Category / world travel

by Mary James

35. Moving Towards, but Also Away From, the Dutch East Indies, Feb 8 – 12, 1938

To recap, Helen was just recently in the Dutch East Indies for Chinese New Year (1938 = year of the Tiger), then took a tour through a brink-of-war Singapore, with its air raid drills and harbor full of battleships. And now, though she keeps her forward momentum, she is back in the Dutch East Indies.

To visualize the geography of this, I have created a map of all the places she stopped on the five month trip around the world (the loop-de-loop is her inland visit to the Taj Mahal). There are some zigs and zags, but no backtracking.

The M.S. Silverwillow started its voyage in New Orleans in 1937 and ended (at least Helen’s leg of it) five months later in Los Angeles, in 1938

A zoom-in on the map might not show the exact seafarers’ route (but never doubt that there could have been some Fitzcarraldo-esque boat-over-a-mountain stuff going on). Even if it weren’t a crow’s fly map made with a free app, you can still tell, geography-wise, how a boat might visit the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia) twice, before and after a stop in Singapore.

Helen’s exact route, via boat, through South East Asia, 1938.

Now that we (I) understand the trajectory, we snap back to a world simmering in war.

Day-to-Day Journal

Tue Feb 8 

Up with the anchors at 6:00 a.m. into the harbor of Tandjong—Priok past two rows of warships, 3 French, 2 Dutch. Still wind blowing, came too close to the Dutch Navy for comfort as we made two passes at the mooring buoy. 

Silverteak came in just astern of us, did not go alongside as we expected.

Side note: The Silverteak survived World War II. The Silverwillow (the boat Helen was on) was used by the British navy, and was destroyed by U-Boats on October 30, 1942. Several men died.

To Batavia (8 mi.), a canal runs alongside the road from Batavia to the New Batavia Centrum (no Europeans live in the old city now (malaria)). 

Took pictures of the laundry being done in the canal.

Side note: I wish I had more pictures. There are barely a dozen of the whole trip, and most from the early time at sea. The canal might have looked like this.

Batavia was known as Cemetery of Europeans because of the rates of malaria. 

Fine stores, we went in only one, having no more time. Thru Batavia museum, beautiful dignified building with white columns, filled with Javanese work: carving, silver, models of types of houses, costumes, implements, Batik, musical instruments, boats — a fascinating place to spend days. 

Outside were many Hindu and Buddhist Gods from Borobudur and elsewhere.

Side note: Most if not all of these artifacts survived WWII, but the local population did not fare as well. The Japanese occupied the Dutch East Indies in January 1942. They were welcomed at first at liberators, after hundreds of years of Dutch colonialism, but ultimately four million people died there during Japanese occupation due to forced labor and famine. The gory details can be found here.

Saw sacred cannon decked with flowers, incense burning. Pony carts like Sumatra, but with flat tops, called a delman - with ponies from Bali. Buffalo hides drying (use for fans, belts, lampshades, etc.) thru the country. Opium factory (control by Gov't.) next to medical college. 

Everywhere along the road coolies in big hats carrying baskets. Hundreds piled high with rambutans (fruit with red soft-spiny shell — hang in great clusters on the trees), mangostein, pomelo, banana, ucus (like small pale lemon, inside formed like a pomelo, has a tinge of banana flavor), also vegetables, tinware, all manner of household articles.

Side note: By ‘ucus’ I believe she meant ugli, which is an unfortunately named fruit. It is also known as uniq in some circles and Jamaican tangelo in others. So much learning.

Goodyear has a large factory, produce 6,000 bicycle tires, 600 truck tires per day. (Gov't. collects 1,000,000 in fees from the bicycles in Java). A large market-looking place with hundreds of people around it proves to be a pawnshop, one of sixteen Gov't. operated ones in Batavia.

Side notes: The government had its hands in pawnshops, opium factories, and salt. Also, remember my hint in the last post about Helen being back in this part of the world decades later, and that it would be related to rubber? Here is another hint. 

Acres of rice fields, tapioca (use root), rubber, sugar, miles of kapok trees, sago palms, pith used for making sago-like small tapioca beads, also ground for bread flour — leaves dried to make thatch roofs for houses, juice makes vinegar and a native alcoholic drink. 

Indigo plants about 3 ft. high have white blossom, plant soaked in water 15 days, crushed, extracting juice, water left to evaporate, indigo powder remains. Tamarind trees growing along road, from them a hot extract for flavoring salads. The palm with the red stem is sealing-wax palm. Betelnut tree a tall very straight-trunk palm with a tuft of leaves at the top, clusters of nuts like the date betel leaf, in which natives wrap the nut comes from a small shrub-like tree, is chewed like chewing gum.

Side note: Sago palm does just about everything, doesn’t it? Puddings, breads, roofs, boozes, and last but certainly not least… BOBA TEA. The also magical indigo powder is used to regrow thinning hair AND to cover grays. In India, she complained about the red betel nut chewing spit splats everywhere, if I recall. The betel nut was more like a cigarette in effect than chewing gum though.

In Buitenzorg the zoological museum, then the Botanical Garden (largest in the world) many thousands of trees I never saw before — trees with trunks like concrete walls, cannon ball tree (fruit the size and shape of c-ball), pandanus, from which Panama hats are made.

Side note: The Panama hats she saw might have been called Tamsui hats, from Taiwan. They are the same looking. I don’t think the actual Panamanian Panama hats were made from pandanus, as it didn’t grow in Panama. Those (at the time at least) were usually made from the Carludovica palmata plant, indigenous to the region.

Lily ponds with enormous pads, pink lilies, lotus flower — monument to Mrs Raffles.

Side note: Sir Thomas Stamford Bingley Raffles built The Lady Raffles Memorial for his wife. He was a Colonial governor in the Dutch East Indies in the 1800s. Helen mentioned a Raffles Hotel in Singapore. And I know I’ve heard of Raffles whilst traveling in that part of the world. It’s all the same guy, but the latter without the Thomas or the Bingley. Why is a British dude the governor of a Dutch colony? Google says because of a capture, for number of years, of Java by the British during the Napoleonic Wars. Then it went back to the Dutch. Maybe the monument was nice so they kept it.

Houses in Java are made of bamboo matting, for there is no good building wood here except teak, which is very expensive and a Government monopoly. Bamboo house lasts about 20 yr.

Side note: Teak was not indigenous to the region, but had been growing there since the 16th Century. Excellent building material (rugged stuff used for floors and boats and furniture) was available locally, but the colonial government hoarded it for their own use and profit, and locals got to build bamboo houses that last for 20 years. Cruelty and greed.

A new passenger on our return — youngish, male, married, from Sacramento. Daisy nabbed him.

Side note: Daisy is ‘Miss Daisy Mount’, who Helen described as, “Sweet little old lady, dainty, birdlike, speech a bit breathless as tho people wouldn’t listen. Pioneer stock.” But here she is ‘nabbing’ a youngish married man. In a post several months ago, Helen said that Daisy, “had an acquaintance”, and she also was involved in some gossip, telling Helen there was “axe in the offing”.

I think I may have found her! Sarah Fisher ‘Daisy’ Mount was born in 1867 in the San Francisco Bay Area. In 1938, she would have been 71, so that tracks (Helen was 34, so 71 would be quite old). After docking in Los Angeles, Helen traveled north through California, visiting Daisy in SF on the way.

Helen also mentions that Daisy has ‘pioneer stock’ and pioneers were settling all around the Bay Area in the 1860s. And now here was Miss Mount seeing the world and nabbing young men. Go Daisy!

Miss Mount passed away in SF in 1945 at age 78.

Why we know so little about the few other civilian passengers on the boat is because Helen was focused (people-wise) almost exclusively on the men that worked on the boat.

Wealthy Chinese own much of the land in Batavia. 

Started sleeping out, hot and humid — coughed for hours in spite of Jim's toast at 10:30 — paced deck, slept in for a couple of hours. 

Ashore in a boat with a port oar and a paddle in the stern. -10 Java cents each way. Quite something to see our passengers climb in and out.

Side note: Sleeping ‘out’ probably means that she is back in the hammock that she helped measure, cut, sew, and hang on her way from New Orleans to Cape Town.

And regarding people climbing in and out of the boat… I think she is poking fun at the more elderly of civilian passengers, who mostly have at least three decades on her.

Wed. Feb. 9: Dropped the pick in the early dawn at Cheribon. Tug with 7 lighters came alongside. Unloading gunnies from Calcutta, taking on a few tons of Sago flour. 

At 11:00 Capt. asked if we wanted to go ashore. H.Q. & I went with him. Stopped for a beer at Hotel Cheribon, Then 30 mi. south to Lingga-Djati, to Hotel Rustoord, beautiful drive. Rice fields and rice fields, men, women, and children working in them — every separate shoot planted by hand. Mt. Cheribon — 10,000 ft. volcano shrouded in clouds most of the day, extinct for 200 yr., became active last year. Sandwiches, milk, fruit for lunch (my first glass of milk since Capetown and this was boiled).

Side note: I cannot find anything about the Hotel Rustoord, but the word ‘rustoord’ means old people’s home in Dutch.

The Mt. Cheribon she mentions is indeed a Mt. near Cheribon, but it is actually named Mount Cereme (or Ciremai or Ciremay).

There is so much Dutch East Indies that we must cut this one in half… but stay tuned because next we have more war, but also some peace.

by Mary James

28. India, Part III: Before the Taj Mahal: The Journal, Jan 11-14, 1938

“But we just left the Taj Mahal”, you say. And you are correct. But before we move forward, first we must circle back a little.

The last post presented passages from Helen’s post-trip letter to family, all nice and curated. But remember there is also a corresponding day-to-day journal, that was for her eyes only (at least until I came along)*, with fun detail and juicy context that doesn’t always make it into the letter. I’ll pare to the best bits.

*Helen gave all of her records to family, with the idea that someone might turn it all into a story and here I am doing that; I assume that she would have (and maybe did) pluck out bits she didn’t want anyone else to see.

The Day to Day Journal

Side note: We left the journal when Helen was luxuriating in a hotel (after over two months sleeping — by choice — primarily in a homemade hammock on a boat deck) before heading inland to the Taj Mahal with the ladies from the boat. But first, Helen networks a bit.

Tue. Jan. 11: Jack Frost came for me at noon, as darling as ever, to Ballygunge to her lovely home — high ceilings, airy, comfortable. Deep chairs covered in soft turquoise, a luscious Persian rug, fine silver and lined — a lawn tennis court, two dogs: Jack & Jill.
  
Sherry, then lunch: cold baked eggs with whipped cream & catsup, fish, peas, hot grapefruit, Kashmir English walnuts, figs, stuffed dates, Turkish coffee, Greek cigarettes.

Side note: I picture Jack & Jill as a regal, but derpy, long dogs, like Borzois. And I won’t comment on the cold baked eggs with whipped cream and catsup. 

Drive with Jack about Maidan, Victoria Memorial, Fort William, cricket grounds, Gov. House, race track, 200 (Indian day, with band, hundreds listening, wrapt.) Hippo-elephants, giraffe, birds of color.

Side note: Hippo-elephant sounds like something to come out of a World’s Fair. I think she must have meant hippos and elephants, like she saw both? She’s too science-y to confuse the two (and yes I Googled whether hippo-elephants exists or have existed… no they don’t/didn’t).

To Tollygunge Club (1000 members) — race track where gentlemen jockeys hold 4 race meeting a year open to public, pays club expenses. 

The house was owned by an Indigo Planter — lovely: yellow-orange bougainvillea, enormous cannas, swim pool, golf and tennis. Had tea on the lawn, a restful spot. Thru Alipore, the other residential district (Viceroy's house) past Jodphur Club. 

To 1st Empire. Ronald Coleman and Madeleine Carroll in "The Prisoner of Zenda". Nearly everyone in evening clothes. Strange to come out from the American picture to the squalor of an Indian street.

Side note: She might be again job prospecting thru YWCA connections. This sounds like a lovely spot, tea on the manicured lawn and all, but lordy the disparity (see the last two posts).

Wed. Jan. 12: Shag and I wandered back across the Maidan for a couple of precious hours together. Sigrist came to get Dreyer's blanket while D. buys her own bedding, cheap skate! If I ever get like that!

Side note: She would get like that. Precious hours with Shaaag. She won’t see him for a whole 10 days.

Across the river to Howrah Station. Miss Skinner and party on the door of the compartment. As barren as a cattle car, narrow seats around three sides, so someone's feet are in the face of another. (R.R. & Calcutta time 24 min. different). Punjab express. We rented bedding rolls for 1 Ru. per day from Am. Ex. For 6 As. Had them delivered at station. One ladies' 2nd class compartment on each train.

To Dasashwamedh Ghat to take the boat up river first, past bathing ghats. 

Everyone bathes in the river each day, then worship under the straw umbrellas where the priests sit. Many temples and palaces with stairs leading to the water's edge. Various postures as prayers are said and rites performed. Down river, where we watched one funeral pyre and saw another corpse prepared - an emaciated middle aged man, whose widow, in white, with low-coiled shining black hair, sat wailing at the top of the steps. 

The Hindu belief: body is dust, fire, water, they bury material things, ashes burned in the fire are returned to water. On down the river past more palaces, rest houses, temples and return to the starting place.
Drive thru the city, saw the Monkey Temple, here barren women pray to Durga for fertility. If the prayer is answered, a goat is sacrificed. 

Thru narrow alleyways lined with beggars to several other temples - Siva, Goddess of Plenty, Ganesh, the Elephant God, the Sacred Bulls, Well of Knowledge, the Golden Temple whose beautiful spire must be observed from a balcony next door, so narrow are the streets. We were given garlands of the Niwari flower. Peepal tree sacred, may not be cut down.  

After lunch to Sarnath, where Buddha preached his first sermon, gained his first 5 converts. Dammekh Stupa, built in 3rd Century B. C. near Buddhist ruins more than 1000 yr. old. Modern Buddhist temple with murals of the life of Buddha done by a Japanese. 

After dinner entertained by a magician who was exceptionally good, produced a flock of live birds out of his equivalent of a hat.

Side note: ‘Equivalent of a hat…’ is a good band name, no?

Fri. Jan. 14: Tea at 5:00 a.m., left for the station in the cold gray dark at 5:30. On board the first train for Mogul Serai, our bearers carried our luggage up over the bridge to the waiting room and back again. It was 7:30 when we got away. Had an attractive young Chi-Chi girl in our compartment as far as Allerabad.

Side note: I think Chi-Chi is like shi-shi? Someone who is stylish? 

Wild monkeys, gorgeous parrots, peacocks, mud hut villages, bathing in every water hole, wells with oxen every drawing water for irrigation. 

Change trains at Tundla at 4:30 p.m., we were put in first class carriage with K.R. Dixit, professor of physics, Gujarat College, Ahmedabad, returning from the Science Congress at Calcutta, stopping over between trains to see the Taj.

Side note: Dr. K.R. Dixit wrote a paper in 1940 (two years after this trip) that appeared in the ‘Proceedings of the Indian Academy of Sciences’, which was published by Springer, which happens to be the publisher for whom I work. And we publish their conference proceedings still, almost 100 years later. La de da!

So here we bid adieu, with the ladies choo chooing along with Dr. Dixit, chewing the rag about Helen’s favorite things: science and facts.

Next time we will, again, visit the Taj Mahal, but from a different perspective.

by Mary James

19. Port Elizabeth & East London, South Africa, Dec 7-10, 1937

The After the Trip Letter

Port Elizabeth and East London are bustling, growing cities, thriving as ports for the diamond mines and South Africa's young export business. Durban is cosmopolitan, cultured, as modern as most large American cities. I went with our British Captain in a Reo driven by a Mohammedan to a South African theater owned by a Jew, to see an American movie...had supper in a Dutch restaurant where we were served by turbaned Indian waiters...and rode back to the ship in a rickshaw pulled by a Zulu.

Side note: In 1937, the passenger cruise industry was not yet hopping, so activities at the ports were likely catered to those in the import/export trade, the mining industry, the military… so men, and then all the people who cater to them and their whims. As is often the case, port towns are playgrounds of booze and flooze for some; hard labor for others.

An aside: While Googling about things she mentions in the paragraph above, I discovered the ‘Reo’ car she mentions is a REO SPEED WAGON! Who knew!? To me that is a band. But first, it was a car.

For supper she goes Dutch, literally. Get it?!

I had to look up what Dutch foods are. There are surprisingly few Dutch restaurants here in New York City, despite it once being called New Amsterdam. Of the top 10 Dutch restaurants in NYC on Yelp, only two are actually Dutch, and one of those is an hour into New Jersey. Another has ‘Dutch’ in the name, but serves American food. Three are Belgian. One is a food hall without any Dutch cuisine.

Poor Dutch food!

Have you heard of poffertjes? I have not. And I have been to Amsterdam and I worked for a Dutch company for four years. Poffertjes are the most popular food there, according to Google. If this rarity-of-Dutch-cuisine was true also back in 1937, then it might have been quite exotic to eat in a Dutch restaurant. She does not comment on the food, which is out of character. Is that good or bad?! Were the poffertjes pleasant or poor?

The Day to Day Journal 

Tue. Dec. 7: Washing - and high time too. Sewed sail in afternoon, cut out the jib. Hike on boat deck, then topside for more sewing — only one more day at sea before Durban, and it must be done by then. 

9:45 p.m. — went on the bridge to see the chart of the Cape, watch the plotting of tonight's course. Tennents and crayfish sandwiches.

Side note: I know from my incredibly short stint as a student of sailing (I should have asked Helen if she forced her students to purposely capsize in the middle of winter) that a jib is a canvas-y thing, and I believe it is connected to the boom (which is the part that hit me in the head more than once during said class). (The real reason I gave up on classes is that they were far too early in the morning for a college student. Like 8am or something!)

Helen is taking her self-appointed sail-sewing job very seriously, with set-in-stone deadlines. The chart and plotting are of course also jobs she’s taken on. No tipsy squabbles over cribbage with the retirees for Helen!

(I think Tennents is a beer.)

Port Elizabeth 

half penny
penny ticky = 3 pennies
six pence
12 pence = 1 shilling = 1 bob
2 shillings = florin
2 1/2 shillings = half crown
20 shillings = 1 pound

Wed. Dec. 8: 5:00 a.m. — woke to see land ahead. Engines stopped about 5:45. Fine concrete wharf with many loading cranes. Shag got the bike off early and we rode out to the beach past Humewood to a beautiful cove, rocky, breakers tumbling in. Sat on the beach — idillic.

Side note: Land ahoy again! The vision of Helen and Shag zooming along the coast to a cove, then the sitting and taking it all in… m’waw!

Time for a family related aside… Helen’s grand nephews, the two sons of her sister Mary’s son, Bob, used to run a motorcycle shop in California. And I purchased a motorcycle from them in 1997ish when I was in college (a 1984 Kawasaki 305), and I lived by the sea, and riding along coast, with the misty air, salty breezes, and white caps crashing into jagged rocky walls was life affirming.

And even extra for her, Helen was experiencing it all with her crush. 

Back to the boat at 11:45. 

Changed clothes and walked in to town again. 

Lunch with Ruth and Daisy at Cleghorn's on the market square. The town is spotlessly clean, many new modernistic buildings. The tall square tower above the jetty is "To commemorate the landing here of British settlers in 1820". It was one of the first towns in Africa settled by the British. Ruth and I visited the museum (poor taxidermy of native animals). Beautiful tropical birds in the aviary: a red-orange one — a velvety black with a red spot and long black tail. The snake garden was hemmed in by hibiscus bushes and trumpet vine. Cobras, pythons, puff adders dozing pretty peacefully in the sun.

Side note: Can hibiscus bushes and trumpet vine keep snakes away from humans?? They are skinny, slithery, and sly (but not slippery. An ex I lived with for many years had a snake so I know all this, reluctantly, up close and personal).

East London

Thur. Dec. 9: Shag and I went ashore at 9:30, walked thru the town, out to the beach, life histories. Small town, built up recently, ultra modern architecture.

Side note: life histories = looove 👩‍❤️‍👨

A note folded up in Helen’s files from the trip, dated Dec 9, 1937

The note above was written on Dec 9, 1937 (the day that the life-history-sharing was going on) and I want to think it was from Shag to Helen and that they met up in the sail loft, where all work on sails was halted so they could flirt. (The main part doesn’t look like her handwriting; but the date written at the bottom does, hence it was to her and she added the date for memory purposes.)

In the harbor are 3 square-riggers out of Finland, "Killoran", "Pamir", "Viking". Went aboard the "Viking" (built Sweden, 1907) she is unloading lumber, next goes to Australia for grain, (4 masted barque), crew of 16, young boys learning to sail, 2 Americans, Finns, Swedes, Danes, Capt. has his wife aboard, and an Australian girl is working her way home as mess girl. They are not radio-equipped, keep off the steamship lanes.

Side note: Seems well equipped to be a pirate ship, no? Lurking through the night with no radio… maybe ‘lumber’ and ‘grain’ are code names for types of illicit loot. 

Worked on sail in afternoon, and in evening, my usual hike and a game of ping-pong and Tennents with Chief. 10 — 45 knots tonight, have a 5-knot current. Many planes flying about. Mail plane came in Trimotor Junkers, some RAF formation flying.

Side note: Was she bugging the mailman for plane specs?? I hope she asked to fly it.

Fri. Dec. 10: Topside at 10:30 to finish sewing the corners on the jib. Put grommets in the corners of both sails and she's ready for action. At 3:00 p.m. we were being piloted into Durban harbor, dropped anchor, it began to rain. First word was we'd stand by for the Silvercedar to vacate her berth, but later it was decided to spend the night at anchor. Shag and I were going ashore, but it was too wet. Captain showed Ruth and me Mr. Dreyer's movies of the canal of New Orleans, of me painting the lifeboat. Called on Jim and Shag, saw some of their pictures.

Side note: If she’s only just heading up to finish the jib at 10:30am, she must have been quite confident she’d finish before Durban (her self-imposed deadline).

‘Vacate her berth…’ sounds more dramatic than it is, which is just a ship moving.

And a video! How cool it must have been in 1938 to see film of yourself moving around. I hope Mr. Dreyer’s relatives were bequeathed that film and that they kept it and that it is living somewhere.

by Mary James

16: ‘At Sea’ to afloat-off-Africa, Nov 22 – Dec 2, 1937

The letter

First, the perfectly concise bit from the after-the-trip letter:

One night I woke suddenly...something was different, and then I realized the engines had stopped. I went on deck and there to starboard twinkled millions of lights around the crescent of Table Bay. Overhead hung the constellation of the southern Cross. South Africa!

Side note: Land ahoy!

Table Mountain, South Africa, after 23 days at sea, December 1937

The journal

She’ll do most of the talking here, but I will say, the last sentence of the first paragraph below is another example of why journals are great. We transition effortlessly from heavenly skies to more backhouse trots (remember, those aren’t a dance).

Mon. Nov. 21: 

[Present location:] 
Lat. 5° 43' S
Long. 26° 04" W
Dist. 314 mi.
Av. Speed 13.24 mph. 

The water tonight a delicious inky black, the curling foam a swift white flash with an occasional phosphorescence. Watched the moon come up. A cloud bank gave the effect of a mass of liquid white heat, poured into fantastic shapes etching a silver pencil line around the cloud making it glow with some inner light. At last its final form emerged in golden radiance to begin its nightly voyage across the heavens. Four passengers laid up with diarrhea this morning, something they ate, no doubt.

Side note: Masterclass level transition, no?

Tues. Nov. 22: - First planking on Capt.'s boat this a.m. Using the sextant for the second time, I took the Altitude and worked the latitude within 2 min. of the official one on the bridge. Capt. seemed pleased.
Helen Skinner, M.S. Silverwillow, somewhere on Atlantic Ocean (this might be the Planking she mentions? Her planking must be different from the planking that is core strengthening and/or a dumb meme from 2010ish)
Into my monkey suit after lunch and did some more painting on the life boat. Read "Silas Crockett". Morse at 7:30, Jim sent while Roy took it down, and after numerous unsuccessful struggles, I managed eight words a minute. Marked a course on the chart, learning to apply deviation and variation. Had my first trick at the wheel for five minutes. Slept in the hammock.

Wed. Nov. 23: Lost my favorite scarf overboard in the interests of navigation — while I had the sextant in my hand, and nothing could be done about it. Found the Lat. within 1 min. of the official one, again. Capt. bragged on me at lunch. Spent the p.m. painting gear from #1 life boat. Lesson in Morse with two assistants. Chatted with the Engineers on my way "home" tonight. Finished "Silas Crockett". Turned in early. Saw the inside of the funnel today.

Side note: Sextants are still carried on ships and crew should know how to use them. Actual vintage ones are expensive, but I found a replica made to look old that is neat to look at, fun to play with, good for storytelling, and a nice knick knack. But also incredibly complicated and with no autofocus. As for finding altitude and latitude and the other things with that little device, here’s a 25 minute video of numbers and maths and calculations and complexities that make my eyes glaze.

Here is my replica sextant:

It is upside down in one of the photos, but 100% right side up in the other

Thru. Nov. 24 My first bloater for breakfast today, very good. Figured compass courses, correcting for leeway, variation, deviation. Painted about 1/3 of lifeboat #1. Thanksgiving -- saloon decorated with British, U.S., and Union of South Africa flags. Each setting had a place card with a jingle, done by Daisy Mount. Topside afterward. Capt. let me read the letters he has written to the school he has adopted. A number of British Captains under the "Adoption Society" have schools to which they write, about once a month, telling of activities on board ship and places visited. What a stimulus to the study of geography. Capt. let me check a code radiogram he is sending. First time I've seen an official code book. Drew names for our share in the Christmas party.

Side note: A bloater is not gas, as I first assumed (she is very open about bodily things!). It is a smoked herring.

Also, the book she finished above, Silas Crockett, is about generations of maritime families and the women who ran them.

This must be the place setting at Helen’s Thanksgiving seat: 

Helen’s place setting at Thanksgiving, 1937, and it’s perfectly personalized — nice that aviation and navigation rhyme.

It’s a wee blurry, so:

Skinner, Miss Helen
She has studied aviation
And its twin art, navigation
The code de Morse
Is in her course
So she works like all tarnation
M.V. Silvervillow
Thanksgiving Day. 1937.

Fri. Nov. 25: Chipping paint on the deck below us — sounds like a boiler factory. Worked problems in the Meridian Altitude. Apprentices have half day off to study, so I sewed sail for the new boat. Another Morse lesson until rain drove us inside — 185 letters, 4 mistakes. Cold, we had on coats, wrapped in blankets. Passed 100 mi. west of St. Helena today. Read "Thirteen Women" by Tiffany Thayer. Myrna Loy played in the movie, the book is trash with some very clever lines.

Side note: ‘Trash with some clever lines” is actually quite kind from her.

Sat. Nov. 26: Chief took me on a tour of the engine room at 9:00, have been trying for weeks to get to it, seems to me diesel is far superior to steam. Started by compressed air — enormous engines at 115 rpm drive us thru the water. Saw the refrigerating plant, the fresh water distiller. Wish I could remember it all. Sewed sail instead of study, but went up on Monkey Island at noon to see the sun at 87° Altitude, probably the highest I'll ever see it. Could see it in the sextant all around the horizon (my Latitude was way off). Jim and I peered at the Weems Air Navigation book. More Morse considerably faster, but it still gets away from me. Phosphorescence on the water.
Helen and the sextant, figuring latitudes, 1937
Sun. Nov. 27: At noon Capt. said, "come on, Navigator" — to Monkey Island, and saw the sun to the north instead of the south, and even higher (88° 49' observed Altitude) than yesterday. Found the Lat. with no help whatever — no formula. Finished the second seam on the sail. Hiked on boat deck after dinner with J., T., S., it was still light at 7:30 p.m. Up at 3:00 a.m. to see the Southern Cross, cold today, wore a suede jacket, came out in a wool dress for dinner. More up and down movement than any time thus far. 

Mon. Nov. 29: Every page in the navigation book uses logarithms, and I never met them in my progress thru math. Spent the morning learning to do them. Found it not so difficult as I expected. Officers came out in blues today. Not warm enough to be on deck except in the lee of the boat deck. Took my letter writing around this p.m. found Shag working on the motorcycle.

Side note: A++ in classes. That old time latitude stuff ain’t for amateurs. And how convenient that when innocently on her way to pen her long overdue correspondence, she just happens upon Shag, hunched over his motorcycle, in coveralls, likely clutching a greasy wrench. And since she’s there she might as well be polite and ask what makes the bike go vroom. From that likely scenario we get very detailed and specific drawings like the one below (spark plugs indeed). I posted this one preemptively in the last blog, but here is where it is supposed to be:

Distributor illustration, presumably by Shad/g, M.S. Silverwillow, 1937
Tue. Nov. 30: Collected a few autographs this a.m. Continued my pursuit of logarithms. Production has sped up, I can sew canvas twice as fast as when I started. Hiked miles with J and S, and more miles on our own deck. Had my first attack of indigo. Called on Ruth, whose innards are miserable. Cold tonight in my green checked jacket.

Side note: I think indigo means indigestion, but if someone knows more, let me know. Ruth is a civilian passenger, who I’ll be introducing in the next post along with the others. So far it’s been all engineers and Captains. You’d almost forget there were seven civilians elsewhere on the boat.

The passenger and crew autographs she mentions collecting, M.S. Silverwillow, 1937
Wed. Dec. 1: First rough day. Alternate clouds and sun pushing into blue water, piling it into mountainous ridges where the wind whips off the top and flings it into shining rainbows of spray before plunging it in swirling foam aft. The nose plows under a wave, tosses up a white spray to crash over the fo'castle head and rip along the deck on a flying sheet of water. Sin [sine], cos [cosine], tan [tangent], coses [cosecant?], cot [cotangent] took up the morning. Shag and I walked in a gale, and then stood in the lee of a boat watching the elemental forces heaving, piling, crashing, surging away. It was glorious. It's a little moment of ocean I'll always remember. 

Thru. Dec. 2.: Problems in parallel sailing, and using traverse tables. Lone hobnob with Morton, had a tour of the wireless room and couldn't understand the ship's call letters when they came in, --., [GQVY]. The sea is much more calm, a few bumps and some lovely spray.

Side note: Who needs moving pictures when you can paint a scene like that? And then pepper it with trigonometry? And that walk in the gale, my goodness. You can feel the sparks. 

Fri. Dec. 3: 3:00 a.m. — woke with a start when the engines stopped. Looked thru the port to see hundreds of lights sparkling dead ahead. Land, after 3 weeks of ocean, went on deck and saw the jeweled crescent of the bay, under the Southern Cross.

Side note: End scene! Doesn’t that last bit sound familiar? She wrote something similar in the letter summarizing the trip and it’s up at the top of this post.

And in addition to being an engineer, she shoulda been a writer. But now she kinda is being one, here in the blog. And we have plenty more where that came from so stay tuned!

by Mary James

14. ON A BOAT! NOLA to ‘at Sea’, Nov 9-13, 1937

By now I thought we’d already be to South Africa, if not further. But here we have just shoved away from The Big Easy’s decadent docks. There are just so many good bits to share.

From a distance, we are now steaming steadily ahead, eastward ho, on the three-week salt-water-y trek to Cape Town, South Africa. Shall we peek in?

The Letter

(As a refresher, we look at the passage from the nice and concise after-the-trip letter and then the corresponding bits from the day to day journal.)

The passengers were left to themselves to get on as best they could. I chose to take part in the daily routine of the ship. During the 23 short days on the Atlantic I studied navigation with the Captain every morning, painted lifeboats with the apprentices, peered into the intricacies of the engine room, learned to send morse signals, sewed canvas with the quartermaster, made myself a sailors hammock and slept on deck under the southern stars. 

End Scene!

Kinda like a movie trailer, right? Just giving the highlights. But then the lights go down, and we watch it all unfold, one morse signal at a time.

The Journal

Lights, camera, action! 

[Present location:] 

Lat. 26" 57' N 
Long. 87° 52" N 

Wed. Nov. 10:  

8:30 — Breakfast — prunes.  

Wander over to watch the apprentices work and get a job setting grommets in a piece of canvas that's to enclose the Captain's deck.

Side note: She did wait until after prunes to find the engineers and land a job, but this was her first morning at sea, so she certainly didn’t waste time.

The apprentices are the ‘clean, intelligent looking youths from Canada’ from the last post, mind you. We will get to know (at least one of) them plenty. 

After lunch the Captain tells me he has discussed with the Mate my studying navigation — decided they'd experiment and see if an inexperienced person of normal intelligence can really learn how to steer a course in five months.

Side note: Normal intelligence. Pfft. Her two degrees from Columbia U would beg to differ! But maybe five months is a short amount to learn to navigate a freight boat? So if she could do it she was not just of normal intelligence, but extra?

Sadly, this was probably the only way she could learn ship navigation. Women weren’t navigating boats in 1937 (and barely even today). I looked this up, and a few women were ‘allowed’ to navigate when they got stuck at sea because the Captain became incapacitated or dead. And a few women disguised themselves as men and got to navigate… until they got found out. You may read more about it here.

But Helen got to learn while dressed as she pleased and while all the men on board were at full capacity. Good on you, men of the Silverwillow!

She was clearly meant to maneuver ships, as you can see:

M.S. Silverwillow, 1937, with its Captain and with Helen Skinner, learning to navigate with a sextant (this must be the Captain she went dancing with in NOLA??). 
Listened to "One Man's Family" and the Chesterfield Program on the Capt.'s radio.

Side note: I love when she mentions movies, politics, radio. It puts a timestamp (era-stamp?) on things. One Man’s Family was a radio soap opera, that, like the soaps still do, ran forever (silly me didn’t know they had soap operas before TV!).

The ‘Chesterfield Program’ means ‘Chesterfield Time‘ radio variety show (named after their sponsor, Chesterfield cigarettes). And I’m listening now to Chesterfield Time, and I suggest you do too, as it is leg shaking, fast talking fun. Era-stamps are important.

And then note that she is listening to these programs ON THE CAPTAIN’S RADIO — I hadn’t caught that before. Nice mood music, too. Hm. 

Weather: wind force 4. 

Sun in a.m. It may just be the day, but there is almost no sensation of motion of the ship. The engines throb through your conscience, but unless you look at the water you can't be sure you're moving. 

Inspection of after deck with Capt., the ship's potatoes are kept in a huge bin. News: Ramsay McDonald is dead. Brazil set up a dictatorship on the Nazi pattern.

Side note: a lovely thing about random journal entries is how they jump from topic to topic so effortlessly. From throbbing engines, to potato storage, to Nazis.

You can almost hear the staticky Walter Cronkite crackly type voice, more static, and then ***ATTENTION: We interrupt this programming with breaking news out of Her Majesty’s England. We have just learned that the former Prime Minister, Ramsay McDonald, has died. I repeat…***

Maybe they wouldn’t break in for Ramsay? But you can still hear the voice, can’t you?

And on November 10, 1937, Brazil’s Getúlio Vargas did indeed make for himself a new constitution and cancelled elections. Not good.

The bath procedure: Bucket of hot water, placed in rack in tub, sponge off or dump it in the tub. For a rinse fill the tub with sea water.

Side note: like I mentioned, a no frills trip. 

Present location: 

Lat. 22" 22' N
Long. 85° 04" W

Thru. Nov. 10

10 a.m. at the Captain's desk — I am set to work learning definitions for my first lesson in navigation. Study until 11:30.

Side note: For what she’s gonna be learning, this eighth grade level short on nautical navigation was way too much for my brain.

At dinner lettuce cooked with a fried onion and tomato sauce, artichokes. 

Pacing the Capt.'s deck after dinner. Learned how the Dutch are displacing the English in South Africa, since all in govt jobs must be bilingual — Africans and English, and the English won't bother.

Capt. says I may follow the 'prentices — do what jobs I want, and he'll have them practice Morse code sending with me. 

Side note: How about the Dutch and English just leave it all well enough alone??

And now the promising young men from Canada have been ordered to teach her whatever she wants, whenever she wants. And she wants to know everything.

Nov. 11 Foster taught me 4 knots: bowline on a bite, the knot used for handcuffs, hangman's noose, crown. Capt.'s wife expecting a second child momentarily.

Side note: The ‘prentices get right to work helping her do what she wants. And again, a married captain! Hm.

Notes from journal on ‘Capacity of Tanks’ and ‘Anchors’, perhaps taught to her by ‘prentices
Present location: 

Lat. 20" 23' N
Long. 30° 11" W
Dist. 330 mi.
Av. Speed 13.95 mph 

Fri. Nov. 12: I begin my pursuit of navigation this a.m., The Capt. explains the ecliptic and in a flash it is mine permanently.

After lunch — on the Engineers deck, had a try at Foster's hammock. It was a delightful sensation, mentioned it to the Capt. and he said, "why don't you make one?'. Within 5 min. the canvas was cut and ready. Service!

7:30 p.m. — "Not to be opened until Fri. Nov. 12" — so the box of candy Kay and Ann gave me made its debut in the Capt.'s room tonight.

Side note: The ecliptic is a navigational thing I just read about but don’t understand (not ‘in a flash mine’), so see the link from the beginning of this sentence.

And also, enter… the hammock! She mentioned it in the letter snippet above and here it is, happening, on day four.

Lastly, she is back in the Captain’s room, eating candy. Hm.

Helen (right) hanging out on the M.S. Silverwillow. (Yes, the woman on the left seems to be missing an arm, but I think that is a photo illusion, as Helen describes all the passengers, and with her level of detail, that would have come up).
Present location: 

Lat. 18" 21' N 
Long. 74° 48" W
Dist. 330 mi.
Av. Speed 13.96 mph 

Sat. Nov. 13: Woke at 4:00 a.m. Up and had a look at the stars, they seem so much closer in these southern skies. Up again to see the sunrise and watch the boat come to life about 6 a.m. 

In a haze off to starboard lies the mountain that looked like a cloud bank, but is Jamaica. Started figuring GMT, and am painfully dumb at it. Navassa Is. to starboard this a.m. and shortly after the beautiful slopes of Haiti loom up to port. Low banks of cumulus clouds give the effect of a volcano from the highest peak. Foster undertakes to give me some help in navigation, until tea time working problems. 

4:15 — Worked on my hammock with one eye on the clouds. The last view of Haiti was a soft gray mist with purple shadows on the land as a peak shone thru here and there. This morning the water was sapphire, and the waves so smooth it seemed you could slide on the surface. At sunset: puffs of pink cloud all around the horizon, and the water almost motionless, a turquoise color with iridescent reflections.

End scene!

“This morning the water was sapphire, and the waves so smooth it seemed you could slide on the surface.” – Helen Skinner

And side note: if stars look close in a good way, I suspect her heart is full (she has her trifecta of machines, travel, and men). If the stars were close in a bad way, they’d feel claustrophobic, and that is gleaned nowhere in her writing.

I’m also sure she’s not dumb at GMT (Greenwich Mean Time). They are moving around the world, slowly, so the time is constantly changing. How, without Google, would anyone know the time!?

I am ending this one here, as I believe Haiti is the last bit of land she sees for about 20 days, and that seems a good place for an intermission.

Next up: latitudes, handwriting analysis, a tiny bit more land (oops), the backhouse trot, and engineer intrigue (not just the how of it, but some of the ‘who is this smart hot cute engineer’ of it?’). Stay tuned!!