"If an invalid, the voyager will, of course, prefer a sailing ship to a steamer, the latter mode of travelling being objectionable on account of the heat, dirt, smell, and vibration inseparable from steam sailing." The man that wrote this, among some other advice for people intending to emigrate from the Old Land to the New, is still with us, and his pen illumines the correspondence columns of the "Auckland Star" from time to time. The fact that he is still with us, hale and hearty, will serve as a reminder of the wonderful strides sea travel has made since 1881, the year in which the invalid would "of course" choose sail in preference to steam. Mr. J. Liddell Kelly was the author of the hint to intending travellers, and I have taken it from a most interesting diary which he kept of the voyage he made from Glasgow to Wellington in the Algoa Bay, a vessel of 1130 tons, commanded by Captain Emmett, which sailed on April 29, and arrived in Wellington on August 12, 1881, a passage of 105 days. Mr. Kelly's diary speaks of the "courage it required to make a married man with a family of five sell out and sail 12,000 miles to the other side of the world." In his case it was ill-health that caused him to pull up his tent-pegs, and looking at him to-day one must admit that New Zealand has some reason to plume herself on being a healthy country.

Although a fine big ship the Algoa Bay was not fitted up for carrying passengers—so they found out afterwards—and the Kellys were housed in a sailroom in the after part of the ship. "A place of about 8ft square, with two beds, to serve as kitchen, bedroom, dining-room, and sitting-room for seven souls seems rather contracted," observes the diarist. He goes on to remark that in fine weather it was all right, but in heavy weather they "might just as well have been in an open boat."

In those days travellers provided their own table gear, and Mr. Kelly recommends delf rather than tin, "which gives one," he observes, "a distaste for the food." And the food seems to have been sufficiently distasteful in itself, for the diary records that they could not eat the ship biscuit owing to its "flinty hardness," and the salt beef and pork were "villainously bad." The preserved potatoes were so badly cooked as to be "revolting to the palate." Most of the meat and potatoes went to the sailors, who complained of short commons, and welcomed the stuff. The food that could be eaten was 4lb of oatmeal, 4lb of preserved beef, 2lb of rice, 6lb of pease, and 8lb of flour per week, for a family of seven! The ration worked out at about five ounces of solid food for each individual per day. To add to their hardships the fresh water ran short, and at one time the Kellys had one pint served daily to the seven of them for drinking and washing.

Mr. Kelly was ever a poet, and of this trying period his Muse sang, in a poem called "The Song of the Ship":—

"Rice and porridge and soup,
Molasses and raisins and rice;
Such nasty porridge and vile pea soup,
One's palate need not be nice.
Salt beef and salter pork,
Salt pork and salter beef,
Till we sadly wish we were sent to 'quod'
To get the fare of a thief!"

Despite these disadvantages, the "sea air" must have been nourishing as well as curative, for Mr. Kelly records that, whereas he was a mere skeleton when he left Glasgow, he gained 16lb in weight during the voyage, and was asked by the first official that boarded the vessel in Wellington Harbour, "Are you the captain?"

Quite an Adventure.

It is amusing in 1924 to read Mr. Kelly's careful directions to intending passengers about taking a good supply of carbonate of soda and cream of tartar for cooking purposes, washing soap, some simple medical remedies, and other indispensables. What makes the diary more interesting is such a note as this: "I am assured that what I have here written of the diet on the Algoa Bay applies with more or greater force in every line of sailing ships or steamships."

Travelling in those days was quite an adventure, and the diary tells how the Kellys, "to keep their spirits up sang as they drove down Glasgow Road to the docks." One of the first incidents that will strike readers of this interestingpage 275 diary happened when the ship was passing through the narrow channel between Scotland and the North of Ireland. "We pass close to the rocky island of Innistrahull," says the diary, "and are boarded by some Irish fishermen, who are anxious to barter fish for grog or baccy." Unfortunately for them, the Algoa Bey was a teetotal ship.

In the Bay of Biscay they struck a storm which caused havoc among the Kelly belongings. Mr. Kelly lost his letters of introduction to people in Auckland, and his certificates of character. Talking about that sort of thing, he says there is no need in similar circumstances "to get the captain of the vessel to grant a line, as was said to have been done in the following terms to a domestic servant: 'This is to certify that Bridget Murphy had a very good character when she left Dunedin, but she lost it on the steamer."

The galley of the Algoa Bay seems to have been an odorous place, for Mr. Kelly says they could not at first pass without holding their noses, so offensive was the smell of the cooking of the "horrid messes of meat," but afterwards hunger asserted its sway, and they found the once-loathed galley "the sweetest spot in our dominions." The diary gives realistic details of fights among the members of the crew, who were a very mixed lot.

Sailors' Songs.

Mr. Kelly ran a small newspaper on board, "the Algoa Bay Gazette and Boundless Ocean Advertiser," issued once a week in manuscript, which contains interesting particulars of the daily life. Being himself a poet, it was natural that Mr. Kelly should be much struck by the sailors' "chanties" sung when doing any work in concert. Chanty, pronounced "shanty," is evidently from the French "chanter," "to sing." Several other French words are common at sea. For instance, in the Navy "matlow" is quite a common name for a bluejacket. It is, of course, the French word matelot, which means a sailor.

Chanties are never heard nowadays at sea, so it is interesting to read some of the rhymes Mr. Kelly collected on the passage. He says that the music was usually of the lowest order, seldom rising above a monotonous chant, in which, however, good time was kept. As a matter of fact, the whole idea of the chanty was to give the time, so that all hands could pull together. "The words, as a rule," writes Mr. Kelly, "do not rise above the merest doggerel, and the songs are so often interlarded with slang sea phrases as to make them almost unintelligible." As a fair sample of the songs sung when pumping—the "barky" developed a leak on the voyage—he gives "Sacramento," of which a verse runs:—

"Sacramento's the land for me—
Doodah, Doodah!
Sacramento's the land for me—
Doodah, Doodah, Day!
Chorus:
Blow, blow, blow,
For Californy, O;
There's plenty of gold In the land I'm told,
On the banks of the Sacramento!
There's where the boys are gay and free!
There's where the boys are gay and free!"

And so the song goes on, telling of the singer eventually coming back "with his pockets full of tin." The chanty usually sung when setting sails was the well-known "Whisky Johnny":—

"Whisky is the life of man,
Whisky, O! Johnny, O!"

And so on, whisky being responsible for numerous calamities in the history of the singer and his family.

Mr. Kelly confesses to being attracted by something in the chanties, although they were so crude. "I confess," he writes, "to experiencing an 'eerie' sensation when I awoke one morning about two o'clock, with a gale blowing, and heard above the howling of the blast half a score of strong-lunged sailors bawling out the well-known ditty beginning:—

"As Sankey and Moody sat up on a tree—

Sing Yo, Ho! Blow a man down!

As Sankey and Moody sat up on a tree—

Give Us some time to blow a man down!"

Long-Winded.

In these chanties one man usually took the air, while all the voices joined in the chorus, the effect produced being rather pleasing. The sound of the mate's "belay!" was the only thing that brought these chanties to a close. Mr. Kelly says the soloist would improvise as he went along, and some of them were of an interminable length. A favourite chanty was "Ranzo," which told of "Young Ranzo, who took a notion to sail the Western Ocean," and fell in with a wonderful captain, who gave him rum and brandy and taught him navigation. This chanty was an effective one. Each line ended with "Ranzo O!" and was sung twice.

Another fine old chanty quoted by Mr. Kelly was "Rio Grande," each verse ending with:—

"We're bound for the Rio Grande."

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A chanty called "Blow, Boys, Blow!" which ran into several verses, told this thrilling story:—

"A Yankee ship came down the river, What do you think they had for dinner? They had sharks' fins and monkey's liver," only each line was repeated, and between the repetitions, "Blow, boys, blow," was interpolated.

Mr. Kelly's diary brings back so vividly the life on board ship in the old days of sail that I should like to publish more of it, but must content myself with the extracts I have given above. Suffice it to say that the good ship Algoa Bay after 105 days arrived safely in Wellington, where Mr. Kelly and his family stayed less than a week, and then came on to Auckland by steamer. Mr. Kelly winds up his letters to the people at Home by telling them that he is about to start "in the office of the 'Auckland Star,' a popular daily paper." As I mentioned before, the "Star's" correspondence columns are still enlivened by Mr. Kelly's facile pen, and all who know him will wish him many days more in which to compare the difference between the wonders of modern travel and the old Algoa Bay days.