We have worked hard to secure permission to display Chapter 6 of Alan Villiers work 'The Set of The Sails'. In this chapter he describes vividly his time aboard the James Craig. A special thank you to the estate of the late Alan Villiers.

We begin now with Part I

The James Craig looked a thoroughbred, the poor old Bay a workhorse. The lines of the Craig's hull were extremely lovely. She sat gracefully and light even upon the waters of Johnson's Bay, with the hulk of the Daniel beside her and her sharp bows high out of the water where the coal had been discharged for'ard to get at a leak there. Her rigging was new, and lofty. The line of her sheer was unbroken, for she had neither a raised fo'c'sle head nor poop. Her iron hull was painted black with a gilt line of beading. A scroll-work ornament decorated her sweet bow.

"D'ye like the look of her, lad?" a bewhiskered old Scot working on a stage by her side addressed me, as our boat came alongise. "Ye should ha' seen her in the old days. She'd a wunnerful figurehead then. Aye, 'twas Steel of Greencok built her, away back in 'seventy-four. He built some lovely 'uns. But she's just a rigged-up hulk now. Ye shoud ha' known her in the 'seventies when she was a Glasga' West-coaster. Did ye ever hear tell on her figurehead, now? Did ye not?"

I said I was sorry I had not.

"'Twas a full-length figure of a Highland cieftain," said the whiskered one, " and wunnerful well carved. 'Twas the McLeod o' McLeod, in his full regalia, an' the tartan an' all was there, proper an' shipshape. The old man thought so on it that'twas kept covered up at sea, wi' a special sor of canvas cload f'r its protection, an' to keep the mcLeod man war'r'm. An' in ports 'twas only uncovered of a Sunday moor'rnin', sharp at eight bells. The old man'd lift his hat an' say a greetin' as a 'prentice boy took off the coverin'. 'Guid moornin', McLeod,' hei'd say, takin' his old hat off. I mind a time when I was in her in Newcastle in 'ninety-six when a de'il of a young 'prentice boy tied a whusky bottle to the spor'r'r-ran an' put a beard o' tarry oakum on t' face, an' a clay pipe on him an' all. 'Twas ajoke, he thought. But we all thought the old man'd gone mad, when he saw it. He was rafvin' ther an' cussin' in the Gaelic for a week. D'ye have the Gaelic, now, ye'sel'?"

I couldn't answer that because I had only a vague idea of his meaning.

"Do you speak Gaelic? hea means," whispered Tom Germein at the oars. "you know, Gaelic, like they speak in the highlands of Scotland and at the smoking concerts in the Caledonian Club."

I had to reply then that I regretted I did not. The port of registry on the Craig's counter was Hobart, not Glasgow. Gaelic, now? What had that strange tongue to do with the pretty barque, lying in Sydney Harbour? I had great difficulty in understanding the old man even when he thought he was speaking English.

The bewhiskered mariner noticed my bewilderment. "She's still a Scottie," he said, "though there's stars in yon Red Duster she's flyin' now an' she's been lyin' a coal hulk in Rabaul these dozen year'r'rs. Aye, laddie, once a Scot always a Scot, ships an' men. An' the Gaelic's guid aboar'rd here."

I realised why the figurehead was the Chief of the Clan McLeod when I read the name on the bell by the antique up-and-down windlass immediately abaft her low fo'c'sle head. "Clan McLeod," it read, "1874." The old name was still there thought she had been the James Craig since 1903. At that time - the middle of 1920 - the line of lovely little barques which (with a sprinkling of barquentines) flew the J. and J. Craig house-flag out of the port of Auckland, had been dispersed, and the James Craig had been rescued from service as a coal hulk in New Guinea, rerigged because of the shortage of shipping and the temporary harvest of good freights. When I joined her she belonged to a firm of Tasmanian jam merchants and shipping agents, who had financed her refit. The refit must have been skimped somewhere, for she had almost foundered on her first passage - from Newcastle with coal towards Hobart, in Tasmania - and she had run back in distress to Sydney, from off Gabo, with her forepeak full and many of her shrouds so slack as to be useless. They had been cut too long, or perhaps her lower masts might have settled a little. She was in the process of a second refit to put these defects right when I joined her, and the old wooden Norse barque Daniel, which had been an inter-Colonial trader since 1907, now cut down to a hulk, was alongside to store her coal while the hull was made seaworthy.

I swarmed aboard, throwing my new sea-bag (which I'd sewn myself) and bedding before me. I'd sold the big chest, which was really an encumbrance in a small ship. The Craig was a good hundred tons smaller than the Rothesay Bay, and she had no half-deck. I made my way along the deck to stow my gear in the forecastle, approaching that historic domicile with interest. In the Bay the cadets had never gone into the for'ard house. This was not actually forbidden, but it was not done. The "squareheads" and "dagoes" in there were left to themselves in their free time, as far as we were concerned, though we were all good friends on deck.

Continued

Reproduced with the kind permission of Laurence Pollinger Limited and the estate of the late Alan J Villiers.