A VOYAGE IN SAIL.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVII, Issue 20620, 19 July 1930, Page 8 (Supplement)

A VOYAGE IN SAIL.

HORRORS OF THE HORN. Could I but lio in tho ocean deep 'Neath tho slumbering surges ever to sleep. . . Where waves eternal slir the sands Ant! move tho seaweeds' sodden atrinida: Buried for age in tho Sea's deep bed, Dead to tlie world: to myself not dead: Listening there to tho breakers' boom, Watching the sunlight's filtered g oom. Till tho Sea shall cast up her dead. Not great poetry, tho reader may say, with 110 particular distinction of subject or style. Perhaps not, yet it has a tragic interest wliich better work might lack. Tho verse was written by Bonald Gregory Walker, a young reporter on a Tasmanian daily newspaper, who had never been (o sea except as a passenger between Ilohart and Sydney. Iwo years later, in May, 1929, ho was killed in the rigging and buried from tho poop of tho Finnish full-rigged ship Grace Harivar, on the road to Cape Horn. The story behind Walker's presence on tho ship and the tale of a voyage ill sail from Australia to Queenstown—a passage subsequently recorded ■by tho newspapers as " uneventful" —is told in " l?y Way of Cape Horn," by Walker's friend, A. J. Villiers, whose " Falmouth For Orders," has already proved that ho can write of tho sea and sailingships with force, beauty and sincerity.

The Birth ol the Idea. Morning in tho Tasmanian newspaper office. Out-side bright sunshine; inside dusty dingy depression, and a few reporters gloomily seeking a usable typewriter to run out their reports .of boring entertainments and insignificant conferences. Then suddenly a paragraph ia a Melbourne journal, the reprint of a cutting from a London newspaper, urging tii,-it before it was too late someone should ship in one of the big Capo Horn sailors that still survive and make a motion picture of their voyaging*. At once Villiers and young Walker were aliro with tho idea. Everything was against the scheme. Villiers had returned only four months before from his voyage in the Ilerzogin Cecilie. and was not anxious to ship before the mast for another run via the Horn. Walker had no sea experience beyond tho handling of small yachts. Neither possessed any knowledge of how to work a motion picture camera, nor any money with which to buy one. Finally, it was the wrong time of year at which to sail and the weather was sure to bo atrocious. The Grace Harivai. All objections, however, melted in the fire of youth and enthusiasm, and April of 1929 saw the two embark upon their long trail, destined for one of them to be the longest trail of all. The ship on which they sailed was the Grace Ilarivar, built ,40-vears before on tho Clyde, " a, typical deep-waterman, a true sister of the Horn. ller three masts have <-i graceful loftiness and the sweep of her deck is entrancing to the sailor's eye." . A creation of " leisured beauty, out of place in an age of speed, quick turn-round and dividend-earning," she had to the unpoetic eye some of the defects of her qualities. No brace winches nor halliard 'winches, and a " patent " windlass, " at winch Nelson might have scoffed and Drake himself have scorned." And to man this ship of 1749 tons gross register were shipped thirteen hands all told, the average ago of tho seamen being 19! Tho crew included two green young Australians, one of whose first questions had been " what do you do when you want to get some sail in and it's raining?" The first night at sea they found out, when with half a gale blowing from the west they had to shorten her down. Vet somehow the impossible was accomplished. Despite • a succession of heavy gales and high seas, the ship was worked and arrived in Queenstown, after a passage of 136 days. Rut tragedy had touched tho Grace Ilarivar, and there was a man missing from the. little crew. Thirtv-cight days out from Australia Ronald Walker had finished the gay adventure of his life, and the second mate, whose order had been responsible for the ghastly accident, 1 was slowly driven mad with nerves, blaming himself, quite unjustly, for what had happened. Film not Marketable.

There is something sadly ironical, 100, over (lie fate of the film which had cost so nuicli, except in money, to produce. In spile of all (he drawbneks in the way of weather and inexperience, 6000 ft. developed excellently. "Jt was not a perfect picture by any means, nor was it (ho Lest that could he got out of that voyage. But it was some record of the ship of sails, battling on a Cape. Horn voyage, and Walker's life, had not been given in vain." A brief footnote, however, records the fact that no British firm will market the film, or oven make it in the form its photographers intended. The passing of an ago is too shadowy a theme to appeal to a public nurtured on blood and thunder. But in the reading world (here are fortunately si ill manv who will welcome (his swan-song of tho great days of sail. "Bv Way of (he Horn." by A. J Villicrs. (Geoffrey Bleu.)