(Page
"Oh this hateful England
...but I love it.'
T
HIS is the period of the year in which I take a firm and unalterable decision. Nor are these words lightly chosen. Each year the decision becomes more firm and unaltorable. And what, pray, in it? The answer in simplicity itself
nover to spend another winter in England.
Come with the Baxters, plus a pleasing Italian girl visiting London en pension, to a'smart first night at Iler Majesty's Theatre in Haymarket a few weeks ago. The star of the piece was that amusing comedian, Ian Car- michael, and as the theme of the play was one of com- plicated adultery we were assured of a pleasant evening for all..
Wn
1 of telling a hire
car or taxicab to drive
the honest
THE CHINA MAIL FRIDAY, JANUARY 31, 1958. !!
Parts of the cake were black... it smelled of brandy.
the Stock Exchange closed and gosalp upon it.
What about a week at Nassau with my old pal Lord Beaver- brook) Just a week of tran- quilly and aweel accord, with no differences of opinion mare violent than two awans rearing It is their necks in mid-pool
charming
to
TR
Edward Allcard, the one-man crow of ketch Sea Wanderar, was challenged by an American (in another one-man vessel) to race across 3,000 miles of Atlantic Ocean from the Canaries to the West Indies. Now he tells his own story of the race-for which the prize was a one-dollar bill.
Lost-one dollar and my battle of the Atlantic
by
EDWARD ALLCARD
phenomenon nearly means quiet weather.
33|36|54|2|38|JEJE310E
to
ing sleep
minimum were counteracting Windflower's superior speed,
Under a stormy sky, and aftor zeveral ferea squalls, the wind flew round into the cast and began to blow hard. A boavy confused sea flooded the decks os Sea Wanderer flow westward.
My noon to noon runs jumped up to 110 miles, 105, 110, 127, 113, 123. then the record of my Hfe146 nautical miles under always full sall with me at the wheel
for a continuous 24 hours.
The next day Sea Wanderer was sailing with six sails sol The two shirts hoisted were merely put there to dry.
Unhappily our high spirits ************ were somewhunt subdued when homes. Fortunattly we are no foreign_travel. The poet sud- on emerging from the theatre
a totalitarian state but if the denly feels the need of moon- we encounte ed a fog which was people are given liberty they fight over Hawail or star-ight thickening font although it had ought to treat it with responsi- on the Danube or surast on the not yet attained the full dignity bilty. The London fog has In- Solent. The care Paul Gaugin There of a "London Particular." There
spired poets to grey dreams but was a classic examples
young, successful I um all for doing away with he wa our Whistler's
mista and Dickens' Paris stockbroker with a genius pre' Italian to her apart psodice upon the Thames. At for money and a flair for paint
ROPICAL rain swept in sheets over the sea, ment on the Chelsea Embank- ment. We would have to drive this time of the year I prefer ing. With Ave children and his
forthright River wife dependent upon him he good
the hear
beating it flat. Water roared over the decks raites was the bag for the frat her home in our car which we which I saw Lost Summer in chucked everything but the tedium of the natives' calypso
parked outside the theatre. Fredericton, New Brunswich. It painting. The end was sordid, musle, it is good to see the boats of my 10-ton ketch Sea Wanderer. hod
the fox! and Thicker grew
may not, ke the Thames, be tragle, pitiful.
roped to the docks and to hear In thicker. Being the only man liquid history but neither is it That great and gifted Agure the tar off shouts from a launch
From under my oilskin making ite the party I walked in front of a dripping serpent wrapping of Scottish letters-Robert Louis or sipping yawl
hood I peered forward end of dazzle
not endure way to a pler. itself in a mist and
breakwater Nights the car with
plotting Stevenson-could
anxiously, waiting to catch several minutes the Scottish climate although he
ahead. Sume glowing faintly upon my per- wicked things.
another glimpse of the hours later, at nightfall, had a deep and pervading love ambulating posterior. Omnibuses
We When the for Scotland itself.
island of Antigua to were both becalmed to the north winter set in he was miserable.
identify the coastline after "mus: find the sub," he said.
33 days at sea, He sailed to
We
ما
No man can disregard the Loomed up from the mists like obligations of his profession, his nor family, and his associates, ships scarching their way
slithered can he ignore for too long either harbour. Thus along the Embankment to Chel- his critics or his friends. But! our am now making a solemn vow sea where we debouched
นเส a sweet Italian, and finding fairly clear patch we shot up to the North and drove home to St John's Wood. And so to bed,
America in en einigrant ship under conditions to his which did rauch harm to
Still in search of the health.
Samoa and kun he settled in was so impressed by the beauti- fut setting that he wrote those roble words:
Parliament is
from December 20 January 20 in each year that is allotted to me by the gods 1 shall not set foot in the United Kingdom unlese unexpectedly recalled,
Where then shall we go after banished the United The next night, under much we have
Coriolanus GX the same visibility conditions, Kingdom just
and banished Rome? Personally I a train, taking shoppers
from have a weakness for spending home. office workers
their suburban part of the winter in New York. London dwellings, 'crashed through the They really make a magnificent warning fog lights and 90 people show of It all with myriads of were killed in a horrible coll- lights abinze. sion.
den.
fre
to
and over
billowing clouds made radiant by the uninhibited sun
of
does
praised But when you have the blue glory of the moon, or the golden rhapsodised upon Blitter of the sun, where
Even the twinkling cnc turn? cocktail poignancy nothing to forget.
joses shaker
because оле
a
has
Suddenly, close by, white breakers flashed near the foot of a high cliff. The rain cased off.
The long
of Gran Canaria,
I completed 828 miles in this fourth week. remained. But I could not keep Only 480 miles
up the killing pace and had to leave her to sail herself while I caught up on sleep. Then the
Five hundred and ninety-two wind left me.
week and I was certain that I had built up good load on Windflower,
Are
me.
A CHANCE....
Had Peter managed to keep Hundreds of flying fish were Windflower going? Letting his being flushed by my low. They boat steer herself he could sail land on deck at night and
15 to 20 miles a day more than delicious fried in olive oil.
But there was always the Fourteen months previously chance he had had to heave-to
for some reason, my wife had cooked me a coke
Then Now was my chance to build for the ocean crossing. I rather
came the day when up a lend, I started the Lister dubiously prised open the now Antigua was only 88 miles away, and turned out my lights to rusty tla in which it was kept. The day was crystal clear,
the ratinca to the confuse Peter. His Hight became Parts of it had gone black and climbed
Bilcky, but the rest was excel- crosstrees
and gazed carefully weaker and weaker astern.
lent. It had a slight fermented round the horizon. It was calm, Near dawn I had an interval favour and smelled of brandy. and I had enough fuel for mo
a few hours' sleep, then
to reach port, but I did not "Ah! Cape Shirley." I pressed on. The white speck of
At the end of the second start the motor. disappeared week of light to moderate wlads is no murmured in relief. Just Windflower's sals seems that there
If Peter was 25 miles and more' ahead then he deserved to escape from living in London. I around the next bluff would below the horizon as I headed feared that Peter might have
out into
A hauled ahead,. (Actually he was Atlantic. rock 'n rolled with the
to the win. As far as I was concerned Glad did I live and gladly Canadian mountains and watch-be English Harbour in the south-easterly breeze sprung up more than 100 miles
and stopping the
would have over the race was either won or lost motor,
I north, but ed rich Americans drink sherry British West Indies.
crowded on sall, hoping that taken me had the weather re- already, Peter had not yet got its mained the sume.) bencût.
"Under the wide and starry
Bicy
Dig the grave and let me
He
die And laid me down with a
will
This is the verse you gave
for me:
'Here he lies where be
longed, to be:
Home is the sallor home
from sea
And the hunter home from
the hill"."
I am away from my books of reference and have quoted R.L.S. from memory so I can- not guarantee every comma or quotation mark, but it is near enough
the original. It might have been that Stevenson have lived longer than His 44 years if he had stayed at mists of the Highlands but we shali never know. A mind of atch breadth that it could write
Two days Ego we were in foggy shivering London and now we are or could be swimming would
Montego Bay. There are
Twa
"Kidnapped" and "Doctor Jekyll and Mr Hyde" in the same year would not have been influenced unduly by the weather.
I write the words with regret but it
have
In a heatwave on Long Island: I have seen tycoons lunching at the Strathcono Club in Montreal und have spoken to Mr Diefenbaker
Mir St
1:
NO RULES
for
J
the
FAMILIAR
That night I saw the lights, The vast Atlantic then at dusk, of the sole ship sighted Laurent on the same day but But the big question was: swallowed us up. We were during the whole voyage a about Ave miles away not at the same time I met the Had I won the race across destined not to see each other tanker Mayor of Toronto the
nor was anyone else to sight us crossing my stern, too far off one the Atlantic-and the one given a
for signalling. before last--and was gin-and-vermouth by the chair-dollar prize that went with until the end of the voyage. man of tho Toronto Stock it? Or had my rival, Ameri-
The Irade wind route is pretty Exchange. How can a man, who
can Peter Tangvald, in the deserted at this time of the year. has lived so fully, want
faster Windflower, reached If things go wrong, one can die expert experiences? They just
quite easily. A few steamship don't exist, if you know what I English Harbour before me? lanes cross it at certain points, Investigate a peculiar noise and suri came out to dry and warm
merr.
ar
Excopt in London! Ah there's the rub....
otherwise there
BI
only
-SURROUNDED
mo. I felt fighting fit and 10 Join the by a school of whales, first purified inside and out,
It did not seem more than a occasional yacht month since the captain of the ghosts of the old windjammers. Real Club Nautico at Lad Palmas, in the Canaries, had dropped a flag and started the race.
Look at those myriad chimney pols as your train nozzles its way into the vast tuberosity of the metropoils. Thousands and
We were off! Three thousand thousands of chimney pots miles to go and a hard-earned belching fumes into the besotied dollar for one of us at the end nir, And as a Londoner-I amn part of it all.
ON COURSE
tho
right
I plunged nakød över the side and swam ahead of the boat.. A dark line on the water was approaching art I swam to the bowsprit to haul myself aboard.
But the dark line was not wind, but rain, buckęta of 3, which washed me as good na nny One night I went on deck to shower bath ashore. The hot
an found Sea Wanderer surrounded
surfacing
then. one side
an hour or other. After half
The dry weather broke over- got bored and so they
dis- night and my landfall was made appeared into the darkness.
in shocking conditions of rain
and poor vizibility. -- died The trude wind
I entered the cut loading The second night out the wind away and the boat lay becalined,
Tension dark and with the boat rolling the north showed that it was a mounted. I felt I had won. But went aft and freshened. In the A huge swell rolling down from to English Harbour. of it.
the very first yacht looked and pitching, I managed to rig storm which was upsetting the
the wind did horribly familiar." Yos, Wind- Peter Tangvald was the chal- up my twin booms and set the winds. When The ductor say 1 have a lenger.
The capricious winds specini running staysails which come back it was from the west flower had made port before the calm last calm, 31 days out from Làs hang-over of Aslan flu and that would be anybody's luck. Wo
enable the boat to steer herself. for two days, then it was
In Temperature
the Palmas, I turned in, flashing. It would be a good thing to go had no rules for the race except occasionally on to the tiny car cabin rose to 85 degrees.
a light again. take it that we must be single-handed to a sunny clime and casy. But look what happened and the winner would be the compass at the head of my bunk the boat was suro These expressionlsts who arst one to tie up at the dock to make
keeping on course. always thought that there was at English Harbour. some heaven lurking beyond the and the horizon. mountains
buried Robert Louis Stevenson
epitaph, himeel! with his own
of drink, Shelley Gaugin died got himself drowned and Byron died of a fever. The fates have always been jealous
But New York tires of its Of course there was heroism visitors and one feels that the Itinerant pligriin must move on. And, of there always is.
Shall il be Jamaica which is course, there was calm courage.
from a very few hours
How beautiful But should not science be put only
Gotham? in the duck and charged with
world above the criminal incapacity in failing to route is the
clouds! There In solitary prevent such a disaster? Hore grandeur the plane carries us are Russians, Americans Britons nusuring each other that
cille they can destroy whole with the same rose that a man beetle by could exterminate a stepping on it. Yet it is appar- ently not within the power science to disperse a fog.
Heaven knows that this is subject which attains absurdity rich folk in the hotels and there home and breathed the cold without reaching the high lands are smiling dark waiters to I am whom laughter still comes easily of humour. For example,
the as with children. The rich men writing these words in library of my house which looks talk of oils and gill-edged and out on the terrace and the far- industrials and take a pretty
the The logs in
grate dim view of the future. some odd years ago in Jamaleo I did not buttressed by
side of an pieces of coal, are giving cheer- dare to leave the
least 40 fulness to the secne Plus u American (worth at
dollars)-who นวล steady feeding of smoke to the million
would chimney. It is so pleasant and certain that any day he
himsel! und find that wake up Dickensian to have a fre chuckles and spits but the tens uined. I almost offered him of thousands of chimneys, shar- five pound note to cheer him up ing the joke, are nil spreading but it didn't seem quite right." That's the trouble with golog the death clouds of the skica.
The It is an accepted fact that the to the sunny Caribbeus. open fire-place is an accessory Calypso music luits your criticat to the act. The fog that hides sence, the while crested waves pleasant ocean lullaby, or distorts the warning signals make a
the moon calls to the poet in To think that by a wave of of a railway Hino nis sume
forgetting that the peet the hand, in other words the of its origin in
the massed one,
creates a beauty of his own. The signing of a cheque, I could be Pattalions of London's chimney is so soft, the background se swiftly in that splendid Island who challenge the omnipotence pots. It Britain were a totalltar-
pleasant that there is no In citadel or rugged Independence of the gods. Ian state Mr Macmillan could
spiration to
Dickens called Nassau, There is some-
wistful And all would probably never have been order the destruction of
So perhaps I shall stay appealing chimney pots and make oil he heard of if he had not lived in about rich people meeting for colourless London with neither
fuel in private that only available
squat London suburb intellectual discourse in their sun nor snow to break the bleak known as Camden Town: lovely dwellings set like white monotony. But if I listen care- It is, of ecurse, part of the jewels in 11 no-income tnx fully it may be possible to hear Illerary temperament, to imagine paradise. One would imagine the Pipes of Pan sounding In
the Park at night, that a writer needs to be that the rich man would seek rejuvenated and Inspired by out the company of poets,
philosophers and even poseurs The ductor
LONDON LETTER
wrlic.
by Sir Beverley Baxter MP
At the moment I have a deep, almost passionate, desire to get away from this seepired isle of England which as you know is set like a Jewel in a sliver sea, If you have any doubts. as to what Leland I mean let me assure you that it is this garden of England.
thing
to
of men
53ys that
BECALMED
For stores, 1 was relying on rice, spaghetil and A hugo Spanish smoked ham. For
breakfast
Was
soon congratulating Peter. He came aboard with Thus, in unfavourable condi-
his charts and logbook. We dis tions, I took 17 days to com- plete 1,800 miles-haliway point. Windflower's course Feter and I that had 'I been on covered But where was Peter?
would have entered harbour at
Had I but known it, Wind- the same dawn! Peter's best I ate porridge with flower was barely out of sight noon-to-noon run was 140 miles
against my 140, To offset Windflower's greater syrup and two vitamin tablets. astern, 35 miles away. What a
Honour was satisfied. Pater thrill if we had seen each other. speed I had a vastly increased
under deserved to win. But there was Lister range with my
A Spanish baker had toasted My bursts of travelling diesel, which I would use in calus, me 60 smail loaves. These I power in calm patches, my prize for me, too--a
the driest part of the long hours at the wheel, keep- large bottle of rum. Also I hoped, by sailing further kept in
the loc-box, Oddly south than Peter, to meet better ship, in in
which winds. There was no doubt that enough, the margarino, It was going to be a tough fight one might expect to find in the for both of us.
jee-box I kept in the oven. For vegetables I had a large onion a We started the race from day; my fruit was dried.
the
I
but that is not the way of the temperature is coming down a wealthy. No tover. cruelly bl but I must stay in bed for separated from his mistress, can another three or four days. be more anxious for news than suppose doctors must say some- rich men walling to hear how thing..
was
anchor. Sea Wanderer under way first, and I tacked back and forth to wait for Wind flower so that we would leave together,
It was not till the fifth day that I cracked the 100 miles for a 24-hour period, noon to noon. However, the day ended with a clear sunset which produced carrying moro one of the biggest green flashes
Itad ever sail, passed me and rounded the I
Windflower,
·SCOTLA
This
TAIKOO
GOLDEN
LESYRUP
That's the twenty-fifth one said "Dr. Fuchs, I presume," this morning."
Fies
州
GOLDEN SYAW
and adults
Children love it on bread
with cereals or clet's admit
its straight out of the
tin on their fingers!