AFLOAT IN FRANCE

Press, Volume LXX, Issue 21139, 14 April 1934, Page 15

AFLOAT IN FRANCE

-—♦- A HAPPY VOYAGER "To the Mediterranean in "Charmina." By E. Keble Chatlerton. Rich and Cowan. 233 pp. (12/6 net.) "This liner life, with its artificialities, its railway-like time-tables,. its boisterous young females eternally playing idiotic deck-games, was the most boring of experiences. . . . So-called 'pleasure' cruising may be all right for some people, though not for us, who preferred uncertainty, independence, and adventure."—This extending of shore life to the sea has produced its reaction, and more tiny vessels have gone to sea during the last 10 years than ever before. The Charmina is one, and Mr Keble Chatterton continues the account of her wanderings begun in "Through Brittany in 'Charmina'." No one will need his adjurations or example to be convinced of the delightful freedom and freshness that a man finds in his own boat in the wind-swept spaces of the sea or on the French waterways. The art of living thus is forbidden to many by the necessity of living at all. The next best pleasure is to read books like this or Hildebrand's "Blue Water." The Charmina is a six-ton auxiliary, wooden yawl and her present voyage was from Nantes, by sea to Bordeaux, by canal and river to Sete in the Gulf of Lyons, and again by sea to Toulon. The book will be of greatest interest and profit to yachtsmen, for her captain gives explicit sailing and mooring directions. His definiteness, however, will also make the armchair sailor's voyage more real. Great excitements were few: a man cycling and fishing at the same time, les joutes setoises, the sinister streets of Marseilles, the rare danger of being nipped between canal-bank and a steel barge, and some pleasant interludes with "mariniers," the hereditary bargemen of France. The weather, the passers-by, the ship, all smiled. Mr Chatterton found all the people he met hospitable and helpful, workmen's charges were amazingly small, and luck soon drew him out of his insignificant mishaps. The extraordinarily considerate officials and the voluntary kindness of strangers suggest what his own calm, unhurried narration suggests —that he, himself, is tactful and gentle, and that he has, in greater measure than his countrymen, understanding of the French character and respect for French prejudices and institutions. Many people will be glad to know that he hopes soon to resume his voyage in "Charmina."