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Peter Fogg recounted two excerpts from tales of voyages, in his own words,
without identifying their source. Questioned by Hewitt Schlereth, the
response was-

| Author is Alan Villiers, but which book?  Here is an anthology:
| http://www.seabring.com.au/vcitationseditions.htm
|
| Could have been *Of Ships and Men, a Personal Anthology* or perhaps *Give
Me
| a Ship to Sail*.

Hew then picked out "The way of a ship", but from a quick look, I didn't
find those stories there.. If they are there, someone might kindly quote
page numbers.

I have quite a few Villiers works on my shelves, and am sure those stories
stem from him. Accounts of what appear to be the corresponding passages
appear in "By way of Cape Horn" (1930, 1939), though not completely tallying
with Peter's version.

Villiers, on page 215, gave the Tasman Sea story like this, about a voyage
in a little barque called "Rothesay Bay".

" ...shifting down to Auckland, and loading the timber. ...Then we were
something like forty days or so from Auckland to Sydney- a voyage that a
slow steamer might cover against a strong head wind in six days. We were
short of food and the ship had been loaded badly and was cranky; we struck
nothing but head winds and could carry little sail. The master was very ill
with cancer, and his heroic wife did what she could for him. The mate, a
splendid old fellow with one eye who had lot more ships round the Australian
coast than any other master mariner - he's dead now, rest his bones - sailed
her. His policy was caution. We sailed under the lower tops'ls most of the
way; there was a big deck cargo, and it was more important to deliver that
than to get the ship to port quickly. In the end, if a tug had not picked us
up a hundred miles or so from Sydney, I don't know when we might have
arrived. We might have still been drifting somewhere round the Tasman Sea.

There were five boys in the half-deck, and although the old ship made us
suffer something, we loved her none the less for that."

Compare this with the version Peter gave-

"On another occasion they loaded timber in New Zealand bound for Australia.
The Tasman is often stormy but this was exceptional; for week after week
they wallowed in terrible weather, hove to. The load shifted, the weather
only got worse. Eventually they spoke another ship which carried news back
to the ship's agent in Sydney who sent out a tug to look for them and bring
them in. The author said these old masters did no navigation that he ever
noticed, and seemed to instinctively know their way around the waters they
knew well. Of course heading west from north of NZ it would be difficult to
miss the Aussie mainland."

It sounds like the same voyage, but those accounts differ significantly.

Peter describes another voyage-
" ...sailing across Bass Strait (between the Australian mainland and
Tasmania) with the crew literally atop a deck cargo of explosives; the only
prospect of a hot meal or drink meant lighting a fire on top of their load.
Which they eventually did, during a long and cold winter crossing."

You can compare that with Villiers' own words, on page 228 of "By way of
Cape Horn".-
"We loaded a full cargo of superphosphates, in bags, at Yarraville, and when
that was all aboard, took in a deck cargo of cased benzine on top.  Then we
lashed the galley above the benzine...  We lived in a little hutch down
below the main deck for'ard... In Launceston we put out the benzine, which
fortunately had not blown up on us."

So what was initially "a deck cargo of cased benzine" has become dramatized
as "a deck cargo of explosives". Benzine (perhaps more likely benzene), in
drums, was certainly dangerous stuff, but hardly that. On a short passage,
it was better stowed as a deck cargo, where any leakage could disperse as
vapour, rather than accumulate in-hold. A load of fertiliser in the hold
would certainly increase any dangers.

The galley would normally have been a wooden hut, bolted down to the deck,
and containing some sort of cooking range. From Villiers' account, it had
been unbolted from there, and instead lashed in place above the layer of
drums. Dangerous practice, certainly, but hardly "lighting a fire on top of
their load".

And "we lived in a little hutch down below the main deck for'ard" has become
"the crew literally atop a deck cargo ...".

We always have to be careful with Villiers. He started off in a newspaper
office, and always liked to tell a good story. He wasn't above recycling his
tales, with embellishments. And certainly, those tales appear to have been
embellished. Was that done by Villiers, or by another? Whose were those
words?

George.

contact George Huxtable, at  george@hux.me.uk
or at +44 1865 820222 (from UK, 01865 820222)
or at 1 Sandy Lane, Southmoor, Abingdon, Oxon OX13 5HX, UK.




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