Typhoons travel a long way

I was unmarried working in Hong Kong in 1960 at which time I was due to take my vacation leave. For some time I had arranged to travel by the then normal route to the UK, by sea via the Suez’s canal. Approaching the time I was due to leave I paid a routine visit to the travel agent. Whilst there the clerk whom I had come to know asked me if I would consider changing my route home and take another P&0 ship going by way of the Panama canal. Since this was not going to delay my departure I readily agreed to this arrangement. At about this time a severe typhoon struck the Colony.(June 7th). I was staying in a hotel prior to embarking and with the force of storm the windows of my room gave way and I was evacuated to a safer location in the hotel. Shortly after this, it may have been the following day I boarded the SS Chusan to start my journey home. In the meantime, thousands of miles away, an event occurred of which I was completely unaware, but directly connected with what I was doing which would affect me for the rest of my life. A widowed lady with four young children had made arrangements to leave her home in California and to live for a period in Europe. She had decided that she and particularly the children would benefit from this venture and arranged with a local travel agent to book reservations to travel from Los Angeles by train to New York and then by ship to Le Harve. At about this time possibly as I was leaving on my journey she was talking to her travel agent when he asked her if she could think about going all of the way to Europe by sea, rather than the train journey to New York. Not one for quick decisions, she pondered the question for some time but then said she would agree to change her plans. In the course of her discussions with the travel agent he had mentioned the ship calling at Long Beach was British, and was the SS Chusan, he added it is supposed to be a very ‘happy ship‘ We met and six months later we were married in Scotland. With my ready made family we returned to Hong Kong on the same ship the SS Chusan coincidently departing Tilbury at the end of my leave. By the way we have just celebrated with our much enlarged family, our 51st wedding anniversary . Before I go I must go back to the typhoon that got me out of my bed, its name was typhoon Mary, sometimes called ‘Bloody Mary’ owing to its severity, my darling wife is also called Mary.