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!

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. 

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: 

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.

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:

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.

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!