ROMANCE OF SAIL

Hawera Star, Volume L, 20 December 1930, Page 11

ROMANCE OF SAIL

fpHEBE are at least a hundred old salts in Melbourne who, now that j they know passenger-carrying sailing ships are going to resume running between England and Australia, will die in peace, happy in the knowledge that the “good old days 77 they have so long: lamented are coming back again, writes! N. S. Monks in the “Sun-News Pie/ torial. 77 • I It must be more than 20 years since I a wind jammer made her “eastingl down 77 with a complement of passengers for Australia. How things have! changed since then! I \ j And now Captain Gustave Erickson, • "'vof Finland, sole owner of more than half the wind jammers in commission, is going to travel back through the years, along memory lane, and give to the sea the romance it has lost (so old salts say) when steam supplanted sail. It was in sailing ships that Australia's pioneers came to these shores. Some of those ships carried as many as 700 pasesngexs a voyage. Where on earth they put them, goodness only knows, apart from single women berthed under the poop, single men up forward, and married couples in the midship 'tween deck. The fares ranged from £l2 to £6o—■ plus each passenger’s own bedding, bed, and cooking utensils. And the food—well, the least said about that the better. Still, the people who made those] voyages refer to those days as “good/ 7 so it must have been great fun, after all. ; Things will not be exactly the same aboard Captain Erickson’s ships as aboard some of the ships of the 7 80’s. Perhaps the only connecting link with the old days will be the 'fact that the ships are actually sailing ships. For instance, passengers who make the voyage to Australia in Captain Erickson's Herzogin. Cecilio will not

Windjammer Days Come Again

have to put up with half the hardships and dangers with which passengers who came to Australia in the famous Marco Polo, under Captain “Bully 77 Forbes had to contend. Captain Forbes it was who used to put massive padlocks on his sheets and from the break of the poop, stand with a revolver in each hand shouting to his crew that the first man to attempt to j take in sail -would be shot. It was his boast that not a stitch of sail was taken i in from London to Australia, and that, j with “Hell or Melbourne/ 7 as liisj motto, his lee rail was always under - water. Things must have been bad indeed when the 900 immigrants he carried formed a deputation to him to ask him to shorten sail. His reply is shipping history. But “Bully 77 Forbes got results. The, Marco Polo used to average remarkable speeds for the whole voyage. Sailing up Port Phillip at the end of a 68-day run from London, Captain Forbes was informed by someone who had boarded him in the Bay that the crews of 50 ships had deserted’ in Melbourne, and that these ships had been idle for months. “Bully 77 Forbes immediately hoisted the Union Jack upside down, the signal for police aid. When the police boat came out, Forbes turned the whole of his crew over on a trumped-up charge of mutiny. They were hern in gaol, pending trial, until the Marco Polo’ was ready to sail on return, then Forbes “forgave 77 his crew and had them taken back on board! Later, in another ship, Forbes played poker while his ship ran aground—and his passengers ran amok. Told by his mate that the ship had ripped a hole in its bottom, Forbes, looking at his hand ho had just Dccn dealt, said: “Let her go to . Tell me when she is high and dry on the beach/’ A truly remarkable man!