Windjammer Life

Dominion, Volume 31, Issue 128, 24 February 1938, Page 5

Windjammer Life

Two Women Who Are Seeing The World Slowly

Lif on board a windjammer was vividly described to the. “New Zealand Herald” by Miss Dorothy Laird, Arran, Scotland, who. with Miss Catherine Bridger, Wallasey, the only other woman passenger, arrived at Auckland on Sunday by the Finnish barque Penang. The barque sailed from Leith on August 12 of last year. “Monotony does not enter into life on board, probably .because of the impossibility of thinking ahead,” said Miss Laird. “You must live in the moment and within the ship. The work, although hard, requires initiative, skill, and strength, and the boys prosper on it.

"The food is remarkably good,” she continued. “When you. realise that everything must come out of a tin or a barrel and take into consideration also the tropical heat, the cold down south, and the fact that every meal has to be served twice, once for each watch, anj- housewife would declare us lucky to get anything to eat at all. With fresh bread baked daily, however, tinned beef, bean soup, pancakes, and everything else in abundance, we fare very well indeed.” Speaking of the voyage itself, Miss Laird said that by the time the barque passed the Lizard things were gradually settling down. The dawn was greeted at 6 o’clock with the rattle of rust, hammers, the sailmaker was patching tropic sails on the main deck, boys were aloft, rattling down, or sending down the foot-ropes for repair or renewal. Going aloft was not in itself dangerous, but it was difficult for a landsman to become accustomed to the crazy angles at which the boys would methodically and quietly carry out their work.

The travellers found Nossi Be to be a glorious tropic island off Madagascar, where they feasted ou pineapples and bananas and enjoyed all the strange sights, especially of native life, which was unusually varied and picturesque. Coming after coffee groves and mangrove swamps, Juan de Nova seemed very barren. This island, where the barque loaded guano, was nothing but a mile or two of dazzling white coral sand set round with a reef on which were piled the bones of a number of ships. The island had a temporary population of two whites and 150 negroes, but its “real owners” were the sooty tern. These birds were there in very large numbers, rising like clouds of . smoke off their ferneries, their screaming and calling resounding for long distances.

If short of eggs, use one tablespoon of cornflour for each egg left out. Instead of using a spoon for filling jam jars, use a small aluminium saucepan with a lip. It is much quicker and.cleaner. Country women should never throw away old felt hats. When cut iu strips they make splendid wicks for kerosene lamps. '