Page 8

8

life every year, sometimes up to 20%, or an average of 1 per ship. A
whole watch & the 2nd mate were washed from the bowsprit of this
ship a few years ago before they got as far as the Horn and the "Melbourne"
was rammed and sunk by a steamer with only 1 more day to get to Queenstown
Ireland. The "Grace Harwar" is called the Coffin ship, she loses so
many men. The Cape of Good Hope is a warmer and pleasanter trip but
takes longer although much the same distance as the Horn; the
Herzogin Cecilie has the Hope record with 98 days in 1927. These facts
are from 2 books; "The voyage of the Parma 1932" and "Last of the wind ships" 1933,
written by A. J. Villiers who was part owner then and sailed as passenger
those 2 years. If you had time from dusting & sweeping to visit the
town library & see the latter book, you'd find an excellent lot of
photos taken on this ship during those 2 trips. However Villiers writes
a terrific lot of romantic rubbish (for the person by the fireside who
has never been to sea) and we all here laugh at many of the statements
he makes. We have passed 1 ship by day and 3 by night and have not seen
land since Kangaroo Island. During the hot weather we had lime juice
handed out; I understand it prevents scurvy and is a substitute for
green vegetables, which we never get. (I forgot, I told you that before).

Monday May 4th We are now 40 degrees East longitude, 30 degrees South
latitude (=40 degrees E; 30 degrees S) 45 days out and we experienced our first bad
weather yesterday at 2pm when a violent squall blew up from in front
of us which was the worst direction it could come from for, had
it either continued longer (it was only about 20 minutes) or our rigging
been unsound, we would have been dismasted with a good
chance of being rolled over and sunk afterwards. We had a few