Return to Sex

All last week a row of red pins on the smoking room map marked the slow progress of the S. S. Kenilworth Castle, chief passenger Edward Windsor, down the Western bulge of Africa. High, traditional horseplay erupted when the red pins reached the Equator.

Following inexorable British custom, the Kenilworth Castle hove to just at the moment when by the sextant of her Navigating Officer she was "crossing the Line. A gangway was lowered. In their oldest clothes hilarious passengers who had never bisected the Equator before, trooped from bar to boat deck. Up the boarding ladder came His Majesty King Neptune, shrouded in whiskers, accompanied by his Queen, his Barber, the members of his Court, all liberally smeared with burnt cork.

Centre of interest was the Barber, who, swathed in a large white jacket borrowed from the cook and carrying a sanguine daubed wooden razor, was none other than Edward Windsor. No newcomer to the Equator is H.R.H. He first crossed the Line in 1920, crossed again last year on his interrupted African hunting trip which he is now completing, and was once incautious enough to allow himself to be festively photographed in a blonde wig, a most effeminate dressing gown, a palpably false bust.

In last week's pageant he returned to his own sex. As barber he vigorously plied lather brush and wooden razor on the faces of Equator neophytes before toppling them into the canvas tank erected on the Kenilworth Castle's deck. In the midst of the ruckus little Wendy Tuke, eight-weeks-old baby, was brought to the barber's chair. Nervous passengers crowded forward, wondering whether baby Tuke was to be shaved and ducked with the others. Barber Wales contented himself with sprinkling a little soapy water on Baby Tuke's puckered face, conferring on her "the freedom of the seas for life." Exhilarated passengers and members of Neptune's Court immediately seized the royal legs of Barber Windsor, dumped him in the tank with the others.

So much attention was given to Barber Windsor that passengers and correspondents almost overlooked the distinguished old gentleman who played King Neptune. If H.R.H. is an Equatorial veteran, Rear Admiral Alfred Astley Ellison might be called an Equatorial commuter. Retired in 1922, it is his boast that he has been almost continuously at sea since the age of 15. He has served in the East and West Indies, in the Mediterranean, Africa, China. In 1901 he was Navigating Lieutenant of the vessel which carried King George and Queen Mary (then Duke and Duchess of York) round Britain's colonies. Though it has no connection with last week's marine horseplay, he is a Companion of the Bath.

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