ROLLING HOME.

Dunstan Times, Issue 3384, 25 July 1927, Page 2

ROLLING HOME.

f (By C. Fox Smith.) ■ There is an unusual degree of dramatic fitness, perhaps also a touch of tragic irony, in the. fact that tile very ■ year which will in all probability witness the virtual disappearance from the British register of the deep-water sailing sluip, is witnessing also once again a fleet of wind-jammers, in the words ’ of the old chanty:— ’ Rolling home, rolling home, | Rolling home across the sea, over the long sea road which holds si, , many stirring associations with the famous ships and seamen of a bygone day. True, it is no more than, a flash in the pan; the last expiring leap of the flame before the candle gutters out for ever. The chance offered by a dispute between the grain growers and the steamship companies has given sailing ships in Australian waters, as in the days of the war, a period of brief prosperity. Hence it comes about that thi; spuing and summer will see ai qreatei .number of windjammers arriving; at Queenstown or Falmouth “for orders’’ than has been the case for many a year. ; Tho first ship of the thirteen to set out from Australia has already reached Queenstown. She was the Finnish lour-masted barque Herzogiu Cecile, Hiat made the journey in 188 days. A good many of the vessels comprising the fleet are Clyde “four-posters,” built when cargo capacity and not speed had become the chief consideration witli builders of sailing ships; most were well-known British ships in their day, which have now been “sold foreign,” generally to Finnish owners. No doubt, however, the competitor in which the keenest interest will he felt in this country is Messrs J. Stewart’s steel full-rigged ship, William Mitchell, built in Londonderry in 1892 by the firm of C. J. Bigger. ‘She is one of the very last British windbags. owned by the same firm ■whose Monkbarns—now, alas! a hulk in Nor- I way—received so rousing a welcome in the London river a year or so ago: ! and the news of Tier safe arrival will 1 he hailed with an excitement almost ! comparable to tliafc which greeted the 1 first flighters of the Australian wool 1 fleet in the days of the racing clippers ( There arc various crimes which a 1 member of the House of Commons in v liis ignorance may most readily com- ( : nrit, and the most serious is to lock a v door in the House. 1