that boys weren’t allowed in the girls dormitories, and vice versa. Anyway we’re fifteen with raging hormones and a few of us had been invited into one of the girl’s dorms to listen to music (I had taken a little portable tape recorder along with a few mixtapes), and to partake in some of the girls contraband, which we gladly did, and all was going swimmingly until a dragon teacher from one of the girl’s schools unexpectedly made an appearance.

We knew that we were going to get hammered for entering the girl’s dorms, so I also took the rap for the contraband – Rum, aptly!

The dragon teacher was incensed and said we’d be flown home from the next port for this most serious of rule-breaks and that our respective teachers had been summoned to deal with us.

I remember thinking that this was all a bit OTT, surely a mutiny is a more serious ‘rule-break’ aboard a sea-going vessel than listening to Rod Stewart (no not Sailing, that wasn’t released yet, thank god) and drinking Bacardi & Coke from plastic beakers.

Knowing my guy was a strict disciplinarian, I feared the worst, but to my amazement he was great, told me to keep my head down for a couple of days and to be a bit smarter in future, i.e. “don’t get caught”. Before sauntering off, presumably to enjoy another wee dram and to crow further about his teams resounding tug of war victory, at the Captain’s Table.

He treated me like an adult and it was appreciated, it was also a bit of an eye-opener to realise that teachers weren’t all one dimensional and had an off-duty persona as well.
After that it was all plain sailing for the rest of the trip.

I often look back on the cruise now and wonder if I made the most of the opportunity.

Did I fully appreciate the souks of Casablanca, the aforementioned Alhambra Palace built by the Moors over a thousand years ago and the baroque architecture in Oporto where great explorers set sail to discover new lands?

All these great cities and sights, did I really make the most of the opportunity or was I just on a jolly?
Of course, I don’t have to think too hard about the answer, just like some of the Golden Ticket winners who got eliminated on the tour of the chocolate factory, some of us didn’t quite get the ‘big picture’ back then.

Here’s a playlist of the tunes we were listening to which take me back to 1973.

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0ZKwcW5J67i94U4bLYsobB?si=BpLLoPg7Szav1zR6aNn05A