Annie and I have just been to a very interesting two-day symposium called In the Wake of the Beagle at the Australian National Maritime Museum in Sydney. From time to time we will bring you snippets about UK Government surveying voyages in the South Pacific by vessels such as the Fly, Rattlesnake, Erebus, Terror, and so on.
The first is of a saying by the world’s – so far – youngest non-stop round-the-world sailor, Australian Jessie Martin. It was told by Dr John Collee, scriptwriter of Master and Commander and Happy Feet, who spoke at the symposium, as representing the discomfort amounting to pain of all on board such cramped, stinking, filthy vessels.
Jessie said that, if at some stage during an enterprise one didn’t say “I really don’t want to be doing this”, it isn’t an adventure.
I think a lot of sailors nowadays can identify with that.
