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I can't claim to have read a lot of books of square-rigged seafaring,
but one thing did strike me. In most of them, even after the gales,
the ice, the shifting cargoes, the smoldering coal in the holds, along
toward the end of the book the author will look back fondly and effuse
about the beauty of those wily bitches.

George can probably come up with the name of an account of a voyage in
a (I think) 4-masted barque named Bearhead or Birkenhead, something
like that. Anyway what the author did was take the ship on a voyage in
which everything happened, short of sinking. As i recall the events
were recounted from actual narratives. The passage  and ship were
fictional composites.

Somewhat like Conrad, the captain had begun as an apprentice and
climbed the ladder, though unlike Conrad I don't think he ever
commanded a steamer.

I can't remember whether the ship was British or American. The author,
though, I recall being American and living in Oregon.

Thanks again, guys, for all the help with this meander of mine.

Hewitt

On 2/1/09, George Huxtable  wrote:
>
>  Peter Fogg recounted two excerpts from tales of voyages, in his own words,
>  without identifying their source. Questioned by Hewitt Schlereth, the
>  response was-
>
>
>  | Author is Alan Villiers, but which book?  Here is an anthology:
>  | http://www.seabring.com.au/vcitationseditions.htm
>  |
>  | Could have been *Of Ships and Men, a Personal Anthology* or perhaps *Give
>  Me
>
> | a Ship to Sail*.
>
>  Hew then picked out "The way of a ship", but from a quick look, I didn't
>  find those stories there.. If they are there, someone might kindly quote
>  page numbers.
>
>  I have quite a few Villiers works on my shelves, and am sure those stories
>  stem from him. Accounts of what appear to be the corresponding passages
>  appear in "By way of Cape Horn" (1930, 1939), though not completely tallying
>  with Peter's version.
>
>  Villiers, on page 215, gave the Tasman Sea story like this, about a voyage
>  in a little barque called "Rothesay Bay".
>
>  " ...shifting down to Auckland, and loading the timber. ...Then we were
>  something like forty days or so from Auckland to Sydney- a voyage that a
>  slow steamer might cover against a strong head wind in six days. We were
>  short of food and the ship had been loaded badly and was cranky; we struck
>  nothing but head winds and could carry little sail. The master was very ill
>  with cancer, and his heroic wife did what she could for him. The mate, a
>  splendid old fellow with one eye who had lot more ships round the Australian
>  coast than any other master mariner - he's dead now, rest his bones - sailed
>  her. His policy was caution. We sailed under the lower tops'ls most of the
>  way; there was a big deck cargo, and it was more important to deliver that
>  than to get the ship to port quickly. In the end, if a tug had not picked us
>  up a hundred miles or so from Sydney, I don't know when we might have
>  arrived. We might have still been drifting somewhere round the Tasman Sea.
>
>  There were five boys in the half-deck, and although the old ship made us
>  suffer something, we loved her none the less for that."
>
>  Compare this with the version Peter gave-
>
>
>  "On another occasion they loaded timber in New Zealand bound for Australia.
>  The Tasman is often stormy but this was exceptional; for week after week
>  they wallowed in terrible weather, hove to. The load shifted, the weather
>  only got worse. Eventually they spoke another ship which carried news back
>  to the ship's agent in Sydney who sent out a tug to look for them and bring
>  them in. The author said these old masters did no navigation that he ever
>  noticed, and seemed to instinctively know their way around the waters they
>  knew well. Of course heading west from north of NZ it would be difficult to
>  miss the Aussie mainland."
>
>
> It sounds like the same voyage, but those accounts differ significantly.
>
>  Peter describes another voyage-
>  " ...sailing across Bass Strait (between the Australian mainland and
>
> Tasmania) with the crew literally atop a deck cargo of explosives; the only
>  prospect of a hot meal or drink meant lighting a fire on top of their load.
>  Which they eventually did, during a long and cold winter crossing."
>
>
> You can compare that with Villiers' own words, on page 228 of "By way of
>  Cape Horn".-
>  "We loaded a full cargo of superphosphates, in bags, at Yarraville, and when
>  that was all aboard, took in a deck cargo of cased benzine on top.  Then we
>  lashed the galley above the benzine...  We lived in a little hutch down
>  below the main deck for'ard... In Launceston we put out the benzine, which
>  fortunately had not blown up on us."
>
>  So what was initially "a deck cargo of cased benzine" has become dramatized
>  as "a deck cargo of explosives". Benzine (perhaps more likely benzene), in
>  drums, was certainly dangerous stuff, but hardly that. On a short passage,
>  it was better stowed as a deck cargo, where any leakage could disperse as
>  vapour, rather than accumulate in-hold. A load of fertiliser in the hold
>  would certainly increase any dangers.
>
>  The galley would normally have been a wooden hut, bolted down to the deck,
>  and containing some sort of cooking range. From Villiers' account, it had
>  been unbolted from there, and instead lashed in place above the layer of
>  drums. Dangerous practice, certainly, but hardly "lighting a fire on top of
>  their load".
>
>  And "we lived in a little hutch down below the main deck for'ard" has become
>  "the crew literally atop a deck cargo ...".
>
>  We always have to be careful with Villiers. He started off in a newspaper
>  office, and always liked to tell a good story. He wasn't above recycling his
>  tales, with embellishments. And certainly, those tales appear to have been
>  embellished. Was that done by Villiers, or by another? Whose were those
>  words?
>
>
>  George.
>
>  contact George Huxtable, at  george@hux.me.uk
>  or at +44 1865 820222 (from UK, 01865 820222)
>  or at 1 Sandy Lane, Southmoor, Abingdon, Oxon OX13 5HX, UK.
>
>
>
>
>  >
>

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