After five+ months of zigzagging the planet, Helen is back on U.S. soil.
A longshoreman's strike gave us one day instead of the five we'd expected in Los Angeles. I was taken on a mad dash across county to see everything at once: Hollywood, the Troc, the Brown Derby, Wilshire Boulevard, the University (U.C.L.A.), the oil derricks, the beaches.
Side note: Unthinkable that a person could mad dash anywhere in Los Angeles, especially to so many places in one day. That, and they first had to get to LA from the port in San Pedro or Long Beach, and then go back to the ship (about 25 miles each way and in 1938 cars didn’t go very fast).
Dots are all the places Helen visited in and around LA, in one day, in 1938, back when traffic wasn’t hell
Here’s a cool aerial view of UCLA in 1938 and look how tiny it was! Also look at the creepy oil derricks she likely saw. Their more recent iterations are no less creepy though, as oil derricks are creepy by nature.
Day-to-Day Journal
Sat. Mar 19: At 6:00 a.m. the anchors groaned up and we went inside the breakwater. I got up and pressed some clothes before the doctor and immigration officer came aboard. Everyone keyed up at being back to U.S.A.
At 8:30 we were piloted in to Long Beach. Ruth's husband, Mr. MaGuire's son, the Dunhams were waiting on the quay. There was a gardenia corsage for me with instructions to get in touch with Virginia Lyon.
Side note: To alert people that you would be arriving from across the sea in 1938, did you send a letter or telegram from your last stop (in this case Manila, some 20 days earlier) with a guesstimate of your arrival? Maybe the recipient could call some ship whereabouts number to find out if it was on course? Or maybe there was a ticker? The internet won’t give me a straight answer.
Had my bag packed to leave the ship when the word came around that on account of the strike we would stay only long enough to take oil, and would leave for San Francisco tonight. Gnashing of teeth! What to do?
Drove, can I begin to say where, places whose names had become very familiar during 5 months among Californians. Santa Monica, Wilshire Blvd., Sunset Blvd., Hollywood, Beverley Hills, Ventura Blvd, saw the Troc., Grauman's, The Brown Derby, Clara Bow's "It" Café, Westwood, some Africa-ish looking hills, an observatory. Lunched at a curb service place - chefs salad bowl and a tall glass of milk.
Side note: Perhaps the observatory she visited was the famous Griffith Park Observatory… the super-cool art deco dome, perched up in the Hollywood Hills, that had just opened three years prior?
The curb service she mentions was likely a drive-in restaurant.
Called George Bunyan and found him home. To a dentist to have my tooth cemented back on the plate. Away again to ... marvelous food: thick steak, real vegetable soup, stewed tomato, deep dish apple pie.
Side note: After 5.5 months away, I bet even the most worldly traveler would miss some food from home, if only for the familiarity. In 1938, you could not yet sneak off to a McDonald’s whilst traveling, and then pretend you didn’t.
George Bunyan was Betty Bunyan’s (Helen’s cousin / bestie) younger brother. As children, his family and hers lived side-by-side, first near Albany, and later, in Brooklyn. George was about 8-10 years younger than Helen and Betty so likely a pest.
Below is a picture of George in his Flatbush, Brooklyn backyard, circa 1914. The picture below that is of what looks like two grandmas flanking George, Betty (scowling), Helen (about 12 years old), Mary (my adorbs grandmother), and then below that it’s the same folk, but rearranged and minus one grandma.
George Bunyan, Flatbush, Brooklyn, New York, 1912ishAbove: Grandma, George, Betty, Helen, Mary, Grandma; Below: Betty, Grandma, Helen, Mary, George
Dash back to the ship for 6 p.m. sailing, to learn it would not leave before 10: Took Shag uptown to get a haircut, came back to the "Pussywilllow", chatted with Sam. Brot oranges on board, super colossal's for 25¢ a dozen ... the man had large, jumbo, mammoth, colossal, and super colossal sizes! Stayed with Shag until sailing at 1O. Mrs. MaGuire learned her 2nd son died in Feb. Helen D. found her oldest sister dying. Sam gave me some advice.
Side note: Helen noted earlier that Mrs. MaGuire was a widow from Portland who had three sons. And one of them was there waiting for her at the dock. How horrid.
Large, jumbo, mammoth, colossal, and super colossal are a very American range of sizes.
Sun. Mar. 20: At sea again, the 1st day, chill breeze, salt spray, California hills on our starboard side. Spent all off watch hours with Shag. Wrote 5 business letters and a long one to the family. Everyone dead as dodos, lolling around all day. Kept in the air as much as possible. Jim came over at 10:30. Anchored early in a.m. and rolled all the rest of the night. Had a toothache to help matters.
Side note: I wonder if the long letter home to family is the one I’ve been transcribing. That one doesn’t end on March 20th, but she could have added more later. Oh, I bet she was drafting a letter, like by hand. People used to do that. For college papers, too. Olden times.
[Present location:] Lat. 25° 53' N Long. 163° 05" E Dist. 354 mi. Av. Speed 15.01 mph
Mon. Mar 7: Filled with good intentions for work, it's bright cool, sunny. Said hello to Shag and stayed until after 10. Session with J. on time, hour angles, tec. Morse - I get progressively worse.
[Present location:] Lat. 27° 27' N Long. 168° 55" E Dist. 327 mi. Av. Speed 13.85 mph
Tue. Mar 8: J. woke me at 6. At 9:00 had a session on longitude with J. before I went topside. Capt. set me problems until lunch.
Warm enough for Sam and me to have a sun bath on top of #3 Hatch.
Walk with Sam after dinner, visited Shag, then read Sam's articles until 10:45. Lesser Sundas Maluccas. Feel as tho I begin to have some small idea about them.
Side note: For those unaware, like me, the Lesser Sundas Maluccas are part of the water they were bobbing upon, as they worked their way from Manila to Los Angeles.
This was the penultimate leg of her globe trot.
[Present location:] Lat. 29° 01' N Long. 174° 57" E Dist. 333 mi. Av. Speed 14.10 mph Wed.
Mar. 9: Spent two hours finding out where we were at 8:55 this morning. Capt. gave me the works - Lat., chron., D.R., H.A.T.S., polar dist., Co-Lat., and I fumbled thru, making a mistake in arithmetic on every line.
Side note: For those wanting to learn along with Helen:
Lat. = latitude – opposite of Long. For how to find it, see chron.
D.R. = dead reckoning – guesstimating the position of moving things (like ships) based on moving things of the past (like previous ships). Don’t quote me on any of that though. Here is a better way of putting it.
H.A.T.S = Highest Astronomical Tide(s) – guesstimating the highest of high tides in various weather conditions.
While first disseminating Helen’s adventures, I envisioned that maybe I, too, would learn how planes fly or that I would study celestial navigation, because how cool would that be. But plans were quickly squashed at the sight of so much math. So I learned very little, but did purchase a replica sextant in homage (below left).
The sextant that Helen is holding below looks bigger than mine, but mine says it’s a genuine replica that works and such. But with my studies on hold, the sextant is currently serving as a nicknack… one that acts as a perfect segue into a good brag about my Great Aunt Helen.
Cold and raw and rainy. Got out my green knit dress I've carried around the world and this time first time cold enough for it. Had only a few minutes to dress for dinner and had to put it on tho it smells musty. Went over for some Morse, but couldn't stand the smell of the dress so Jim, Shag and I paced the deck to air me out. Beautiful moon but frightfully blowy.
Side note: If ‘musty’ is worse than ‘men-at-sea-for-five-months’, then musty must be dealt with, even at risk of being blown into the Pacific.
There’s a chance that this was the musty dress
[Present location:] Lat. 30° 32' N Long. 179° 13" E Dist. 317 mi. Av. Speed 13.00 mph
Also Wed. March 9 - Got out the flannels and sweatshirt, for winter has come, and we are a heaving up and down over this wave and that wave. Shag and I watched our wake boil and burble.
Side note: No R.E.Is then for water-wicking, temperature-gauged, ultra performance gear. Back then they had to rough it in flannels… or snuggle in them, and maybe that’s what Helen and Shag were doing while watching the heaving, burbly sea ❤️.
2nd longitude - comes out at 180° 13" E'., which isn't possible - I would have problems like this just at the date line. Read. Had a chance to live 1 yesterday over, and did no better with it. Have an attention span of a very few minutes. Don't like to read indoors and too raw and windy outside. Nuts to knitting. Shag and I especially close today.
Side note: She sounds uncharacteristically annoyed until the last line. But that last line, like most lines relating Shag, is characteristically vague.
[Present location:] Lat. 30° 48' N Long. 173° 32" W Dist. 294 mi. Av. Speed 12.48 mph
Thru. Mar. 10 Worked another long. Got exactly the same as the bridge huzzahs! Warm enough for a little while after lunch for a sun bath on Hatch 3. Aired my suitcase. It's hard to keep things from getting musty, and since the canvas went up again yesterday, it's dark as a pocket in our room.
Side note: I wonder if she had just one suitcase for the five month trip. She’d mostly be on a freight boat, but did need items for formal situations at ports like dinners and dancing. Maybe she had suitcase like one of these from the era. And maybe a toiletries bag like that. A camera, film, a few books. A tiny journal with minuscule penmanship. See journal picture below, on the right topped by my old iPhone XR, which was a wee 3″ x 6″.
My late uncle Bob (Helen’s nephew), bless his heart, transcribed every word of her tiny-scripted daily goings-on from this trip — and her lists and measurements and charts and weights and prices and side observations — into his computer in the early 2000s. He did this all by typing while squinting at the tiny text, and using a magnifying glass here and there. He then printed it, 70 pages, and sent paper copies to the family, including me.
When I ultimately read it, I excitedly underlined and starred and circled things, and bracketed sections, and wrote in the margins. This made the software I used to scan and digitally transcribe the printed version, confused, and it made a lot of ###&&&()^s. I had to re-transcribe a lot of it. This is how we learn lessons.
And while we’re talking about Bob, the future heroic transcriber… in March of 1938, he was a dapper three year old in New Jersey. He will play a big part in Helen’s life many decades after this trip.
This is a year or so later, but that’s Bob and my mother, in 1939ish
Morse after 3 day rest and no better for the vacation. Gave Capt. a start when I went up at 9:30 p.m. and knocked just as Lady MacBeth was murdering sleep.
Oh, the bookkeeping joys of a master. Three kinds of insurance for every member of the European crew, health, old age pensions, ship wages and draws to be paid in every kind of currency. Debits and credits from London, from the agents.
Visit with Jim from 11 - 1. Wonder if my influence on him has been good or otherwise. Washed my hair at 3 p.m., can't get soap out, hair gummy and dandruffy.
Side note: I can’t figure out what the murdering sleep reference means in this context. Was Capt. having a restless sleep? Was he snoring? Reading Shakespeare?
[Present location:] Lat. 31° 01' N Long. 167° 11" W Dist. 327 mi. Av. Speed 13.87 mph
Fri. Mar. 11: Another double page of longitudes. Typed from lunch until tea time, making copy of Capt.'s ship adoption letters. Ruthie and I took a fast one from stem to stern - cold dismal day, tho the sea is very calm.
Side note: To close out, let’s look at some of Helen’s beloved lists and study notes and measurements and diagrams from said journal, all neat and tiny and precise.
Be sure to read all of this one, as it has some extra juicy parts. But they’re peppered about, so don’t skip.
Thur. Feb. 24: Talked to the new passenger — been mining engineering, new mining laws giving Gov't right to confiscate mines and equipment is scaring out foreign capital. Large gold mines, very large manganese and chromate (used in autos) mines, the former shipped to Japan.
Says Quezon asked for independence to keep his bread buttered on both sides, is now afraid his bluff will be called. As soon as U.S. moves out, Japan will move in.
Side note: The Philippines was (and is) a land of mineral richness, and grabbing hands near and far have wrestled for it. This new passenger, the mining engineer, could be one of them. She could maybe find out by mining him for information. Get it??
When you Google ‘Quezon’, a place pops up first, but in 1938, Helen and the mining engineer were discussing a person named Manuel L. Quezon, who was the first Filipino president of the commonwealth of the Philippines, and who was very popular. And because of him, there is also now a place.
And Japan did indeed ‘move in’ a few years later, as they did a lot of places in the region then, but certainly not without a fight.
Sailed about 4:30. Had no escort like the Army transport that went out at noon with a bomber circling. Took some pictures of the harbor, warships, submarines.
A U.S. sub came up asking who we were, were going (our 'not under command' signal was up).
Side note: I envision a Nessie like submarine scope slowly breaching the waters; its face slowly turning until it stops… and then zooms in on the M.S. Silverwillow, who is guilty of having a not under command light on. Wait though, how would an underwater vessel know if an abovewater vessels’s signal was up??
I don’t have the pictures she took, but the one below is from the same time and place.
Helen in the Philippines, 1938. I have very similar shoes
Sat. Feb. 26
Reduced speed last night to time arrival in Opon between boats, for there's only one wharf at the coconut oil refinery. Slid alongside before 8:00 a.m. Coconut oil hose into the deep tanks at once.
Serenaded before breakfast by native boys with ukuleles — who sat and played most of the day. "Milk from contented coconuts, I suppose". Uke's from Y 1 up.
Side note: Is the ‘milk from contented coconuts…’ lyric part of their serenade?? Or a saying of some sort? The Internet is not being helpful.
Shag and I went ashore between raindrops on a picture taking expedition. Opon is a small village (3 towns on the island — Mactan where the Magellan monument stands).
Bamboo houses, coconut trees very short, got an orange blossom (much sturdier and larger than U.S. ones) from a 7th day Adventist Mission. Pony carts, the train of small boys, "Beautiful Lady in Blue", "Maternity Center and puericulture".
The coconut refinery: take in 250T. copra daily, produces 170T. oil (storage tanks hold 340T.), 500 employees in 3 shifts year around. Buy whole nuts on % oil and water (by chemical tests). Climate here damp, 10% water, not millable. Kept under cover a month until lose 5% of water. Split nut, keep for month, crush twice, 2nd time to powder. Heated, oil pressed out in hydraulic press, refuse pressed into cakes, (removes extraneous matter & color) packed & shipped to Europe, cattle feed. For soap, oil mixed with 1% fuller's earth, 3% F.E. for white oil, shells for fuel.
Side note: Coconut Refinement 301 (it’s like graduate level).
After lunch Sam, Ruth and I hired us to the town wharf, took an outrigger catamaran with blue sails (25 ft. long, 10 ft. outriggers, sail with 2 booms). Sailed across the bay to Cebu in an hour. Stood on the outrigger and dangled a foot. Grand sail.
Side note: Dangling a foot off an outrigger catamaran whilst casually sailing off the Philippine’s in 1938 (at least the part before the war started) does sound grand.
To a club for some refreshment, shortly the Silverwillow arrived. First time I've seen her under way when I've not been on board.
Rain, but not enough to delay loading much. Copra arrives on truck in bags in slings, dumped into the hold, is removed in port by suction. The whole town smells of it. Breeds flys. Chief says they eat all the oil out of the winches.
Shag and I went walking, found a bollard to sit on and talked for hours. He proposed to me again this morning. Sign on a movie house, "Nothing Sacred" and good added shorts.
Side note: Proposed AGAIN?? She failed to mention the first time. All this news and her handwriting, in her personal journal, remains the same as everything else… all measured.
A robust paragraph about coconut refineries, followed by seven words about a marriage proposal, all the same type height, width, angle, and pen pressure. That and she mentions it calmly, right after a story about smelly winches.
The below isn’t the same text, but it shows the same consistency.
Alas though, we only have context as much as what’s in the journal, so nada about her feeeeelings about being proposed to AGAIN, so we must forge on… (but an element of romance and suspense makes for a Hollywood story, so thank you to Helen for keeping it coy).
Sun. Feb. 27: Walked ashore with Chief at 7 a.m. Very hot and glaring water and copra still loading. Lord Cochran, London, abaft us, has just been to Odessa under sealed orders. No pilot met the boat, "Mr. X" boarded when they landed, took on a cargo of guns, ammunition, planes, to Indo China, with each man receiving a bonus: Capt. $5000, Mate and Chief $4000, etc. thru each member on crew.
Side note: The USSR and China and Mr. X and guns and ammo and payouts?!?! The HMS Cochran (nee HMS Ambrose) was British. Just that year the boat went from being a passenger boat to a destroyer depot ship… one apparently up to shenanigans. Pirates??
Stopped at the race course — 8 a.m. to 6p.m. every Sunday — a dirt track in the stix, bamboo shelter for a grand stand, moth eaten looking ponies.
Bridge of signs — natives brot out from the walls, dug their graves were shot so their bodies toppled in. The Spanish were full of tricks like that. The cemetery next to the hospital (for convenience, I suppose).
The house on the hill started by an American, blatant and ugly, Y 30,000.
Side note: Each port stop in this story could be a case study in why colonialism is absolutely a beyond monstrous endeavor. Yet almost 100 years later it’s still in the dialog.
Back to the ship at 10:20, and Shag got what for not being on board at 10, tho we didn't sail until after 12 — passed Opon during lunch, tho I went out in time to see the Nordmark from Berlin drawing up for some coconut oil. She's a big freighter, fine looking ship. Last look at tropical islands with sundown for tonight we go thru straits, the last land before Pedro. Toward dinner time we ran into rain and fog... and we crawled thru the night.
Side note: Pedro is San Pedro, California, which will be their next (and last) stop!
Mon. Feb. 28: Hard rain and rough seas. Capt. on the bridge all night, sleeping today. Knit and read. Stopped rain except for showers, but the jack staff wavered up and down all day and into the night.
Jim had p.m. off, got some information about Lloyds Registry Pimsoll marks, capacity of various tanks, etc. Discovered a Wodehouse in the library and read some to Shag in the evening. During the hardest rain our canvas protector on passenger deck went up.
Side note: Ah ha! We have discovered the context to the notes and illustrations below. So it was Helen as student (that is her handwriting) and Jim as professor. But then she’s sheltering with Mr. Shag (the repeat proposer of marriage) later, during the hardest of rains.
Sam and I (he was a passenger we acquired in Java) stopped traffic in Cebu, and the citizenry turned out to stare, for he wore shorts and I had on slacks, and such peculiar creatures had not been seen before in those parts.
Side note: In 1938, women’s slacks were popular (and controversial) in a host of places near and far. Maybe they hadn’t made inroads yet in Cebu though… until now! Helen likely knew wearing them out and about in certain places, like the Philippines in 1938, would induce an eyes-out-on-stems effect, as she liked to say, and I think she liked it that way.
Below are some Helen-in-pants (and shorts) photos from the 1930s; the last one is from this voyage, and perhaps those are the slacks she wore out and about in Cebu.
Since we’re in Cebu, here’s a neat video filmed there in the 1930s that is worth a look see, with its cool old footage of the hustle bustle streets. My notes about it: hemp looks very nicely silky and blonde even in black and white; Cebu was the first European settlement in the region; the Philippines is named after King Phillip II (PHILIPpines), who was a king of Spain. Who knew??
“Sam and I … stopped traffic in Cebu, and the citizenry turned out to stare, for he wore shorts and I had on slacks, and such peculiar creatures had not been seen before in those parts.”
Day-to-Day Journal
Side note: In the day-to-day world, we’ve now left Cebu and are anchoring outside Manila.
Anchor outside the breakwater. Italian ship "Victoria", U.S. Army Transport waiting to go in. Our berth almost last one out. Passengers ashore at 10:30 on a Stevedore's launch.
To Am. Express, Kodak store, P.O. Met for lunch at "Astoria" on Escolta. Air conditioned, rare roast beef, green beans properly cooked, real strawberry sherbet.
Side note: The Italian Victoria (aka “The White Arrow”, “The Dove of the Orient”, “The Ship of Maharajahs”) was a posh ocean liner famous for its interiors (there are some pictures in that link and they’re regal indeed). Like the M.S. Silverwillow (the ship Helen was on), The Victoria was sadly destroyed during World War II.
Took a car (Y 3. per hour) to Yneko market, lost our minds over fiber matting, bags, etc.
Thru the poorest part of town, destroyed a few years ago by fire. People living in shanties of rusty tin.
Thru the walled city, then past the big hotels and clubs. Polo grounds to Rizal, another native village. Huts on stilts, has been known to rain 60 in. in one week. To an ancient church to see the bamboo. Return on Stevedores' launch at 5:00.
Shag and I to town at 8:00, sat in the Manila hotel and watched the world go by. At 9:00 taxi'd to Santa-Ana; the World's largest dance hall. One section roped off for women with escorts; the rest, the size of several city blocks, for Taxi-Dancing with natives. Some very lovely girls, all neatly dressed. First time I have danced with Shag.
Side note: I’ve just learned what Taxi Dancing is (men paying to dance with women) and why it’s called that (woman gracefully ‘taxi’ the men around the dance floor, with each song costing a fare).
The Santa Ana club must have tawdry stories to tell. But also some charming stories, perhaps like the first dance between a dashing young ship engineer / race-car driver and a fast-talking professor, pilot, and consummate flirt, after months of heavy innuendo (from both sides) throughout their courtship at sea.
Here is them:
Roy (Shag) and Helen Shadbolt, likely near Vancouver, Canada, in the 1940s
To Legaspi pier at 2:00 a.m., had delicious apple pie al la mode. Came back in our private launch (Y 1.30). En route back to the boat this p.m. it began to rain torrents, were drenched going up the gangway.
Went thru the Alhambra Cigar factory. Cigars and cigarettes — long ones with brown paper covers as well as white one and regular size. The cutting in lengths particularly interesting, so quick you can't see the cutting edge. Girls pack them in containers, tell the number by touch alone.
Side note: Sadly, the workers probably were ‘girls’, as they were often children. Here’s a picture from 1930.
Tue. Feb. 22:
Washington's birthday a holiday here, all "white" stores closed. Stood around on one foot and another waiting for someone to decide what flag to put up to summon a launch. Sooner or later the mate suggested a "J", finally a boat appears.
Side note: The Philippines was at the time an American colony, hence Washington. And how very colonial to celebrate the former president of the colonist nation, while in the colony, but then only let the colonizers partake.
Shag and female passengers to the Walled City. I bought a Panama hat, asked (Y 5), pd. (Y 4), ($2.) for a white straw summer hat! Bot snakeskin belt, sandals, bill folds, a kimono for Pop, and quite unintentionally, one for myself, a double black and white one. Spent some time prowling around. Back to the ship to go on 4 p.m. watch.
Side note: Shag and female passengers to the Walled City means that 23 year-old boat engineer Shag somehow got tasked with escorting six women — five of them in their senior years — on a field trip. We like Shag for this.
I cannot picture Helen’s father in a kimono. But then Helen tends to look serious in pictures and she is a goofball so who can tell.
Helen’s parents (my maternal great grandparents). Helen’s father is hard to picture in a kimono, huh?
Just before dinner my new wisdom tooth began aching in a big way — ate no dinner. Capt. asked me to go to town. I declined, thot I'd be no help to anybody. Tried numerous remedies, final relief with an aspirin — slept like the drugged.
Side note: We will let Helen sleep a bit before the next post, which I must say is quite exciting… like it features contraband, Mr. X, and a big ole question.
Shall I say we "browsed" through the Philippines, loading sugar, palm and coconut oil, copra and copra meal at several of the islands.
We saw the spot where Magellan was buried, or where what was left of him was buried after the cannibals finished with him...we thumbed rides on native outrigger sailboats, went fishing, went ashore in native villages...
Side note: Magellan died by poison arrow, in Lapulapu, Philippines in 1521, at the age of 41ish. I’ve just learned (or maybe relearned) that ‘The Magellan Expedition’ was indeed the first expedition to circumnavigate the globe, but Magellan himself did not complete the voyage, because of the arrow.
...the bamboo huts are raised high on stilts..that helps to keep out some of the “varmints", and then it rains so much they would be awash most of the time. Normally the space under the house provides shelter for the pigs and chickens. The floors of the hut are made of split bamboo, rounded side up, and they seem to sleep comfortably on woven bamboo mats spread on the floor. A bed is such a novelty...there isn't much furniture of any kind, but I located the inevitable Singer Sewing machine.
Side note: A whole paragraph about stilt houses is a lot for a three page letter about a five month trip. I bet the houses were (and are) striking for just about anyone used to seeing houses on the ground. They likely looked like this and the bamboo mats like this.
The Day-to-Day Journal
Lighters came from Victoria Refinery across the bay. Catamarans came swooping down on us from all directions. Unbelievably narrow craft of various sizes with sloop rig and great bamboo outriggers.
At 1:00pm the starboard forward life-boat went overside and sailed across to the village. We were met on shore by the population, followed about, a few spoke some English.
Perhaps 60 bamboo huts on stilts, pigs underneath, almost no furniture, occasional magazine pictures on the walls, a few potted plants, one sewing machine.
Some of the girls quite nicely dressed. The boys swam, Jim and I wandered up "Main Street". Passed the "Bay-Ang Barrio School", kept very neatly. Water buffalo sloshing about in the puddle in back of the town.
Side note: The link above shows a very different style of stilt house than the first one I shared. The quality would depend on who you were, but whomever, you’d be on stilts.
Sun. Feb. 20: Off for Manila soon after. Sam is going to do violence to Daisy in the cause of "I have a friend". Two people have a basic understanding for marriage.
Side note: Miss Daisy Mount is one of the civilian passengers about whom Helen said early into the trip: “Sweet little old lady, dainty, birdlike movements….”.
And then Daisy said to Helen, “I have a friend”. So maybe that was Daisy’s thing… to make friends; and now Sam is getting the treatment. A rugged sailor hitching what he thought would be an easy a ride on a freight boat for a few stops through Philippines, and a sweet dainty little old lady who wants to be his friend. I hope we hear more.
But before we move on to Manila, let’s look at Helen in the Philippines for second:
We’re back at sea for a bit before another stop in the Dutch East Indies. Time at sea means Ship School, i.e. Helen following around the engineers and captain and asking them a million questions. Some fruits of her efforts:
This doesn’t look like Helen’s handwriting so likely an engineer on the boat probably Shag
She also made her own diagrams, because if you can ink really straight lines, not to mention a perfectly round circle, who wouldn’t? Not to diminish, but there could also have been a ruler and compass involved, but still, A+ penmanship.
Definitely Helen’s handwriting and precision of detail, compass or no
The Day-to-Day Journal
Woke at 4 and had a look around — still unloading. Back to bed and vaguely aware of ship leaving port but too dead asleep to get out.
No interest in breakfast, slept until 9 — up and washed clothes, hair, read. Made no appearance in public until lunch on Capt.'s deck after inspecting Batik, heads, etc. collected by Mr. Leedom.
Side note: ‘Heads’ could mean many things, right? I cannot help but picture shrunken heads and Mr. Leedom, who seems to be hitching a ride between the Dutch East Indies and the Philippines, as a Indiana Jones type.
Left Shag before 9 — topside for a beer. Slept out in the warm balmy air. Didn't stir form 11 — 6, best I've done yet. James woke me to say the deck would be washed down in a moment.
Side note: If she slept until nine and left Shag before nine, would there not have been an overlap?? But maybe the second nine is P.M., since there is beer? She is so detailed in most aspects but so not with Shag, which is what I want to know about. And also now the heads.
MACASSAR Tue. Feb. 15: Shoal water and many islands this a.m. Was in the chart room getting an idea about the coast of the Celebes. At 1:30 we were turning around in the little harbor — came alongside very neatly.
Side note: Shoal water is water over a shoal (raised underwater sandbars that can make for shallows and stuck ships). Each shoal had to be charted (that link is a shoal chart from the opposite side of the world, but a shoal is a shoal). Remember that Helen is in Ship School so shoals would all be important.
I wormed my way into the chart room on a ship once (by bragging about my Great Aunt Helen and her freight boating), and in 2022 they still had paper maps, though were also using other more advanced technologies.
Ashore at 2:00, besieged by taxi men and by bicycle boys with seats in front. Funny looking contraptions, but quite amusing to ride in except it's impossible to walk without being pursued by dozens of them, getting in the way and ringing their bells.
Macassar is a shanty town: rows of open-front shops along 5 streets, an open square in front of Govt. buildings and hotels and not much else except shanty dwellings on stilts and a big Chinese graveyard.
The bicycle boys were much interested in where we came from, how much my watch cost, etc., and passed the word around. Came on again at 4:00, just after we were back on the boat, sailing delayed from 5:00 to 7:00, and at 7 Shag and I went ashore for 1 1/2 hour. Sailed at 9:30.
Side note: A fast-talking American woman, who is probably wearing pants, riding in a basket in the front of a bicycle, flanked by bell-ringing children, in the Dutch East Indies in 1938, on the brink of WWII, seems cinematic. Doesn’t it (hint)??
Also, there’d been Chinese settlements all over the region since the 15th Century and their graveyards were always at risk of pillaging and desecration, and one can learn more here.
[Present location:]
Lat. 2° 15' S; Long. 118° 44" E; Dist. 203 mi.; Av. Speed 14.16 mph We.
Feb. 16: Descended to the depths of the steward's storeroom and resurrected my knitting, it's high time something was done about it. Worked long and earnestly, accomplished about 1 1/4 in. Called on Shag at 9:00, 5:00, 7:30.
Side note: They are now back at sea and coordinates. But also three calls — one in the morning and two in the evening — to Mr. Shaaaag-y.
James took me on a personally conducted tour of the boat today: fore peak (and tank), fo'castle head — windlass for anchor, winch for derricks, mast house, bollards (for making fast ropes), fair leads (less friction in paying out rope), anchor chain locker, 6 deep tanks (4 in #3 hatch, fore peak, after peak), side houses (bottle room for CO2), amidships — weather deck, passenger deck, Capt.'s deck, bridge, monkey island, engineers accommodations — boat deck, main deck (strength deck) runs length of ship under weather deck, poop deck aft of hatch #4, docking bridge aft over steering house.
Side note: That is the most Helen-y paragraph ever. Remember, Helen wanted to study engineering at Columbia University when she started there in 1919, but could not (the first woman to graduate from Columbia with a degree in engineering was in 1942). But neener to them, because she learned about it anyway, and took a lot of notes doing so.
Thru. Feb 17: Tried to sleep out last night but such a gale blowing the hammock whipped up and down like an electric horse. I got up once and it turned over at once, spilling pillows, cover — gave up and went in. Wash day again — knit industriously, read a bit, didn't leave the passenger deck until 5:30 p.m. Boat deck with Shag after dinner. More knitting before I turned in. Crossed the equator for the 4th time last night.
Side note: The electric horse was meant for exercise. Calvin Coolidge had one and was mocked because of it. It’s a fun story, which also involves the Kellogg of cereal fame, who swore by the things, and who also had an electric camel. Since Helen studied and taught athletics, maybe she had tried riding an electric horse (or camel).
[Present location:] Lat. 8° 05' N; Long. 121° 04" E; Dist. 291 mi.; Av. Speed 12.12 mph
Fri. Feb. 18: Ship at half speed about midnight so there was little wind, a gorgeous clear moonlight night and delicious sleep in the hammock until 6 a.m. Read an hour, knit and hour before breakfast. Hour with Shag, knitting, and then topside to write letters. Cargo list up to date after lunch.
Side note: Gawd, to drift off in a self-made hammock, slightly swaying on ship deck, on a windless moonlit night. Also cinematic, no?? HINT.
The Dutch East Indies was (and now Indonesia is) made up of 17,000 islands, I’ve learned. The Dutch had been taking up space on them since 1600. Their time was almost up though, not that the local population would benefit, as they were next occupied and indentured by the Japanese. After World War II, an independent Indonesia was born, free of colonizers and occupiers.
In February 1938, while countries in every direction fortified their armies, Helen slipped into her boat deck hammock and cracked opened War and Peace.
Anchor at 5:30 a.m. — everything very damp. Wrote all a.m. Hot and muggy, no one went ashore — usual round of visits on boat deck. Started Tolstoy's "War and Peace".
Side note: What a book to be reading as war is percolating. I mentioned the Napoleonic Wars in the last post, since they were the reason the Dutch East Indies briefly had an English governor.
So Napoleon is the ‘War’ in War and Peace, but though I minored in (Russian) literature, I never read the book, and I don’t know what the ‘Peace’ is. My husband read it last year (I harbor both jealousy and pride for this feat) so I could ask him, but will instead suss that ‘Peace’ is the class of those mostly unaffected by (at least the combat and blood of) ‘War’.
Anyhow, Helen’s gonna be reading A LOT about the Napoleonic wars.
Semarang’s volcano purplish against a graying sky, at sunrise beautiful cloud masses with just the suggestion of light shining thru
It was decided we'd drive to the Borobudur, but the agent changed our minds. Said in the West monsoon it is liable to be very rough in the afternoon and we'd have to be prepared to go on to Sourabaya by train.
Sigrist frothed at the mouth, but wouldn't risk the expense, so we went in to Semarang on the Agent's launch. The driver took us up on the hills into the residential section, charming homes, grand view out over palm, banana, acacia, flamboyant trees to the ocean.
Side note: This frothy Sigrist, mad because of a monsoon, is a 72-year-old widow whom Helen liked at first, but now does not, and she’s probably only currently traveling with her because of limited options.
I’ve mentioned that we do not learn much about the other few civilian passengers on the freight boat (eight total I believe) because Helen is focused on the ship and its men. But she does give her impression of the passengers for the first few weeks of the trip. Here are Helen’s journal notes about Sigrist:
Nov. 10 - Stolid, but spry for her age, widow, rises very early, reading Shakespeare, walks on Engnrs. deck an hour after each meal. White hair, stooped, a strong, 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: The December note doesn’t even get a date. Sigrist is just a plain old pain by then. Moral: rudeness trumps your good qualities so don’t be a Karen.
Stop at a Batik factory — under a shed a man drawing designs on white cloth in pencil, freehand, two women squatting waxing the intricate patterns with a tiny brush. Bot 2 pieces of hand block work @ f2. each.
Read all afternoon. At 5 to listen to Shag's radio and again in the evening (it rained cats and dogs), best music in months.
I wanted to dance and Shag was inspired to draw a charcoal stage setting for it.
Side note: When I search about radios on boats in 1938, most of the hits are about War of the Worlds and how Orson Wells would scare the bejeezus out of people later that year.
But Helen and Shag would have been listening to offshore radio and I bet it sounded something like this, but all staticky. I don’t know if young men commonly learned to dance in 1938, but even if they did, I bet Helen was leading. She taught dance as a P.E. instructor, as it was part of physical education for women then. She also notes in her timeline that she attended dance seminars and conferences over the years. And dance doubled as a flirting mechanism and tripled as a way to judge men.
But back to the boat, the dance, Shag, and charcoal drawn-stage… ballroom dances were Helen’s favorite. Those tend to take up quite a bit of room, but I’m quite sure they made due, dramatically dipping in front of the chalky stage outline. Let’s remember how cute they were.
Thot I was back in Calcutta when I came along the starboard alleyway. Packed like sardines with sleeping figures — the stevedores stay on board here until the job is finished. They were sleeping on bamboo mats on the iron deck with rain pouring in on them.
Side note: We are back in the real world now, witnessing more of the ravages of colonialism.
Sat. Feb. 12: Capt. and the male passenger went ashore today, while the rest of us stayed aboard and I for one enjoyed just sitting on a beautiful green sea, reading, writing. Sat in Capt.'s new chair all a.m. The hammock was most comfortable in the p.m.
Jim had cut off a pair of white ducks that had worn out at the knees, I did a little hemming and there are now shorts.
Side note: White Ducks still are around. They were and sometimes still are very wide leg dungarees that sailors/navy men wear and imagining them as shorts is fun.
SOERABAJA - MALANG
Sun. Feb. 13: Pilot came on at 5:20 a.m. and we were alongside by 7:30.
On to Malang — 95 km. Distant volcanoes and mountains all around us — a resort town, Tretes, on the volcano on our right.
Here the rice fields are in every stage, much of it like seas of green grass, some of it headed and ripe.
Passed some carts carrying rice shocks. Teak trees blooming, creamy white plums. Miles of sugar cane, several sugar factories (work 8 mo. in the year). Kapok factories, and many coolies carrying big baskets of kapok pods.
Numerous Durian markets, the fruit tied in banana leaves, baskets of tapioca root and several tapioca factories. An unfamiliar plant growing like tapioca which the driver said was used for color for Batik.
Off the main road to look at two stone Buddha's and a Hindu monument. Saw ducus, pomelo, oranges, papaya growing, mango trees, first I've seen to recognize them since Burma — much smaller than African tree.
Side note: She keeps mentioning durians but does not mention the smell. All I know about durian is that they smell and are banned from Singapore markets (or were in 2015).
To a park in the heat of the day to feed the monkeys and strikes me as being too too ridiculous — were almost overwhelmed by a dozen girls with bananas and peanuts to sell who climbed all over the car and shouted for us to buy.
Into Malang, quite high and very new and modern, a beautiful town. Resort for people from the coast, soccer, hockey fields, tennis courts, race track.
To Palace Hotel — Dutch, tile scenes of Jaye around the dining room. Had my first ricetafel, a typical Dutch dish of the country: a soup plate of rice, followed by seventeen dishes (some places use 17 waiters), some go on a side plate but most go on the rice, then stirred up in it. Prawns, fried chicken, bamboo shoots, bean sprouts, onion, fish. All of it very hot, topped by a poached egg - delicious. For dessert avocado pear mashed with coffee extract poured over it. Must have some more one day. Coffee in the lounge — coffee extract, hot milk. During the drive back it poured a deluge — got quite wet.
Side note: The Palace Hotel is still around and looks very fancy.
In Soerabaja to a Batik shop, but found nothing I especially wanted. To a wood carving, silver, etc., store, bot nothing. Saw several things I'd like if I had money and a home. Return to ship at 5:30. Shag and I found a grassy bank in the moonlight on the canal. Saw strange boats with queer sails.
Side note: Helen is right that she doesn’t have a ‘home’ home, as she likely lives in teacher housing during the school year, and at various summer camps, where she also teaches P.E., during warm climes.
Her timeline doesn’t have an address for her between when she first goes to college 1919 and 1938 (that’s foreshadowing…) and she fully appears to have wanted it that way. She was scouting for jobs on this trip after all, which woulda meant a lot more temporary housing.
Helen would get a home soon though (I kept you in suspense after that foreshadowing!), one where she’d have a place for all her travel trinkets, and someone to admire them with.
Is that someone with her now ‘…in the moonlight on the canal’ on the grassy knoll? Read on to find out!
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.
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.
Singapore...magic name...it can be anything you want it to be. Will you have pineapple and rubber plantations and factories, a new modern airport whose administration building is second to none in the world....
Side note: The fancy Kallang Airport was born in 1937 and Amelia Earhart had swooped by there shortly after its debut. Her fateful flight was just a month or so later.
Remember who also flew planes? Helen. Purportedly, Helen and Amelia lived in the same dorm room (not at the same time) at Columbia University’s Teacher’s College, where Helen received her Bachelor’s (1920-24) and Master’s (1931) in Physical Education. Amelia lived in the room in 1919-20 and Helen in 1931, says my sleuthing.
Another coincidence is that they both taught at Purdue,in the same year (1936), and they used the same airfield, but apparently never met. I’m pretty sure Helen only taught one summer semester at Purdue, but still. Here are some snippets from a newspaper story about Helen: “First woman on the Purdue faculty to fly solo from Purdue field … Miss Skinner is one of the most popular pilots among the male flyers … Capt. L. I. Aretz, port operations manager, forecasts a bright future for her in aviation.”
And guess who also knew Aretz, Miss Amelia. There’s a whole movie about it.
I talk about the fun parallels in a previous post.
Since I don’t have any pictures from Helen’s time in Singapore, here is the newspaper clipping about her from Purdue in 1936.
And now we transition back to Singapore and February of 1938….
...American movies cantor in "Ali Baba Goes to Town', to be specific...the Don Cossack Russian Choir was there, too....good ice-cream (for the first time since New Orleans)...a wish for a fortune to spend on Chinese silks and linens, magnificent hand work at iniquitously low prices....tea at the Raffles Hotel, and swimming at the Singapore Club and dinner afterward at the home of friends.....
Side note: Ali Baba Goes to Town (that link is the trailer and I suggest a look see) is a 1937 musical comedy with Tony Martin, featuring lily white Arabian Sultans and, not surprisingly, blackface. Hollywood certainly did its best at exporting American-branded racism to theaters around the world.
Sadly, two people were killed in a flying carpet incident during the making of the film.
The Don Cossack Russian Choir were exiled Cossacks who started a choir in an interment camp in Turkey. They performed over 10,000 times. By 1938, they’d been at it for 15 years. Here’s more of their music and it’s quite lovely.
...and a strange night of "blackout" during British manoeuvres, when every light in the city was out, and all night long we watched the fingers of fifteen searchlights make patterns across the sky, pointing at squadrons of planes as they flew high overhead, trying to evade the anti-aircraft batteries. War seemed very near, and the demonstration was too realistic for comfort.
Side note: The British colonial government’s Air Raids and Bombardments Precautions Sub-committee in Singapore had started doing test air raid blackouts in 1936. In 1941, Singapore was indeed hit by the Japanese and eventually fell to their army in 1942.
Like the Dutch East Indies, the Japanese left when they surrendered, but unlike the Dutch, the British came back and stuck around Singapore for a few more decades. Singapore would become fully independent in 1965 after a few years as one with Malaysia.
The Day-to-Day Journal
Helen’s day to day journal from the same time period as the letter above adds context and quite of a Helen-style detail (costs, weights, conversions, measurements, timelines, routes, schedules, distances….). She has detail for everything EXCEPT the juicy stuff with Shag.
Here is most of it, with a sprinkle of commentary:
Thru. Feb. 3:
Woke at 3:00 am. when the anchor went out, lights of Singapore all around. Up at 6:30 harbor full of British battleships. Pilot came on just before 7 a.m.
White ships on green water against pink clouds in a gray sky.
Money changers, vendors of all kinds on deck before breakfast.
To Chinese and Buddhist temples, thru Malay villages, Singapore Swimming Club, airport (mud flats filled in, one of most beautiful airports in the world, very modernistic) saw a few planes, but none in the air.
To a pineapple canning factory (Sin Heng & Co.) still celebrating Chinese New Year, it was not in operation. Cut and slice, wash, add sugar, cook, can, label, ship. Very clean, white tile tables.
Goodyear Rubber Co., 2 young men from Akron, Ohio — showed us around. Rubber sheets weighed, sorted, graded, repacked, pressed (bound with steel straps) into space not to exceed 5 cu. Ft.
Side note: Later in life, Helen would be involved in an industry that relied on rubber, and would be back in this part of the world, but you have to read on to find out more.
Dropped me at the ship, lunched, Shag's watch changed. Beastly hot. Steak dinner for 50 ¢ (Sing.) at Café de Luxe (with the case of Javanese carbine, silver, batik in the window).
White ships on green water against pink clouds in a gray sky
Fri. Feb 4:
To botanical gardens, fed the monkeys. Past the Eng. & Chinese homes in the best residential section.
Into the grounds of the Chinese whose "Tiger Balm" has made him enormously wealthy. The most unique gardens - pools and gardens, pagodas and houses and people in miniature, exquisitely done.
Stop at a rubber plantation, saw the latex oozing and the process involved before it goes to the shippers.
Into Jahore over the quite new causeway. Saw Sultan's Palace (his Scotch wife divorced him 2 mo. ago.) At the Mosque to hear the Muezzin's call to prayer. Watched the parades of the police, the soldiers. No women worship in a Mosque. Took some movies which I shall probably never see.
Side note: Singapore: exquisite gardens, oozing latex…
The Tiger Balm guy’s was known as The Tiger Balm King. And his gardens are called the Tiger Balm Gardens. His name means tiger, hence the product name. His story is most definitely worth a look see.
Sultan Ibrahim of Johor (not the Hollywood Sultan), would soon head to Europe to help with his gout and also, since he happened to be in the region, meet with Hitler and Mussolini. He also got briefly detained on suspicion of being a spy.
Shag and I took a rickshaw ride, then sat on the jetty until midnight. At 2 a.m. the generators were shut down, a great silence came over the ship. The city lights went out. Blackout for war maneuvers, Plane roared thru the sky pursued by searchlights. Eight fingers of light making patterns on the black page of night. Signal lights flashed — I caught on in time to get ._._. (end of message). Wandered all over the ship from one vantage point to another until 5:30 a.m.
Side note: I want a picture of those two cuties on a rickshaw!! I just asked an AI thing to create one and it would not. It could have looked like this and how perfect for their ongoing meetcute.
Sat. Feb. 5:
Hot! Struggled up after 2 1/2 sleep, shave legs, get bathing bag from trunk which was behind the last box in the store room. Kept the gang waiting while I dressed.
Uptown with our driver to Adelphi Hotel, Mrs. Reed picked me up at 10:00 a.m. with her Dick (8) and David (4) and 2 girl children of a Methodist Missionary to the Singapore Swimming Club. A breeze, salt water just the right temp, felt marvelous. To the Reed home, no windows, open on all sides with shutters instead of glass. Closed only to keep out rain (rain 360 days a year), everything mildews, cloth, floors, cloisonne even. She lived 11 yr., he 16, in China. Both speak the language fluently, loved China. Three yrs. Dick has been twice around the world, at 8.
Side note: The Reeds might be with the YCWA or another athletic organization. I suspect Helen was job prospecting at some of these ports. She had not planned on getting distracted by a certain Mr. Shag.
Had a ma mee for lunch, a hybrid Chinese dish — noodles, chopped cooked egg, prawns, crab meat, nuts, raisins, soy sauce, very delicious. American cake, good coffee, Eskimo pie!, Pomolo, mangustein.
Side note: Very adventurous with food, that Helen. Some people in the family (me) are not. I envy that.
Heavy rain as we reached town, took me to Tang's on Middle Valley Road, one-price Chinese store, beautiful things, but I'd spent too much money. She dropped me in High St., found H.D. in the café with Chief who had rescued her when she'd almost fainted (touch of the sun, no doubt).
Back to the ship for 4 p.m. sailing, to find we'd sail at noon tomorrow. Our crew from Shanghai under the domination of the Bos'n, a petty racketeer (the Shanghai agent takes all the 1st mo. wages, the Bos'n $9 (Shanghai) a month, asst. Bos'n another tong. One group would not work for the other. Some wanted to go home, so in the end all went at 5 p.m., under police escort to jail.
Will be repatriated in a couple of days and sent back to Shanghai. Shag & I walked and talked until 11:30.
Side note: I cannot find anything on this corrupt Bos’n (ie Boatswain, ie guy in charge of boat things), but I did find this extra cool video of Singapore from 1938. It features just about everything she mentions above, except what the flip she talked about with Shag.
Sat. Sun. Feb 6:
A new crew, Cantonese from Singapore, came to inspect the boat early this a.m.
To the ship for noon sailing. Under way at 2:30, very narrow entrance to the wharf, rammed against the jetty as we were towed out, small dent in ship's side. In the harbor the bos'n let the boom down on a sailor, cut off the ends of two fingers, gashed his face, chest - a gory sight. Put him off in the pilot boat not a very auspicious start.
Side note: My goodness if that happened in front of me my journal would be filled with screams in all caps, but no, for Helen it’s another list: 2 missing fingers, 1 gashed face, 1 gory chest. I’m envious again, as I can’t even watch someone administer a shot on the television without getting woozy.
Visited Shag until 9. Early turned in, very poohed. Heavy rain every day in Singapore, showers 2-4 p.m. often. Keeps air fresh, grass green, but not very healthy, disturbs metabolism, women go flabby very young.
Side note: Remember that Helen has a Master’s in Physical Education so she was no dope when it came to women’s health and fitness. But is this ‘young women go flabby in rainy places’ sounds fishy. So is she right? Yes, but it’s not just women. Everyone gets an equal chance at going flabby quite young in rainy humid places, says Scientific American.
And there we shall end for now.
Next up: War and Peace (literally and figuratively). Stay tuned for that! (And also eventually, why Helen was back in these parts decades later, and how it involved rubber.)
Shag and I took a rickshaw ride, then sat on the jetty until midnight. At 2 a.m. the generators were shut down, a great silence came over the ship. The city lights went out. Blackout for war maneuvers, Plane roared thru the sky pursued by searchlights.
It was good to be clear of the dirt and the muddy Hooghly River (I thought Calcutta was a seaport, but like New Orleans, it is 150 miles from the Ocean) and to have blue water under our bows again.
Side note: This is her first time back at sea since January 7, when she first got to Cocanada, India (now Kakinada), and then spent shore leave touring to the Taj Mahal, among other things.
In Rangoon there was a rickshaw ride one evening I'll not forget...through Chinatown...it was like being a spectator in a play...then out of the lights and din and clamor of the bazaar to the quiet of the Royal Lakes.
Across the water lay the reflection of the flood-lit golden spire of the ShweDagon pagoda, and from over the hill came a soft dissonant jangle of temple bells. We were truly "out East".
Side note: Cinematic, no? I wonder who she was with on this ride?? You’ll have to read on to find out!
For the quiz later: Rangoon is now Yangon, and Burma now Myanmar.
And ‘Truly out East’ is even further east of what the British had deemed east.
In Rangoon there was a rickshaw ride one evening I’ll not forget…through Chinatown…it was like being a spectator in a play…then out of the lights and din and clamor of the bazaar to the quiet of the Royal Lakes.
The Day-to-Day Journal
Sun. Jan. 23: At 5 a.m. the anchor chains began grinding and three hours later we were out in the river. Anchored in less than an hour to wait for the tide. Up anchor at 12:30.
The rest of the a.m. with Shag, tho I did unpack first -- and oh the dirty clothes.
Visited topside as we sailed down the river in the afternoon -- same jupe mills, brickyards, bathers, hay boats with no freeboard, sail way up on top. Nothing close enough for a good picture.
Anchor again at 6:30 p.m. with only 14 ft. under our own draft of 23'.
Ate too many cashew nuts to be interested in dinner. With S. and J. until 9 and turned in at once.
Side note: Astute observers will remember she went to the market in Calcutta specifically to purchase these cashews.
[Present location:] Lat. 14° 48' N; Long. 89° 40" E; Dist. 111 mi.; Av. Speed 15.46 mph.
Mon. Jan. 24:
Clean blue sea water again — so good to see it! Writing in a.m. — so impossibly much to put down.
Shag ordered to change room today. Capt. very chipper after lunch. Saw the chart of the Hooghly River. Sounding all the time, continual dredging.
Shag, bearded Capt. in his den after dinner, may get a room alone. Chatted Morton.
Side note: Not to be gossipy, but a room alone… OOoo.
[Present location:] Lat. 15° 45' N; Long. 43° 54" E; Dist. 340 mi.; Av. Speed 14.54 mph
Wed. Jan. 26: Anchored at midnight off the pilot ship. Pilot came on at 6:00 a.m., started away at 7:00.
Slowly up the Rangoon River - no bathers, the whole country side looks cleaner than India.
Customs and immigration officials on at 11:30, we are anchored off Lewis St. jetty. Passengers ashore in silver launch at 3:00 p.m. to Marine Club (swankest in East) for information. Ruth and I shopped, saw some exquisite Chinese things.
Shag came over at 5. It was terrifically hot I felt very washed up. Had tea.
Shag and I took a rickshaw ride (12 As. per hour) saw extensive markets, an enormous Chinatown - some strange sights.
Side note: The rickshaw ride was with Shag!! There are some pictures from the era here.
It was a weird feeling riding in the midst of it. Out to the Royal Lakes, where it was quiet and the night was very dark and beautiful. Got down and walked along the water's edge and listened to the temple bells and in the distance saw the gold spire of Shwe Dagon.
Burma -- there was a magic about it!
Back to town for tea and toast at the Strand. Return to the S. Willow in a sampan, in spite of wild tales we've heard of treacherous current, lives lost, women attacked and robbed, it was a quick safe journey.
Side note: S. Willow, for those new is the Silverwillow, the boat she is traveling on. A sampan is a small boat and she sounds snarky about it, like she expected a ride that would give her a story.
Thur. Jan. 27: Passengers ashore at 8 a.m. after early breakfast, in two cars for a drive around the city. Saw umbrella manufacture, went thru a rice mill, saw Shwe Dagon and Sule Pagodas, drove around the lake, stop at sacred fish tank (eels in slimy green water), Ko Dad Gui Pagoda. It is a large city, very clean -- no castes as in India.
Got the curse — feeling very blah. P.m. in bed, but hot, interruptions, I got no sleep. Couldn't go ashore, Shag and I had a peaceful evening in the hammock watching the swift moving reflections from shore lights in the strong current of the Rangoon River.
The clamor of the rice loading games seemed an overtone far away. Acres of clothes hung on lines at the laundry, very colorful, most startling. When the tide turned every boat spun around like a top, never saw such a violent surge, faster than turning with a tug.
Fri. Jan. 28: Took pictures of harbor craft - very glad didn’t go ashore. It was very hot, still feeling punk. Away at 2:00, past teak saw mills where the elephants work when they work.
Ship vibrating badly, we're drawing 26' and there are only a couple of feet under that. In hammock on port side, gale of wind, finally went in to bed - no sleep. Evening with Jim, who began asking questions.
Side note: QUESTIONS! I suspect the questions are about Shag and the amount of time the two of them spend together, for instance in ‘the hammock watching the swift moving reflections from shore lights in the strong current of the Rangoon River…’ and other things together.
Also, this link I believe shows the sacred fish tank, though it doesn’t look much like a tank.
I don’t have the pictures she took, but here’s a picture of the boat, The Silverwillow, she was on whilst writing this
[Present location] Lat. 11° 57' N; Long. 96° 53" E; Dist. 277 mi.; Av. Speed 14.81 mph
Sat. Jan. 29: Very hot and sticky, did a little washing and was ready for a bath. Letters and reading. P.m. off for Jim. Wrote at his table while he studied. Boat drill 4:00 p.m. Showed Capt. my Indian purchases. With Shag until 9:45, much later than I intended, slept out, warmest night we've had.
[Present location:] Lat. 5° 38' N; Long. 99° 36" E; Dist. 362 mi.; Av. Speed 15.08 mph
Sun. Jan. 30: Cooler toward morning. Up at 6:00 when the Chinese started washing decks. Writing letters, slow job. Jim cleaning deep tanks this p.m. Aft With S. later.
Side note: Things are heating up with Shag it seems as they head to sea once again. The next stop is the Dutch East Indies, which would soon-ish be Indonesia. The Dutch, like the English, often used a direction based naming scheme for lands. These were usually relative to the homeland, which can make total sense in a country or town or street or anything with boundary, but not in a big round world.
Flying Under the Radar 
