Of Ships and Sailormen

Annual of Shiplovers of Victoria

}NE of the pleasantest little books that has come our way is the Annual Dog Watch, published y the Shiplovers’ Society of Vic oria. It is packed full of meat for hose even remotely interested in he sea and the men and ships that ail on it.

Compilation of Dog Watch is on n honorary basis from the editing pwards. Many of the excellent tories and articles are contributed y active seafarers in every part of le globe, or by others interested in istory ancient and modern, and the art played in it by ships and sailors f all kinds.

Dog Watch has the distinction of eing edited by a woman—Miss S. . E. Strom, of 177 Williams Road, rahran, SI, Victoria—which is nique for a journal with a nauti li flavour.

The Shiplovers’ Society of Vic >ria (there are Societies in every ustralian State with the exception I Queensland) meets in the Mel- Durne Public Library on the second Wednesday in every month. Any le interested in the Society or the nnuai can contact Miss Strom at Br home address given above. )F tropical interest in this, the eighth Annual, is a story by Captain A. J. D. McArthur, 9w a Port of Brisbane pilot, but ice a schooner master in the Solo ons.

It was Captain McArthur, in the ranee (later called Dawaun) who ent out to Vanikoro to rescue the anish expedition that had come i grief there in the Monsoonen. he author, Hakon Mielche, was a ember of the expedition—as he is been a member of the present anish survey party in the Gala tea.

Capt. McArthur tells how he un :rtook the 15-day dead beat :ainst the S-E Trades from Tulagi Vanikoro to pick up the Danes; id of how he took as unwilling tssenger, a planter who had been i a prolonged jag in Tulagi and is thus got rid of by Authority.

The planter was brought on board, iconscious, on a stretcher. He me to, a couple of days later, ocked to find himself bouncing ong on the open sea, far from nd. When he recovered he reatened every legal action in the ilendar; later accepted the situa m philosophically and did every ing to assist.

The schooner’s unchancy auxiliary wer failed early and practically e whole 500 miles was done under il—l2 days out of sight of land lich was something out of the perience of the coastal-sailing itive crew.

The skipper’s now daily use of the sextant, which was not used in their usual point-to-point voyages m the Solomons Group, fascinated them. They took it to be some super x£ rt of telescope through which the captain could see land hundreds of miles off, and 12 days before they made a landfall.

On the return voyage, the captain says, he was approached by the boss-boy who commented: “Im he good fella glass; 12 days you lookim Vamkoro along this fella glass; eye belong boy 'e no lookim.”

During the France’s long trip out to Vamkoro, the Danes had salvaged everything they could from the Monsoonen, and after two of the busiest days Vanikoro has

probably ever known, France set sail again, Tulagi-bound.

Cant. McArthur decided to leave the island by an uncharted pas sage instead of making a dead-beat out through the SE passage where Monsoonen had come to grief. It was a poor decision—the captain spent a whole day in the cross trees directing the helmsman, while France missed a maze of reefs 'by inches Five days after clearing Vanikoro they were in Tulagi—but for three 0 f them all hands had been at pumps and buckets: France had developed a severe leak before they got very far Captain McArthur says that one> of his most treasured possessions

is the book Hakon Mielche wrote of the Monsoonen’s voyage—but he says he still thinks that the writer’s description of him as “a hard swearing Scotch captain” could have been toned down a little.