  Once back on New Zealand soil, Prior met with criticism and hostility for failing to stay and play his part in the war. But the journey home was certainly no cowardly retreat: more than 12,000 miles of unfriendly ocean lay between the Priors and New Zealand. At the beginning of August 1940, in Glasgow, they boarded an armed New Zealand liner, the MV Rangitiki, bound for Wellington via the Panama Canal. Their route lay across the North Atlantic, where German submarines and aircraft had sunk a total of 81 civilian vessels during the preceding two months, with a further 144 civilian vessels going down in British coastal waters in the same period (Roskill 1954). There were also armed German surface vessels preying on shipping in the waters around New Zealand, even laying minefields in the approaches (Waters 1956). During June–August these armed raiders sank several defenceless ships close to New Zealand—news that, like news of the Atlantic sinkings, could hardly have failed to reach the Priors. All in all, it must have been a nerve-racking journey.