Again

The Johnsons Are Back Again Yankee in the Solomons

From Our Own Correspondent

Honiara. June 2.

THE brigantine Yankee (Captain Irving Johnson) with Mrs. Johnson and their son Arthur, and 23 passengers who are also crew, arrived in Honiara, BSI, at the end of May.

The Yankee, which last visited the Solo mons in 1948, is on another world cruise.

Two of her crew are women.

Mr. James Ford, of Detroit, a member of the motor car Ford family, is also among the crew members.

Mr. Ford brought with him on the cruise a small glass boat, powered with a fast engine, which is something quite new in the BSIP. It iS made by spraying liquid glass over a wooden mould, and when the glass, in its hundreds of thin layers, is considered thick enough, you just stop spraying.

The Yankee’s lifeboat is called the Doodle. Mr. Ford has named his glass boat the Dandy.

Mr. Osmar White, well-known Austra lian journalist had joined the Yankee in the New Hebrides and was another unexpected visitor.

While the Yankee and most of her pas senger-crew went to Malaita for a cruise round the coast, Mr. Ford remained in Honiara with his glass boat, and with Mr. Wjhite made an expedition up the Nalimbu River, which is some 20 miles east of Honiara. There is reported to be a tambu cave, into which no native will go, a long way up the Nalimbu, and this was one of their objectives.

The Nalimbu is one of the many large rivers which intersect the Guadalcanal coastline. It is very beautiful, as tropical rivers are, but is full of snags, with wide reaches of shallow water in some places, good bathing pools in others, and a fast current in flood time, when it is capable of rising ten feet in twenty minutes and keeping on rising, to subside almost as quickly when the rainstorm at its head waters is over. The Americans bridged the Nalimbu during the war years, but the bridge was rotted and carried away and only a few old timbers remain, with part of the western approach. One or two people were doubtful about the wisdom of taking a glass boat up a tropical river even in a dry spell, but the boat is said to be stronger than steel, and the pair returned safely. They later made an ex pedition along the Guadalcanal coast.

The Yankee left Honiara in the second week in June for New Guinea ports.