As pupils started the new term amid winter darkness, snow, and ice, how about this for an idea - a schools cruise in the sun?

It sounds like a dream, but for hundreds of 1960s and 1970s schoolchildren across our area it was an educational reality and the stuff of pleasant memories. Or, if they got seasick, just memories.

And they may recognise our photographs of a ship which gave them school life on the ocean waves, the SS Nevasa, which was one of a number of specially adapted school cruise ships operated by the British India Steam Navigation Co.

Turn back the clock just over 60 years, to October 1965, and 800 Staffordshire schoolchildren were eagerly looking forward to a seafaring adventure in sunshine, taking in Madeira, North Africa, and Portugal. The children, from 48 schools throughout the county - which in those days included Wolverhampton - would enjoy schooling with a difference, with the 21,000 ton Nevasa being their floating classroom for a fortnight.

It wasn't a one-off. This was the heyday of educational cruises, an idea which went back to the 1930s, and Nevasa would give a rolling programme of cruises throughout the 1960s and early 1970s for youngsters from schools all over the country.

That autumn 1965 cruise began on October 28 and through research by somebody on the internet - and thank you John McAvoy for your post on Facebook - we can pinpoint some of the local schools which took part in the trip, which began and ended in Southampton.

They included Parkfield Secondary School in Wolverhampton; Ogley Hay Girls School in Brownhills; Friary School at Lichfield; Codsall Comprehensive; Brockmoor Secondary School for Girls, Brierley Hill; Brewood Grammar School; Aldridge Grammar School; Dormston Girls School, Sedgley; Shire Oak Grammar, Walsall Wood; and Tividale School.

Were you there? We'd love to hear your recollections. 

Other schools across our region would get their opportunity. For instance, according to John McAvoy's list Wellington Girls High School pupils sailed from Southampton in March 1969 in a voyage which took in Ceuta, Malta, Beirut, Rhodes, and Venice, while the lads from Wellington Boys Secondary Modern left Southampton on October 17, 1973, and enjoyed the sights of Ceuta, Malta, Heraklion, Izmir, Santorini, and Dubrovnik.

While the Med was a frequent destination, there were a wide range of itineries. Depending on the trip, the seafarers would see places like Leningrad, Helsinki, Oslo, and Copenhagen.

Costs in the 1960s were around £60 to £70 for a fortnight's cruise. Food was basic, and on sea days there would be a mix of lessons, including destination-specific lectures, games on deck, free time to relax, and perhaps a movie or dance.

Nevasa typically seems to have taken around 1,000 children and teachers at a time and was one of four educational cruise ships run by the company, the others being the ageing Devonia and Dunera, and Uganda, which replaced the last two in 1967.

Like the others, Nevasa had originally been a troopship, being completed in 1956 and converted for schools use in the early 1960s. Ultimately rising oil prices left her uneconomic to run, and she was broken up in 1975. 

This left the Uganda, whose cruising was interrupted when she was pressed into service as a hospital ship during the Falklands War in 1982. Afterwards she tried to resume her previous life, but the market wasn't there and she quickly gave up, bringing down the curtain on the era of educational cruising.