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England's 1962 Ashes voyage: A month at sea before the battle for the urn
As Ben Stokes and his England squad arrive in Perth ahead of the 2025-26 Ashes-greeted by front-page tabloid scrutiny and the comforts of business-class travel-the journey pales beside the maritime odysseys of past generations. For the 1962-63 touring party, the pilgrimage to Australia meant a 10-day ocean voyage aboard The Canberra, a floating world of first-class luxury, eccentric fitness regimes, and a crash course in the disorienting physics of "sea legs"-a phenomenon that once left a 6ft 7in fast bowler face-planting on a Colombo pitch.
The last boat to the Ashes
David Larter, now 85, was the youngest member of Ted Dexter's squad-the final England team to reach Australia by ship. The tour began in late September 1962, two months before the first Test, with a flight to Aden (now Yemen), where players boarded The Canberra for the remaining 10-day stretch to Perth. "Just 10 days," Larter recalls with a laugh, contrasting it with the grueling six-week voyages of earlier eras.
The Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) spared no expense: first-class cabins, gourmet meals, and an eclectic mix of fellow passengers-"old millionaires soaking up the sun," Larter says-transformed the journey into a surreal prelude to battle. "It was out of this world. By the time we docked, we were a coherent unit, ready to move as one."
"You enjoyed being on a huge ocean liner like that, and the life it afforded. The stewards loved us-they'd roll out trolleys of magnificent food, and we'd eat it all. I've never had such a sustained spell of wonderful eating, before or since."
David Larter, England bowler (1962-66)
Fitness, mutiny, and a failed Olympic intervention
With weeks at sea and no nets, keeping match-ready became a creative endeavor. Morning calisthenics, improvised badminton courts, and weightlifting sessions filled the days-until captain Dexter enlisted an unlikely drill sergeant: Gordon Pirie, the 1956 Olympic 5,000m silver medalist, who was aboard by chance. Pirie's prescription? Laps around the ship's deck.
"It's a long way around one of those boats," Larter admits, "but I did as I was told." Not everyone complied. Fred Trueman, fresh off bowling 1,100 overs that English summer, flatly refused. "Fred said, 'I've just bowled all season-I'm not running around a boat for anyone,'" Larter recalls. "The Pirie experiment died there."
The squad's social hierarchy added another layer of absurdity. Tour manager Bernard Fitzalan-Howard-the 16th Duke of Norfolk-demanded formal address: "Your Grace" at breakfast, "Sir" thereafter. "You weren't cheeky to him," Larter says. "He surprised us with his cricket knowledge, but his world was several scales above ours." Trueman, ever blunt, later griped that media coverage fixated on the Duke's racehorses, Reverend David Sheppard's sermons, and Susan Dexter's fashion-"not the cricket."
Landfall and the perils of 'sea legs'
The ship docked in Colombo en route, where England played a warm-up match. Larter, handed the new ball, discovered his body had other plans. "I ran in, fell flat on my face-twice," he says. "Ted Dexter asked what was wrong. I told him my legs wouldn't work. I'd lost my land legs." Barry Knight finished the over; Larter's humiliation was salvaged by a British Army beach barbecue, a stark contrast to his Suffolk upbringing.
Back aboard, the class divide between decks mirrored the tour's contradictions. Upstairs, Larter mingled with aristocrats; downstairs, he met young "Poms" emigrating for new lives. "The greatest reception was downstairs," he says. "A couple of decent bars, a quiet pint-it was fascinating."
A bittersweet tour: No Tests, but a lifetime of stories
Despite his pace and bounce-ideal for Australian pitches-Larter never played a Test in the series. Stuck behind Fred Trueman and Brian Statham, he watched England draw 1-1, retaining nothing. "Depressing," he admits. Yet the tour stretched to six months, including a 3-0 sweep in New Zealand where Larter finally shone, taking seven wickets in Auckland. "That showed 'em," he says with a grin.
By March 1963, the squad returned to England, their places in the upcoming county season already looming. Larter's career flickered for three more years-10 Tests total-before an ankle injury and disillusionment drove him from the game. He joined his father's haulage business, trading cricket whites for a life in mid-Wales with his wife, Thelma.
"It was an unbelievable experience. You couldn't believe it was going to happen, but it did. Apart from not playing, I had the time of my life. Wonderful."
David Larter
Epilogue: The end of an era
The 1962-63 tour marked the last Ashes voyage by sea. By 1965-66, England flew exclusively-though for Larter, that trip ended with another injury and no Tests. His ceremonial cap and projector slides from The Canberra now gather dust, relics of a vanished cricketing world where the journey was as legendary as the destination.
As Stokes's squad prepares for the 2025-26 opener in Perth on 21 November, their 24-hour flight seems almost mundane. No trolleys of roast beef, no deck-side mutinies-just the cold calculus of modern sport. "A dream," Larter calls his voyage. For today's players, the romance of distance survives only in stories like his.
