Royal Indian Mutiny

Uncle Lawrence in the 1946 Naval Mutiny

Author: 
Reginald Masssey
Reginald Massey

Reginald was born in Lahore before Partition. He writes books on various subjects pertaining to South Asia. A former London journalist, he now lives in Mid Wales with his actor wife Jamila. His latest book is Shaheed Bhagat Singh and the Forgotten Indian Martyrs, Abhinav Publications, New Delhi. A member of the Society of Authors, he is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.

My uncle Lawrence Massey, my mother’s cousin, was a tough type. He ran away from Lahore to Bombay in the 1920s.

Somehow, he managed to join the Mogul Line, a British-owned steamship company that specialised in taking Indian Muslims to the port of Jeddah, from where they proceeded to Mecca for the Haj. He became an engineer on a steamship called the SS Alavi, though it is doubtful if he ever had a steamship-engineering certificate.

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