The fire boats had been placed so that their sprays created a paper-chain of rainbows for the Pride of America to sail through when she left New York for the last time. Every vessel in the harbour set up a cacophony of farewell sirens and the streamers hung, like just-washed hair, over the ship’s side and from Pier 90 and several other jetties by which she slowly passed.

Lights in the twin towers of the Trade Center windows had been specially illuminated, so that the message read ‘Farewell’, matching the word spelled out over the Manhattan skyline by the skywriting plane which arced and circled above, its purple smoke streaming behind.

The waterside was jammed with people and the Circle Line boats had arranged special ferry trips to remain alongside until the liner reached the Statue of Liberty, a vantage point crowded with more sightseers.

It was here that Mr L. W. Lu called the major press conference on board the ship, to enable the film and television crews and journalists who would not be remaining for the entire voyage to Hong Kong to be conveniently airlifted back to La Guardia in helicopters waiting on the cleared observation deck.

There had been press flights from England and every major European country and over two hundred people crowded into the former observation bar. Not since Onassis had there been a ship-owner more internationally known, so the press-kit was hardly necessary. But Lu was a consummate publicist. As each of the pressmen had entered the room, they had been handed a bulging file setting out the already familiar history of an orphan boy born into poverty who had risen from junior shipping-office clerk to speculative investor on the Hong Kong stock market to tanker magnate, Asian oil millionaire, free enterprise entrepreneur and benefactor of three fully supported orphanages and two hospitals.