Tag / 1937

by Mary James

17. Bobbing Towards Cape Town, December, 1937

We see land! But then we also must get to it… in the final miles of our first leg at sea, let’s quickly say hi to the civilian passengers and peruse some of the unbound parts of Helen’s journal like scribbles, clippings, diagrams, addresses, illustrations, instructions, and so very very many lists.

Here are some from this first leg:

Passenger Notes

After three weeks of travel, we cap off Helen’s evolving opinions of the civilian passengers, starting from one day in, and revisited twice more, the last being right around this point in time (whilst bobbing outside Cape Town). Most of them we’ve barely met, but now we can at least kinda picture the people she’s mostly ignoring as she bugs the crew.

Impressions Passengers:


Mrs. McGuire
* Nov 10 Widow from Portland, short white hair, typical joiner, chattery, flabby
* Nov 12 Whistling thru the graveyard, 73, social service for 30yr, diff adjusting to old age, motherly
* Dec Very kind. Keen sense of humor, understanding, amusing conversation

Miss. Mount
* Nov 10 Sweet little old lady, dainty, birdlike, speech a bit breathless as tho people wouldn't listen
* Nov 12 Pioneer stock
* Dec "I have a friend"

Mrs. Sparks
* Nov 10 Just slightly older than I, from LA, very thin, animation seems artificial, high pitched voice, plays ping-pong with Chief, interested in everything that goes on

Mrs. Dreyer
* Nov 10 Widow, grandchild 3yr, Polish, married at 16, little formal schooling, beautiful eyes, pretty curly gray hair, is keen, misses nothing, and the give and take of travel comes easily to her. I am lucky in my roommate. Speaks broken English but it is attractive in her, gives her some of her charm
* Nov 12 Nice taste in clothes and a nose for bargains

Mr. Cargill
* Nov 10 Tall, thin, fragile, silent, but there are living memories behind his eyes, and they still sparkle in quiet amusement. He fought in Boer war, is going back to Africa for the time since. Has been a ranger in Alberta but retired to travel. "Work and I fell out some years ago, and we've never made up"

Mrs. Cargill
* Nov 10 Prototype of a pioneer woman, has known hard work, back breaking toil - is sweet, serene, friendly

Mrs. Sigrist
* Nov 10 Stolid, widow, rises early, rd Shakespeare, walks deck 1hr after each meal, white hair, kind face
* Nov 12 Has traveled much, keen, fine sense of humor, widely read
* Dec Stubborn, dirty, rude, determined to have own way, does not know how to play, is mad if she does not win. Am in doubt about sense of humor. The engineers have dubbed her "Old Corrugated" and it fits her like a glove. Mrs. D. calls her Queen of Sheba all the time. She's a hag out of a Dickens novel. Would rather walk a mile than spend a nickel.

Side note: In Helen’s journal, these folks are sometimes co-stars but mostly extras. She does travel with a few other passengers by train to the Taj Mahal when there was a shore leave. I can’t remember which ones now so we’ll have to wait. It probably wasn’t Mrs. Sigrist though!

Each person has their own page so I suspect she planned to continue this analysis through the trip, but ‘something’ made her priorities shift.

Sadly, she didn’t write the descriptions for the engineers and officers, but she did get all of their autographs:

Is it just me or does the handwriting of the engineers (on the left) seem far more forward facing than the officers? And the officers more upright? Like a handwriting analysis person might glean into that the engineers are young and ambitious and the officers are buttoned up and confident? Or something?

Anyway, to round this part out, I sneak in another snarky quote from Helen about a man she met in NOLA before the boat left: “…a wet blanket, thinks he can tell stories, is interminable, deadly boring.” Quite a first impression!

Boat Notes

The ‘Silverwillow’ is owned by the Silver Line Ltd of London, Eng. and was built in the year 1930 by the firm of Joseph L. Thompson and Sons Ltd. at Sunderland county Durham. She is 450 ft. long and 61 ft wide, and is able to carry nearly 9000T of cargo. She is in every respect a modern twin screw motor vessel and is capable of a speed of 14 1/2 knots.

Side note: “She is in every respect a modern twin screw motor vessel...” – stamped and approved by Inspector Helen!

From Helen Skinner, pieces of letter or notes, typed Air Mail paper, 1937, pre-cut into those two sections by the time I got them

Cargo Notes

At this port we take in our supplies of oil fuel and there is quite a little work to do in this direction. In all we receive about 1500 tons of this oil which will be sufficient to take the ship about 3/4 of the way around the world. During the next day or so we see such cargo as goat skins from Madras, jute bags, pig iron and seeds from Calcutta, rubber, tapioca flour, coffee, kapok, tea and gum demar from Singapore and Java. Paraffin wax from the Borneo Oil fields and coconut products from the Philippines, such as copra meal, desiccated coconut and fiber.

Side note: “…quite a little work to do in this direction…” is both somehow proper but also “do you mind if I bug you for details while you work?”.

Weights, Speeds, Costs, and More Notes

We have so many lists. I’ll space them out some, but here are a few, with all the essential information that I’m sure every passenger gathers.

Costs of navigating a ship around the world, 1937

Found on some scraps of paper, like she was taking notes on the fly:

Twin screw diesel, 14 knots
Net 3.384 tons
Gross 6,373 tons
Dead Wt. 9,766 tons
Freight 8,500 tons 
Draft of ship 26' 5.8", 54.48 tons per in. immersion
Length 451' BP 465' overall 
Beam 61' 4


Total Cap all takes 4970T (inc double bottoms, deep tanks, side tanks, fore and after peaks), deep tanks: 25’6 deep, cap 1126T. Total Cap holds: grain 621,606 cu ft; bale 564,611 cu f

How many USAs can you fit in one Africa

Remember in the last post when Shag invited Helen on a road trip from Cape Town to Cairo? The sketch below, drawn on airmail paper, was folded into her journal. Perhaps it went along with their discussion? We shall never know.

Now, let’s see how land feels after 23 days at sea!

by Mary James

13. Come Sail Away, Come Sail Away With Meeeeeee! 🎵

Setting Sail

In The Helen Files, I mentioned that my uncle Bob had transcribed Helen’s travel journal from her 1937 trip around the world, with its eensie handwriting, and that it came out to 70 typed pages. When a printed version made its way to me, a smart-me would have scanned it and used a software to make it into editable typed text. But stupid-me got excited, underlined a bunch of it, circled some, and put stars and exclamation points all over.

When I went to scan it, the transcribing software got confused by my scribbling and made half of the text like *)H%%soiwue)(. But the other half was ok, and, through re-re-transcribing it, I got to live the tale again, and I noticed all sorts of new detail.

There are two main artifacts. The first is the journal, with all the daily detail and juicy bits, peppered with buried hints. That along with A LOT of particulars. And the other is a three page letter, summarizing it all beautifully. I shall section them in a juxtaposed way, in chronological order.

The Letter – Post-Trip 1938

To preface, when Helen was 34, she did a 360 degree world-loop, solo, on a freight boat, with nary a few civilian passengers (but at least one really nice crewman).

Here it is:

M.S. Silverwillow. Helen spent five months aboard, from 1937-38, going worldwide, dodging real and figurative fireworks

The letter is likely a carbon copy, and the same letter sent to multiple people. And it was written from Arlington, New Jersey, where her parents lived. By October 1938, her parents definitely would have known all that is in the letter, as she returned several months’ prior. As would her sister. So maybe she wrote this to friends and less immediate family.

See:

Post trip letter from Helen, likely a carbon copy sent to multiple people, Part I, 1938

Here she starts:

October 29, 1938 

The Motorvessel Silverwillow is heading north from Panama on her way to New Orleans again. She has been around the world since I left her last March at San Francisco, and it's nearly a year since I sailed for Cape Town and points east. It is high time I attended to some sadly neglected correspondence.

Side note: ‘Motorvessel’ must be the M.S. in the boat’s name: The M.S. Silverwillow. Google says this could mean Motor Ship and that is interchangeable with Motor Vessel. As for how she knows where the boat is located a year later after her trip, it is likely because she maintained relations with a, now former, crewman.

It was Nov. 9 when, loaded with lumber, mining machinery, asphalt, shingles, apples, canned salmon, Ford trucks (to mention a few items of cargo) and eight passengers, the freighter Silverwillow nosed out into the Mississippi and set her course for South Africa. 

Side note: November 9, 1937, to clarify. Right around when a certain World War was brewing.

My fellow travellers were a heterogeneous assortment: a retired rancher and his wife from Canada, who left us in Africa (he had fought in the Boer War, and was going back to see what it was all about)... a fluttery 70-year old spinster from Frisco... a neurotic woman of about my age who was dangling on the brink of divorce...three widows, two of them past 70 years of age, and the third, my roommate, was a dear, a good traveller, easy to live with. 

Side note: Heterogeneous for middle income civilian travelers from America with the means to travel for five months in 1937, yes. But this wasn’t a highball-up, pinky-out kind of trip. Though the Booze Cruise freight boat experience did seem quite opulent, this one was no frills. No costume parties or Gin Rickeys whilst perched on railings. The eight civilian passengers had buckets for showers, slop with the crew, and glorified cubby holes for rooms. We will learn all this…

It chipped years from my age to be the youngest in the crowd, and guess I was the 'enfant terrible’ of the voyage. Anyway I'm sure I had the best time and saw the most, even if I skipped a museum now and then. 

Side note: She absolutely had the best time.

End first scene!

The Journal – The Realtime Timeline

And over to the journal now, where we get to dive in and see what was really going on. She starts by meeting the boat. 

Present Location:  

Lat. 26" 57' N 
Long. 87° 52" N  

Mon, Nov 8 

At last — the Silverwillow. 

Captain said, "I'm glad to see some young blood getting on — it looks like an old ladies' home." A cheerful thrust for an introduction — went on board.

Side note: Cheeky captain! We learned from her last travel log that she quite enjoys a good flirt.

Wandering around the boat, C___ encounters the Captain, we all go up on his deck where he makes us at home, offers smokes and beverages. We talk for a couple of hours. He takes us back to town in his cab. Capt. asks if I want to go back to the boat or for a bit of a dance — to the Blue Room. He listens to my navigation aspirations, sounds hopeful about the possibilities. Back to the ship at 1:30 — roommate still up. The Capt. is a fine person — if only the trip may be as pleasant as the send off.

Side note: She drops off her things, and finds herself promptly on the Captain’s deck, smoking, drinking, and schmoozing, and I’m certain this is exactly where she wanted to be, as it’s the Captain who needs to make her navigation aspirations real. The place where she goes to boogie with the Captain (until 1:30am!) was NOLA’s swanky new club, The Blue Room, which would see the likes of Frank and Louis and Ella in its day.

Tue. Nov 9: 

5:30 a.m. wake when the loaders start shouting and the winches begin to creek putting aboard objects of 10,000 lb. At 8:00 and 8:30 jangling of a bell: warning and breakfast. 

Boiled potatoes are depressing in the morning even if someone else is eating them. Good toast and eggs. Stewards and cooks Chinese — food British. 

9:00 a.m. — I take a taxi to town, buy stationery, gum, some golf clubs at a bargain. 

Side note: She goes to town to get necessities for her trip at sea… like golf clubs. Hm. Also, she only had four hours of sleep due to all the dancing. And while I’m a big fan of the potato and don’t like it disparaged, this is golden:

“Boiled potatoes are depressing in the morning even if someone else is eating them.” – Helen Skinner

To the boat. Mr. Sparks introduces the apprentices and things look up. There are four, three of them and a Junior Engineer are clean, intelligent looking youths from Canada. 

Side note: This is key, as one of these youths is a 23 year old Mr. Royal E. Shadbolt of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. And when you see what he looks like, you’ll understand why she said ‘things are looking up’. But you’ll have to wait until South Africa for that. Also, it’s too cute that she is already meddling again with the crew rather than lounging with the passengers. 

At 5:45 we cast off, the wharf recedes, we are turning in a wide arc and heading down the river. 

It has actually happened — I am starting around the world.

I feel excited and nervous for her, even though I know what all transpired.

That is the end of the pre-boat preparations! We are sailing!!