P&O

P&O is a steamship company considered by Philip Carey when he plans to become a ship’s surgeon and travel abroad. Its passenger service makes it an unattractive choice for him: berths are difficult to obtain, and the presence of passengers limits the medical officer’s freedom. By setting P&O against slower, less sought-after services, the novel makes Philip’s ambition less a search for status than a desire to encounter unfamiliar places and ways of life.

A Career Considered

After qualifying as a doctor, Philip investigates the companies that employ surgeons aboard their ships. He learns their routes and asks men who have sailed on them about each service’s advantages and disadvantages. P&O and the Orient Line are among the options he sets aside, rather than the routes he intends to pursue.

Why Philip Rejects It

The reasons are practical: P&O is difficult to enter, and its passenger traffic would leave its medical officer with little freedom. Philip is drawn instead to other services operating large tramp steamers on leisurely eastern voyages. They stop at ports for periods ranging from a day or two to a fortnight, sometimes allowing a journey inland. Their poor pay and merely adequate food make the positions less popular, but Philip judges that a London degree should make one attainable.

The Journey He Imagines

Philip knows the ports on the slower routes by heart, and each name prompts visions of tropical sunlight, vivid colour, and intense life. From Tokyo or Shanghai, he imagines transferring to another line and continuing toward the South Pacific; he also pictures travelling inland in Burma or visiting the jungles of Sumatra and Borneo. P&O therefore marks the more constrained alternative to the open-ended wandering he wants: a useful medical career, in his mind, should bring him into close contact with life beyond England rather than confine him to a passenger route.