The Last Grain Race. Eric Newby

was mystifying to me. I had read of these things and, with the aid of the Sailmaker’s list, had tried to memorise the Swedish for buntlines, clewlines and so on, but it was different up in the rigging. In the fo’c’sle I might know that the upper topsail outer buntline on the port side was ‘babords övre märs yttre bukgårding.’ In practice my mind became blank. It was difficult enough to hang on and furl sail in a flat calm in dock. I trembled to think of performing these feats in the Atlantic.

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       Wild Life in the Irish Sea

      We sailed from Belfast on Tuesday, October 18th, 1938, our destination Port Lincoln for orders. On board were a crew of twenty-eight, including the Captain, a man of huge size, who had come to us from Erikson’s four-masted barque Archibald Russell.