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I left in 1965 almost by accident. I had enough seatime to sit for my Master's but just before that my father had a serious heart attack and was not expected to last more than few months. I got 6 months unpaid leave, without loss of seniority with the option of 6 months more.
I passed my Master's but thinking I would soon return to sea sought a temporary job to pay the bar bills. Saw an advert in The Daily Telegraph for MN Officers below some age with 1st Mate's or Master's to train as System Analysts, the company (then unknown to me was IBM). Commercial computing was fairly new then. IBM's UK head office had a 1401 computer with 16k of memory (washing machines have more today).
In the first week I saw their Computer Librarian (a better looking version of the Windows Operating System on a PC) we have been married all but 50 years. After a few years I read that P&O had installed an IBM computer to run a passenger booking system I applied and was soon a Senior Systems Analyst. My father died 3 years later but I was now a computer wallah.
Ian
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