MARION HART RICE

Evening Post, Volume CXXVIII, Issue 49, 26 August 1939, Page 7

MARION HART RICE

THE TRIP IN THE

VANORA

THREE YEARS' WANDERING

(From "The Post's" Representative.)

NEW YORK, August 1

Nearly three years after she left England, Mrs. Marion Rice Hart brought her 80ft ketch, the Vanora, to a berth in the Hudson River recently, after a 30,000-mile cruise around the world, that was originally intended to be a cruise of the Mediterranean. Daugher of the late Isaac L. Rice, promotor of submarines, electric cars, and a score of other innovations at the turn of the century, Mrs. Hart sailed from England in "September, 1936. She purchased the craft for £3000, having heard that a group of British naval officers had sailed around the world in her. The new owner had no such intention. Completely lacking in nautical experience, her sole desire, she explained, was to escape the ennui of a sculptor's life at Avignon, France. But the Topsy-like qu lity of her trip became apparent as on she went, ever eastward. Accompanying her were John Smith, • Englishman, and Paul Periez, a Frenchman, who had been living in Hollywood. Gregory Hendren, Bob Finlayson, Jim Alexander, and Duncan Mathieson, a professional seaman, were taken on at Auckland. Four masters were employed at intervals. The changes in crew comprised 25 persons altogether. Yet. it is stated, the lady owner held the helm right across the Indian Ocean. "Call it adventure, if you wish," she remarked. "I got a taste of that going through the Straits of Magellan. Bitterly cold, in the lee of snow-capped peaks, with rough sea at the end of a 5000-mile leg." Few details of the unique voyage were forthcoming, beyond the fact that Mrs. Hart did not contemplate concluding it by crossing the Atlantic. A year ago, her letters to her brother were published in a book under the title, "Who Called That Lady a Skipper?"

Mrs. Hart's father constructed the first submersible for the United States Navy, the Holland, in 1891. Her mother, the late Julia Barrett Rice, founded the Society for the Suppression of Excessive Noise. Mrs. Hart was said to be a pioneer graduate in chemical engineering in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The Vanora is not to be confused with the ketch in which five British Navy officers sailed from Hong Kong to England, via Vancouver and the Panama Canal, four years ago, the Tai-Mo-Shan. built by the officers from their pooled resources for a holiday cruise. They had a mishap in the West Indies, which delayed them several weeks. On arrival in home waters, the Tai-Mo-Shan was purchased by the Admiralty, and is still in use as a training-ship-in-sail for young officers. Mrs. Rice's Vanora was built in Scotland in 1902.