Notes By the Way in a Sailor's LifeKnights, Arthur E.
History
Notes By the Way in a Sailor's Life
Knights, Arthur E.
Knights, Arthur E.; Sailors -- England -- Biography; Seafaring life
This "slave" business was then near its end in Brazil, and, probably
this vessel had been chased off the coast by a British war-vessel, as
every possible effort was being made by the British Government to
suppress the slave trade.
Mary Ann Gander.
On this voyage we had a Mr. and Mrs. Gander and their eight children.
Poor Mrs. Gander used to suffer terribly from seasickness, and was
totally unfitted to do anything but scold, whilst poor unfortunate
Gander used to promenade the deck with a child on each arm and a couple
of others tagging on to his coat-tails. He was a wonderfully
good-natured fellow, was Gander; otherwise I do believe he would have
jumped overboard, for whenever he came near to where Mrs. Gander was,
she used to call to him to go to the captain and tell him to put her on
shore immediately; she would not go any further in that ship,--no, that
she wouldn't. "Now, Mary Ann, what's the use your talking that way; you
know that we are a thousand miles from any land and the captain cannot
put you on shore." "Now, Gander, don't you talk to me. How dare you? You
just go to the captain at once. Oh! you catch me going to sea again. No,
that you won't. When I go home I'll go overland, if I have to walk every
step of the way." Poor Gander! Mary Ann and the children all survived
the trials of the voyage and arrived safe in Melbourne, where Gander was
very fortunate, and in three years made sufficient money to enable him
to retire, and as the English Mail Steamer Company, or the P. & O.
Company had put on a line from Ceylon to Australia in 1852, the Gander
family were enabled to go home by the overland route, as Mrs. Gander had
wished to go.
Hard Times.
In June, 1854, I left Melbourne on the barque "Junior," bound to Callao,
in Peru. We had a fine voyage, and on arrival, being free, I went to
Lima, the capital. I found this was a very interesting old city, with
beautiful surrounding country, which I enjoyed very much, and spent
nearly a month there. Then I had a week in Callao, which was a pretty
wild place. I used to sail around the bay, and in sailing near the shore
I could look down, at the bottom of the sea, on the houses of old
Callao, which was swallowed by an earthquake in the latter part of the
last century. And, strange to say, when the town disappeared an island
came up out in the bay. This island is very high and is called "San
Lorenzo," after a lone fisherman who had been out in his boat fishing on
the night when the earthquake took place, and in the morning poor old
Lorenzo found himself in a boat about a thousand feet up on a mountain
and no town in sight.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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