[SJB]

Regarding pilots and uniformed crews, looking far from either strange or snobbish, I read this story in one of Basil Lubbock books There was this skipper who was terribly cross-eyed, and suffered greatly from it. He had heard of this medicine man in a distant port that could cure the affliction, and being a good man, when he was finally ordered to load in this port he decided others deserved to share his god fortune. Consequently he filled the whole crew list with cross-eyed men. The punch line is not really a punch line unless you have a taste for surrealism. Lubbock found it highly humorous and seriously mirth provoking to consider a pilot entering the ship and when standing on the deck finding himself surrounded by a large crew all looking the other way.