Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
The Brasseys left Alexandria on 2 May and reached Cowes on
the 26th, having stopped very briefly at Valletta, Gibraltar and Lis-
bon.
Thus ended the first circumnavigation-for-pleasure. By the end
of the century scores of other yachtsmen had repeated the Brasseys'
exploits but they could not reproduce their unique accomplishment.
Not only was the voyage of the
Sunbeam
a pioneer voyage it was
an expression of British imperial and commercial confidence. Every-
where the Brasseys went they found their fellow countrymen. Even
where the Union Jack was not flying, British merchants and planters
were well ensconced. The world was open to Victoria's subjects. An-
nie was occasionally conscious of growing foreign competition and
even confided a slight misgiving to her journal: 'It will be a bad day
when the confidence in England's honesty as a nation throughout
the world, and consequently her well-earned supremacy in com-
substantial reality was theatrically represented in the spontaneous
tableau created to celebrate Muriel Brassey's fifth birthday:
Mabelle and the Doctor and the men have been arranging a sur-
prise for her all day, and none of us were allowed to go on the port
side of the deck, but after dinner we were taken to a hastily fitted-
up theatre, very prettily decorated with flags and Japanese lanterns.
On a throne covered with the Union Jack, Muriel was seated, the
two pugs being on footstools on either side of her to represent lions
couchant
. Some of the men had blackened their faces, and gave us a
really very excellent Christy Minstrel entertainment.
24
*
Georges-Eugeène, Baron Haussmann (1809-91), the minister largely re-
sponsible for turning Paris into a city of wide boulevards and spacious squares,
had, according to his critics, a finer eye for security than taste.
