•
'~ .. somehow,
in a curious kind of way, one feels that one is not yet finished with the Cape Horne rs."
nothing. The profit was £3,000 ($12 ,000) and all the capital invested in the Parma was returned to the new owners. In October, 1932 , the Parma was again outward bound towards Point Victoria , dry-docking at Burmeister's in Copenhagen on the way out. In Spencer Gulf the bagged wheat was lightered out in small ketches and schooners to be fou nd there during the wheat season . The homeward voyage towards Falmouth was a record one of 83 days, one of the best runs for halfa centu ry. Discharging her grain in Hull the Parma returned to Mariehamn where A lan left her in the summer of 1933 after what was a voyage of glorious weather from Australia. Being a co-ownerof the vessel with Captain de Cloux had given A lan the unique opportunity to understudy one of the greatest master mariners of the later sailing ship era. He wrote the book Grain Race from the Parma venture , and a splendid collection of photos of the Parma voyages was also published at the same time. In the summer of 1934 Alan was seeking a suitable, small squarerigged vessel , for another kind of ventu re. Unfortunately there was little offering. There were a considerable number of fishing barkentines out of Fecamp and St. Malo in the codfish trade, but they would require considerable reconditioning and their timbers needed attention. So he kept looking ... until one day on the Copenhagen waterfront he caught sight of the small iron full-rigger Georg Stage. A delicately graceful vessel , rigged with big single tops'ls and a long steeved jibboom- frigate-style, as Alan called it , echoing the sailing warships of 100 years before. She was al ready an anachronism when she was built as a training ship in 1882 . Learning that she was for sale, to be replaced shortly by a new and somewhat simi lar vessel, Alan hastened to his broker to make a bid . He got her fo r a mere£ 1,500 ($6,000) . Her circumnavigation of the globe during the next two years would be one of the great maritime adventures of all time. Alan renamed her Joseph Conrad after the great Polish master mariner and novelist whom he so greatly admired . He sailed her across the North Sea to England to refit and register her in Ipsw ich . His crew came from the grain ships and Danish school ships, augmented by some dozen boys who would pay a nominal sum to sail as cadets. T.E . Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia) proposed to sail in the Conrad together with Bruce Rogers, the New York typographer. Their intention was to produce fine books during the voyage on a press in the tweendecks . Lawrence died in a motorcycle accident and Bruce Rogers instead carved the outstanding figurehead that still graces the vessels' bow, and lettered the name on the bows, the counter, and on the lifebelts when she reached New York . Departing England in the fierce equinoctial gales of October 1934, the little full-rigger reached New York at year-end . On the fi rst day of 1935 she dragged her anchor and went ashore in a heavy winter gale and was almost lost in the rocks of the Bay Shore Road in Brooklyn. This involved Alan in a heavy expense, but the vessel was salved and soon rolling down to Rio, completing the passage in 57 days. Alan originally intended to weather the Horn and enter the Pacific from east to west, but the ship was vulnerable and it would be unnecessarily dangerous, so he decided instead to sail west to east towards Good Hope. From the Cape the Conrad sailed to the Straits of Bali in seven weeks, and thence to Singapore. Then on through the China and South Sulu seas, northabout towards Melanesia and Australia. This leg of the voyage was tedious, hot and difficult, giving Alan an appreciation of the daunting task of navigation faced by the early Portugese and Spanish voyagers in these seas . The Conrad was now headed towards Sydney where she was tumultuously welcomed in December 1935. Alan cherished the hope that the little vessel might somehow remain in Australian waters for training purposes, but there was little interest in the idea and no funds. It was my good fortune to SEA HIS1DRY, SUMMER 1984
7he grear ship in herelemenl, deep-laden in 1he AI!a111ic swell , and, be/01-t ·, a1 mrage's end in Cardiffdocks. "Fro1111he quavside we look back at her, /01h 10 depan: she looks po11•erf ul and huge in !h e docks .. .and somehow, in a cu rious kind of111av, onefee/s 1hm one is 1101 ye1ftnished wi1h 1he Cape Homers," Villiers said after 1his mrage.
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