Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
both the heyday and the decline of the clippers, recorded many of
the incidents that made up the rough-and-ready life of these men. He
recalled how the mate of the
Corea
got involved in a fight in Adelaide
during a circumnavigation in 1872-3. He found himself against an
assailant with a knife and had his face cut from mouth to eyebrow.
He lost no time in taking his revenge:
After the Captain had stitched up his dreadful wound [many cap-
tains were, of necessity, practitioners of minor surgery], the Mate was
so enraged that he went to the place the man who had defaced him
was confined, knocked him down, turned him over, and with the knife
that had so cruelly cut him, made a deep cross on each of the man's
buttocks, then took a handful of coaldust from a bunker there and
rubbed it in the deep cuts, making an indelible mark.
5
The men, like the ships they sailed, were larger than life. Many
of them became legends whose exploits were passed on from gener-
ation to generation in dockside bars or became the subject of ribald
songs. They were mariners for whom sailing round the world and
racing round the world had become a commonplace. Captain John
Wyrill who commanded clippers for forty-four years made thirty-six
circumnavigations. That may or may not be a record but it is some
measure of the accomplishments of a remarkable breed of men.
But they had now been joined on the world's oceans by sailors
of a quite different kind.
On the evening of Wednesday, 2 October 1872 four members of
the Reform Club sat, in the large drawing room, playing whist and
discussing the latest
cause célèbre,
a robbery at the Bank of England:
'I maintain,' said Andrew Stuart, 'that the chances are in favour of
the thief, who is sure to be no fool.' 'Nonsense!' replied Ralph, 'there is
not a country left in which he can take refuge. What an idea! Where do
