The aging bur classically beautiful full-rigger Grace Harwarshe killed Alan's friend Ronald Walker. Photo, National Maritime Museum , San Francisco.
that his fruit marketing articles had caused a sensation amongst the growers in Tasmania and were being issued in book form by the Mercury. He was invited to sit as a member of the fruit advisory board and to make a lecture tour of the chief fruit-growing districts. In fact Alan could eas ily have entered state politics "on the red sk ins of the island's lovely apples," but other horizons beckoned. I once remarked to Alan, half facetiously, that he might well have become Australian Prime Minister had he sought political office at this time. "What a fate! " Alan instantly snapped. He had scant use for politicians. A young reporter from the Mercury, Ronald Walker, had suggested to Alan that a documentary windjammer film should be made, so, pooling their resources they acquired two small German cameras from Sydney with 6,000 feet of film , and signed aboard the Finnish ship Grace Harwar about to load grain at Wallaroo, South Australia . This vessel was a classic full-rigger and the last such vessel in the Erikson fleet. Historically ideal , the vessel was also old and virtually worn out. Her gear aloft was in parlous condition-fatally so, as it turned out- to take on Cape Horn in midwinter. In addition, although competently handled , she was woefully undermanned with a largely inexperienced boy crew. It was another month after Alan and Walker joined the ship before she was loaded and ready for sea, this giving Alan an opportunity to work on his maritime history of Tasmania. There would be little enough time during the voyage. The Grace Harwar sailed from Wallaroo on April 17, 1929 on what turned out to be a nightmare 138-day voyage. The film-making proceeded with satisfactory results till Walker was killed while working aloft at night. The gear being rotten , a halyard carried away and he was crushed by the falling upper topgallant yard . He had perhaps been studying camera angles, Villiers felt, "for the view from high aloft of the black sea breaking in phosphorescence before the bows, that moonlit morning, must have been grand ." The vessel leaked and required constant pumping as she butted on towards the Horn in the great seas and opposing easterly gales of the Southern Ocean . " The struggle to get the ship across those miles and past the Horn was so bitter and all-absorbing that we forgot our other troubles ." Her chronometer developed a serious irregularity-s he ran on by dead reckoning. No land and no sun ; a lovely windjammer in an immensity of rolling gray ocean. In bad weatherone of the boys went overboard but was fortunately rescued although in falling darkness the boat itself was almost lost from sight. The second mate had a nervous breakdown , and the captain had to take his watches on the poop. In the Atlantic the ship ran short of food , and scurvy broke out. Grain from the cargo was pounded into flour. Only calashee watches were kept , which meant that only the essential work of the ship was done; for any heavy work all hands would be turned out. Eventually a steamer was stopped and fortunately she was able to furnish fresh provisions. The Harwar eventually dropped her hook in Cobh , Ireland, from where she was ordered to the Clyde, and towed to Glasgow to discharge her grain. Soon after coming ashore to work on Fleet Street for an Australian news agency in the Times building, Alan completed a book on the Grace Harwar's voyage, By Way of Cape Horn. This book, as with Falmouth for Orders, became a best-seller on both sides of the Atlantic. Then followed Vanished Fleets, the history ofTasmanian shipping which Alan finished during theHarwarvoyage, which also met with success. The film of the voyage, which he had continued to shoot after Walker's death , was a disappointment, since the studio exhibiting the film insisted that it become a "feature" with a director, script writer, and actors, with Alan's footage used merely as background . The nautical integrity of the film was destroyed . However, Dr. Gilbert Grosvenor, President of the National GeoSEA HISTORY, SUMMER 1984
graphic Society, who had recently passed the Grace Harwar at sea in an Italian cruise liner, read of Alan's voyage in a London illustrated magazine. He invited Alan to Washington , DC to lecture and show his film to a packed audience of seven thousand in a huge auditorium. Alan was then engaged by a lecture agency to tour the United States, appearing before enthusiastic audiences at yacht clubs, uni versities, museums, and schoo ls. From the books and film lectures, Alan amassed considerable capital-a novel experience-and he wondered what he might do with it. While ashore in London he never missed an opportunity to visit any deepwater square-rigger calling at a South of England port . Going aboard the bark Plus in the London docks, Alan was surprised to meet Captain de Cloux in the saloon. He had thought de Cloux was chicken farming near Mariehamn . De Cloux asked Alan whether he was still interested in going to sea in big sailing ships, and he mentioned to Alan the fine four masted bark Parma laid up in the Segelschiffshafen in Hamburg and going for a song. She had been employed in the Chilean nitrate trade by Laeisz , but this had ended with the deepening depression . There was ample and profitable employment for her in the Australian grain trade, since depression or no depression , Eu rope had to eat. The captain and the seaman-writer decided to buy the Parma! This was no Trade Wind yarn; within a month the big bark was theirs. She was Scots built in 1902 and loaded 5,000 tons of cargo. The price was a mere ÂŁ2 ,000 ($8,000). Furnished with three suits of sails, she was already ballasted and needed only crew, which would come from the Plus, aboutto be laid up. A charter was secured worth some ÂŁ8,000 even prior to completion of purchase; a propitious beginning. The Parma sailed in November 1931. Encountering bad weather in the North Sea , she was forced by head winds and gales in the Channel to round the north of Scotland. After three weeks the weather eased and the Parma was soon bowling along in the Trades. Well manned with a competent crew she arrived in Spencer Gulf after a run of 83 days. She loaded 62 ,650 bags of wheat at Port Broughton , a small out port where loading was slow but inexpensive. She sailed on March 17, 1932 , one of a fleet of twenty big square-riggers lifting Australian grain that season , and 103 days later came to anchor in Falmouth Bay. After discharging in Cardiff she laid up at Mariehamn in late August where dues were little or 17