ON A WINDJAMMER.

Star (Christchurch), Volume LXVI, Issue 20447, 27 October 1934, Page 29 (Supplement)

ON A WINDJAMMER.

“ Joseph Conrad ” Flying the Red Ensign. A TRAINING SHIP. LONDON, September 10. The Red Ensign, which has not been flown by a British merchantman since the Garthpool went ashore on Bona Vista Island, off Cape Verde on Armistice Day, 1929, is again snapping from the peak of a windjammer, the Joseph Conrad, and Allan Villiers, her journalist-author owner, has put it there. He bought the vessel from the Danish Government earlier this year. She had been the iron-built, full-rigged ship. Georg Stage. Mr Villiers has fitted her as a training ship for British boys (he finds it hard to dissuade British girls from competing with them), and is sailing her to the West Indies. Writing to a friend in London, he says; 44 Here I am at home in the saloon of the good ship Joseph Conrad, with the Red Ensign flying from the peak of a full-rigged ship for the first time in years. We hoisted the colours at 3 p.m., on August 29, the Danish colours hav*

ing been hauled down; and a gang of Danish admirals on the wharf at the Navy Yard didn’t look too pleased. * “We get out of here (Copenhagen' Sunday midnight or dawn Monday, towards Harwich, and hope to be there in about a week if the Lord is kind to us.- This is a great ship; I’ve a good cook, too.” Windjammer Dance. As Max Murray, another Australian journalist on this side of the world recalled some time ago, what was probably the last dance given aboard a square-rigged ship was held on the Garthpool when she w*as in Australia before her final voyage. There is still extant a tine picture of her at anchot in the tier at Newcastle, New South Wales, painted by Norman Lloyd, the Australian artist now in London, who is shortly holding a further exhibition of his paintings. * The Garthpool was the last of the fine fleet of six sailing vessels which Sir William Garthwaite bought and rechristened after the war—the Garthgarry, Garthpool, Garthwray, Garthforce, Garthneil, and Garthsnaid. The re-christening was regarded with misgiving by sailors, who deem this process unlucky with regard to sailingships. which arc known to possess in dividual souls. With a steamer it does | not matter.

Defies Superstition. It will be noted that Mr Villiers has defied the superstition with the Joseph Conrad; but the appositeness of this name for a ship owned by an author should avert the spell, if spell there be. After, the Garthpool was wrecked, her figurehead was washed ashore. The superstitious natives of the locality (of mixed negro and Portugese blood) raised it to the dignity of a local saint and paid it semi-divine honours. Sir William, visiting the scene, eventually bought it back, sanctity and all, for a reasonable sum. Sir William, by the way, is the founder of the S*a Lions Training Ship Society; but Mr Villiers has drawn ahrad of him in securing a training ship. It is doubtful whether there will be room for two of them.

Horn books .were lesson books of the children early in the nineteenth century. The majority were shaped like shovels with rough handles, but the more inspiring were shaped in rough representation of dolls or clowns. When lessons were over, the children plaved with them. They usually had on them the numbers from 1-10. the alphabet, and sometimes the Lord’s Prayer.

“Cannibalism” for Slimming. If you want to be thin you must be a cannibal and “ eat your fat away.” This is the advice of Dr J. Neil Leitch, of the London School of Dietetics, who, after characterising slimming as an idiotic craze, praises fat. “ Fat.” he declares, 44 is the buffer of the body, the tissue paper which keeps the folds in and the creases out, the cotton wool which protects the delicate points. Fat is a great insulator against cold. Fat stored in the body is food on which we live when our digestion cannot work, when our stomachs cannot tolerate food and when we are racked with fever and pain. If we are without these stores we stand a worse chance of recovery. Yet fat is a vicious circle. Having so much fat you will, if you go on eating, get still more fat. How, then, are we to get thin? You must become a cannibal. You must eat yourself. You must eat your own fat. Try a day, three days, ten days or even more on one to twenty oranges a day and nothing else but water. The carbohydrates of the oranges will burn your body fat away. Take exercise; try skipping. Massage the fat away. Selfmassage by hand or rubber rollers is an excellent method to start the fat moving away.”