ABSTRACT
The school helped John into a job as trainee buyer in the South American branch of Harrods, luxury department store. John soon quit for a four-year apprenticeship in the Merchant Navy. His memoir dwells on his guilt for having saved his career prospects when, aged seventeen, he joined the ship’s officers to break a strike by the crew. On completing his apprenticeship in early 1933, he enrolled in a nautical school to cram for his second mate’s examination. But with the world in the depth of depression, the global shipping trade had collapsed and his future prospects dire.
