While Neville, his wife, and their three-year-old daughter were in Barbados in spring 1948, the Alcoa Steamship Company telephoned after his imaginal gangplank exercise and offered a cancelled two-berth passage for the family on the 21 April sailing to New York.
Date (happened)
2 April 1948
estimated · probable · preferred
Reasoning
Lecture 1954 is dated 1948 and calls the return 'this spring'. Passage 551931 says the offer came Friday morning for the 21 April sailing; passage 527631 says he sailed three weeks after the imaginal act/call sequence. Friday 2 April 1948 is nineteen days before Wednesday 21 April, matching the stated approximate interval.
1 May 1948
relative · probable
Why
This corrects the year implied by the event's title; see merge_proposal below.
Reasoning
Every telling of this story gives the arrival as 'the first of May' following an offer made shortly after the imaginal act and a sailing about three weeks later (527631: 'three weeks later I sailed'). hist_event:5872 cross-referenced a fifth, independently-dated lecture (nid 1954, delivered 1948, calling the return 'this spring') against the Friday-call/21-April-sailing detail (passage 551931) to fix the offer at 1948-04-02, making the 21 April sailing and 1 May arrival 1948, not the 1946 this event's title assumed from Neville's own uncorroborated '1945' recollection given 26 years later in nid 1783.
Told / reported
13 March 1953
stated
Reasoning
Passages 527624 and 527631 are in lecture 1001, dated 1953-03-13 certain.
19 July 1971
stated
Reasoning
Passage 544240 is in lecture 1783, dated 1971-07-19 certain.
1955
stated
Reasoning
Passage 551931 is in lecture 2030; its certain delivery claim supplies only the year 1955, so the told claim remains year precision.
after 1955
bound · probable
Reasoning
Passage 556967 is another telling in lecture 4006; the lecture has only an after-1955 probable delivery bound, which this told claim does not exceed.