WOMAN ON SAILING SHIP

Taranaki Daily News, 6 August 1934, Page 7

WOMAN ON SAILING SHIP

SIGNED ON AS ORDINARY SEAMAN.

VOYAGE ON HERZOGIN CECILIE.

By Telegraph—Press Assn.—Copyright. London, August 3.

Miss Pamela Bourne, daughter of the late Sir Roland Bourne, South Africa, has arrived aboard the sailing ship HerZogin Cecilie. Miss Bourne signed on as an ordinary seaman and much prefers her marine experience to her previous job as society reporter. She asserts that she went aloft and furled sails in a gale and painted the figurehead from a plank swung over the bows. The only other woman aboard was a stewardess Captain Erikson says. Miss Bourne is an excellent sailor. The ship, which carried wheat, reached Cape Horn 43 days from Australia. She lost a lifeboat and split several sails in a gale.

Miss Bourne, who had worked as a sailor from Cape Town to Melbourne arrived at Wellington in December by the San Francisco mail steamer Maunganui. Tall, and wearing a large island straw sun hat, Miss Bourne made a striking figure. Lady Bourne and her daughter passed through New Zealand in July, 1933, en route to Tonga. Both were fond of walking, and they were about six weeks in New Zealand, touring the South Island. “I really haven’t any home,” said Miss Bourne, smilingly, “but I am a South African by birth.” For about a year, she said, she had been wandering about the Pacific, just enjoying herself. Her mother had been to most places with her.

Miss Bourne proposed sailing in a wheat ship from Australia to Marieham, Aland Island, Baltic Sea, where the sailing ships tie up. The boat she mentioned was the four-masted Finnish barque Herzogin Cecilie. For about two years Miss Bourne was on the staff of a newspaper in South Africa. She explained her renouncement of this work by simply saying that she did not like the life. Miss Bourne has interested herself in navigation, and hoped to study navigation further on the voyage to Marieham. She said she had also learned a little Swedish, because most of the crew on the Herzogin Cecilie would be Swed-ish-Finns. Beyond giving the impression that she had a love of the sea and ships, Miss Bourne gave no very definite reason for her desire to sail in the Finnish barque.