THE SUMMER OF THIRTY-SIX

Peter Prictoe

1936 was a troubled year in the Mediterranean. Italy had invaded Abyssinia (Ethiopia) and the Spanish Civil War was about to erupt. Malta , then a British Colony was considered too vulnerable to air attack and the Fleet had moved to Alexandria in Egypt accompanied by many of the Navy families. My father had gone back to sea but we remained at the married Quarters at Rinella for my mother was pregnant-my brother was born in Floriana early the next year.

For 1936 the Grand Harbour almost empty of warships and it was a hard time for all the Maltese who depended on the Fleet for a living. My father was only an ordinary sailor approaching the end of his naval service and my parents were saving hard in order to set up a small boarding house in the Portsmouth area when he was due to retire in 1938.

My mother was a member of a group of women who seemed to have set up a sort of cottage industry making clothes and various things but these ladies were scattered around the two harbours from Cottonera to Sliema and also in the group were a couple of Maltese ladies. Looking back I wonder if they made much out of it for prices were so low already in Malta but maybe it was because they needed something to keep themselves busy with their husbands away most of the time. I mention this because along with a girl of my own age at Rinella we were the couriers for this group. Her mother was also pregnant (must have gone to the same picnic was the then current joke) and we also collected medicines from the Dockyard clinic situated where Cospicu met Senglea near Nunmber One Dock and distributed them as well as calling in the Valletta Market for some groceries.

During the summer we only attended school in the mornings and so a couple of times a week in the afternoon we set out on our travels. Leaving the Dockyard School up on the ramparts of the Cottonera Lines we made our way down through the Verdala Barracks which was then used to house sailors whose ships were under repair in the dockyard but is now a Maltese Government Housing group and then threaded the narrow alley ways of Cospicua down to the Dockyard Gates and into the clinic. With a small packet of medicines we then went out the other end of the Dockyard onto the Senglea Strand, the notorious Barbary Coast where bars and dance halls lined the shoreline, and caught the Grand Harbour Ferry at its intermediate stop from its Vittoriosa terminal opposite the Church of St Lawrence where the Freedom Monument now stands.

From Senglea we headed across the harbour to Valetta passing the couple of light cuisers that constituted the garrison at that lean time.The Valletta Terminal was at the Fish Market below Lascaris Bastion close to the Custom House and though it is a quiet area today it was thriving in those years. We did not usually bother to take the impressive outdoor lift to the Upper Baracca for it took us out of our way a little as we were either headed for Floriana or Sliema and also we hoarded the few coppers with which we had been supplied for the journey. We therefore either walked alomg what is now Lascaris Wharf and up Crucifix Hill to Floriana or, more commonly, headed across Valletta to the Sliema Ferry at the Mandraggio.

At that time and even after the war there was a substantial movement of pedestrians across Valletta for so many people commuted from Sliema to the Dockyard Area at Cottonera but with the rundown of the Naval Dockyard and cessation of the regular ferries the pattern changed as can be seen in the quietness and shuttered shops of St John's Street today. Of the period of which I write, small or large establishments offering all manner of services occupied those now boarded up doorways. Those down by the fish market specialised in requirements for mariners and indeed there were always small vessels of various nationalities moored alongside the quay and we looked with wonder at such as Arabs in flowing robes dealing in the shops.

St John's Street runs north south across Mount Sciberras on which Valletta is built and to reach it we made our way up from the Fish Market past the Church of Ta Liesse (built for the use primarily of the French Knights of the Order) and under the grandiose Victoria Gate with its blazons of British Imperialism that replaced the earlier Lascaris Gate. Turning left from East Street we climbed the steps that led and still lead over a walkway to the little piazza at the very bottom of St Johns. The odd formation of the streets hereabout is due I am now aware to a sort of canyon that cuts into the hill and made life difficult for the planners of Valletta to retain the grid-iron layout of the capital's streets combined with a periphery road behind the bastions along which cannons could be trundled as required for defence.

Up St John's (called San Giovanni at that period when all streets bore Italian names) we scampered past the Promotion Ring built into the wall of the Castellania on the corner of Strada Merchanti (Merchants' Street) in which was the market but it was on our return journey that we called there because of siesta and so on. On the level now past the Co Cathedral of St John's itself and across Strada Reale (Republic Street) and down the northern more gloomy section of St John's Street to the other ferry terminal by the Mandraggio-a desperately poor area of Valletta in those years where crowded tenements occupied the area from which rock was originally cut to provide both building stone for the city and a harbour for the galleys of the Knights. Due to the poor quality of the rock thereabouts however the project was never completed.

The Sliema Ferry chugged across the smaller Marsamxett Harbour which held the submarine base, some destroyers and depot ships and a row of first world war minesweepers in care and maintenance that made up the Reserve Fleet. The terminal at Sliema is still known as The Ferries today though the scene is much changed with the elegant wooden and stone balconies of the old houses replaced by the steel, glass and concrete modern hotels.

After making our various calls, at which we were also duly fed and watered and slid a few more pennies, we made our way home in the early evening collecting some items from the market, always the same stalls were patronised at which it seemed the proprietors knew what was required and so we landed at the Vittoriosa wharf and then trickled our way through the medieval alleys towards Calcara and finally home. We used to linger by certain bars such as the Shamrock and King George Bar in the Victory sqare of Birgu and the Armstrong Gun at Calcara at which friends of our fathers were drinking and so obtained further chocolate, lemonade or the famous pastizzi - I recall that I did rather better at this when the girl was accompanying me.

This arrangement went on through that long summer but seems to have died the death when the Fleet returned the next year and my dad went back to his duties in the underground construction at the wireless station where he sat amidst those enormous glowing valves (transmitting tubes) of one of the seven transmitters tapping out messages to ships all round the Mediterranean.

Today I sometimes walk the same streets on visits to Malta though the regular ferry service has long since ceased operation and the steps of St John Street seem much steeper. Malta , independent and prosperous, remains a fascinating island but is not so colourful. Though I enjoyed my childhood there I would not wish back the obvious poverty of those days however and am conscious that time filters out the hardships and struggles that even we, the British experienced in the hungry thirties - though our lives appeared luxurious compared to so many of the Maltese.

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