I came to Australia on the MV Fairsea, docking in Fremantle, November 1963. I had never done any research on the ship and was pleasantly surprised when my friend Richard sent me this snippet of information:
Fairsea was originally built by Sun Shipbuilding as the Rio de la Plata for the Moore McCormack Line. Taken over by the US Navy in 1941 she became an Escort Carrier She was transferred to the Royal Navy as HMS Charger but was retained in the US to train carrier pilots and was manned by US seamen. In 1949, she was sold to the Italian Sitmar line and converted to a passenger ship with the name Fairsea. Extensively re-fitted as a single-class migrant ship, she was badly damaged by an engine room fire in 1969 and scrapped at La Spezia in Italy.
I have a few memories of the voyage: the bunk beds in the cabin; crossing the Equator (which was some kind of ceremony involving throwing bikini clad young ladies in the ship's swimming pool - which I also remember as being really deep, like a cube as in as deep as it was wide and long); going to the wrong place for life boat drill (I'd gone with my grandparents rather than mum and dad); playing with two other children and being chased by the crew for being in a place we shouldn't have been, or at least that's what my five year old self interpreted as what was happening; and going past a very smelly place that I refused to get off and go visit and thereby missed out on a whole lot of toys. But I did get one toy.
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