by Derek Wilson
On the second day out the voyage came close to a tragic, premature end. Sunbeam was crossing the unpredictable Bay of Biscay and making ten knots under canvas before a northeasterly. The Brasseys were hugely enjoying their new adventure:
. . . the sea came popping in and out at the most unexpected places; much to the delight of the children, who, with bare feet and legs, and armed with mops and sponges, waged mimic war against the intruder and each other, singing and dancing to their heart’s content . . . After our five o’clock dinner . . . we were all sitting or standing about the stern of the vessel, admiring the magnificent dark blue billows following us, with their curling white crests, mountains high . . . Tom was looking at the stern compass with Allnutt [their thirteen-year-old son). Mr Bingham and Mr Freer were smoking, half-way between the quarter-deck and the after companion, where Captain Brown, Dr Potter, Muriel, and I, were standing. Captain Lecky [Brown and Lecky were naval friends of Brassey’s], seated on a large coil of rope, placed on the box of the rudder, was spinning Mabelle a yarn. A new hand was steering, and just at the moment when an unusually big wave overtook us, he unfortunately allowed the vessel to broach-to a little. In a second the sea came pouring over the stern above Allnutt’s head. The boy was nearly washed overboard, but he managed to catch hold of the rail, and, with great presence of mind stuck his knees into the bulwarks . . . The coil of rope, on which Captain Lecky and Mabelle were seated, was completely floated by the sea. Providentially, however, he had taken a double turn round his wrist with a reefing point, and throwing his other arm round Mabelle, held on like grim death; otherwise nothing could have saved them. She was perfectly self-possessed, and only said quietly, ‘Hold on, Captain Lecky, hold on!’ . . . Captain Lecky, being accustomed to very large ships, had not in the least realised how near we were to the water in our little vessel, and was proportionately taken by surprise. All the rest of the party were drenched, with the exception of Muriel, whom Captain Brown held high above the water in his arms, and who lost no time in remarking, in the midst of the general confusion, ‘I’m not at all wet, I’m not’. Happily, the children don’t know what fear is. The maids, however, were very frightened, as some of the sea had got down into the nursery, and the skylights had to be screwed down. Our studding-sail boom, too, broke with a loud crack when the ship broached-to and the jaws of the foreboom gave way. Soon after this adventure we all went to bed . . .’9
Having learned a much-needed lesson in respect for the sea.
Sunbeam entered the tropics. Annie suffered from sea sickness whenever the weather was rough and from mild heat exhaustion when the air was still. She never, of course, divested herself of her enveloping garments even when the temperature rose into the nineties Fahrenheit; the Victorians abhorred direct sunshine on the skin. Yet, the moment the schooner dropped anchor, she was ready for a shore excursion. She scrambled up the side of a volcano in Tenerife, went deer hunting in Patagonia and tramped into the Brazilian rain forest. Her descriptions are colourful and detailed – at times almost too much so. Everything was ‘interesting’, whether flora, fauna or human behaviour and was noted down in the journal with emotionless, clinical detachment:
We have all been so much interested in the advertisements we read in the daily papers of slaves to be sold or hired, that arrangements were made with a Brazilian gentleman for some of our party to have an opportunity of seeing the way in which these transactions are carried on.
Because slave dealing was illegal for British subjects, Tom Brassey and his companions had to pose as American plantation owners in order to be allowed in the sale room:
They were taken to a small shop in the city, and, after some delay, were conducted to a room upstairs, where they waited a quarter of an hour. Twenty-two men and eleven women and children were then brought in for inspection. They declared themselves suitable for a variety of occupations, indoor and out, and all appeared to look anxiously at their possible purchaser, with a view to ascertain what they had to hope for in the future. One couple, in particular, a brother and sister, about fourteen and fifteen years old respectively, were most anxious not to be separated, but to be sold together; and the tiny children seemed quite frightened at being spoken to or touched by the white men. Eight men and five women having been specially selected as fit subjects for further consideration, the visit terminated.10
British contemporaries penetrating the ‘Dark Continent’ in the 1870s, such as Livingstone and Stanley, wrote angry, heartrending prose in denunciation of the traffic in human lives. The Brasseys observed the slave market in Rio, recorded what they saw – and went on to visit the botanical gardens.
Off the Plate estuary the voyagers came upon a trading barque in distress. The Monkshaven was out of Swansea bound for Valparaiso with smelting coal. Her cargo had ignited and for days a slow, smouldering fire had been raging in the hold, forcing the crew to batten down all hatches to deny oxygen to the inferno, and live on deck. The captain was reluctant to abandon ship but, by the time the Sunbeam appeared on the scene, the Monkshaven’s situation was hopeless and he allowed himself and his men to be taken aboard the schooner. For a week the fifteen crewmen of mixed nationality were the Brasseys’ guests. Then they were transferred to a homeward-bound mail-boat. Annie was rather apprehensive about taking the stranded mariners to her bosom: ‘an incursion of fifteen rough lawless spirits on board our little vessel would have been rather a serious matter’. However, her anxiety proved ill-founded, as the Monkshaven’s crew turned out to be ‘quiet, respectable men’.11
When the time came for the temporary guests to leave, Annie noted, they were very distressed, some even breaking into tears. Well might those rough seamen be reluctant to depart the yacht. Not only had they cause to be grateful to their deliverers, they had also enjoyed seven days of unprecedented luxury. The Brasseys kept a table which was little short of sumptuous. Fresh meat, fish, fruit and vegetables were brought aboard at every opportunity. The Sunbeam’s ‘cellar’ was well-stocked. (After a particularly exhausting day ashore at Tenerife Annie casually recorded that they went back aboard with only enough energy to gulp down a little ‘supper and champagne’ before falling into their beds.) And it was a black day, indeed, when they ran out of ice. As for the accommodation, that resembled, in miniature, the splendid houses in which the Brasseys normally resided. The principal cabins boasted ornate fireplaces (and more than once during the voyage an open fire set off a minor conflagration) and were decorated with all the fussiness of a normal Victorian middle or upper class home – tasselled velvet drapes, rosewood and mahogany furniture, fringed table cloths, and overmantels heavy with ornaments and photographs in silver frames (which presumably had to be stowed away whenever heavy seas threatened). Little wonder, then, that the Monkshaven men had little enthusiasm for transferring to an ordinary merchant vessel nor that they were envious of Arthur Turner, one of their number, who was hired as a member of Sunbeam’s crew.
Annie had prepared herself for the voyage by reading the works of Cook, Dampier, Darwin and other travellers and had noted some of the sights she was particularly anxious to see. These included the fierce natives of Tierra del Fuego. Accordingly she had herself rowed ashore at Sandy Point, ‘the only civilised place in the Straits’, to observe three women recently ‘rescued’ by the local medical officer from some intercommunity war:
They appeared cheerful and happy, but we are told they are not likely to live long. After the free life and the exposure to which they have been accustomed, civilisation – in the shape of clothing and hot houses – almost always kills them. Their lungs become diseased, and they die miserably.12
The Sunbeam had a fine, clear passage of the Straits and was through in five days. Tom Brassey and the crew then took her round to Santiago while Annie went on a sightseeing tour of inland Chile. As her coach or railway carriage rattled through the landscape she noted in considerable detail the trees, shrubs and flowers to be seen from the window. Mrs Brassey was an expert gardener who knew he
r plants. On the cool Chilean uplands, as on tropical islands and temperate coasts, she could name most of the native flora. What she could not recognise she could usually discover by using her smattering of self-taught Spanish:
Just now the whole country wears a golden tint from the bloom of the espinosa, which seems to grow everywhere . . . The branches of this shrub are so completely covered with little yellow balls of flowers, which come before the leaves, and which have no separate stalk, but grow along the shiny, horny branches that they look as if they were made of gold . . . If I bore you by saying too much about the flowers, forgive me. I want to make you all realise, if possible, what a lovely flowery land Chili [sic] is.13
But if every Chilean prospect pleased the fastidious traveller it was also true that only man was vile. Annie Brassey complained bitterly of swindling hoteliers, importunate street salesmen and dishonest natives generally. The coming of the railways had led to the rapid development of commerce and tourism. Every major town had its resident European population, its exclusive clubs and at least one hotel of a tolerable standard. In Santiago the boom years had, apparently, already come and gone:
The Grand Hotel, which used to be considered the best in South America, is now shut up, the company who owned it having recently failed; so all the smaller hotels, none of which are very good, are crowded to overflowing. The Hotel Ingles is considered the best, though I cannot say much in its favour. The rooms are good, but the situation is noisy, being at the corner of two streets; the servants are attentive, but the cuisine and arrangements are bad.14
Such a distinguished traveller as Mrs Brassey was, of course, seldom at the mercy of the locals in South America or elsewhere. Her main points of call were European settlements where she was looked after by friends and business acquaintances of her husband, or British consuls, or by other expatriates to whom she had letters of introduction.
On 30 October the Sunbeam left Valparaiso for her long haul across the Pacific. At this point husband and wife quarrelled. Tom was determined to make the crossing entirely under sail. Annie, worried about losing time and, perhaps, not a hundred per cent convinced of her spouse’s navigating skills, thought they should at least make a start under steam power. She faced the prospect of several weeks at sea, suffering bouts of mal de mer, having to keep the children amused and deprived of the more refined comforts of civilised living. Not unnaturally, she wanted to reduce this phase of the journey as much as possible. Her arguments did not prevail. Sunbeam left port under canvas and carrying a minimum amount of coal.
Despite its romantic associations, the Brasseys decided to give Juan Fernandez a miss – ‘There is nothing particular to be seen . . . and the scenery of the island is not remarkable.’15 Tom set course north-westwards in search of the trade winds – and did not find them. After a week of wallowing in calms and sidling to catch light, sail-flapping breezes, Sunbeam had covered a mere seven hundred of the four thousand, three hundred miles that lay between Valparaiso and the next landfall. Faced with diminishing provisions and, probably, the ‘I told you so’ glances of his wife, Tom Brassey gave way and ordered the boilers stoked. Annie could not resist a self- satisfied comment in her journal: ‘The alacrity with which the order to stow sails and raise the funnel was obeyed – every one lending a hand – and the delight expressed on every countenance, must have assured him at least of the popularity of his decision.’16 A few days later the crew’s rations were found to be severely depleted and the matriarch of the Sunbeam once more confided to her journal her conviction that men are quite lost without female guidance:
Sailors are more like children than grown-up men, and require as much looking after. While there is water in the tanks, for instance, they will use it in the most extravagant manner, without thought for the morrow; and they are quite as reckless with their other stores.17
The voyagers sighted land after twenty-eight days and on 2 December went ashore in Tahiti. A few days previously Annie had had herself rowed over to a small island to meet the local people but Tom had been very anxious and insisted on her taking a posse of armed men with her (he did not accompany her himself). However, Tahiti was a French protectorate with a sizeable expatriate population and, therefore, both safe and respectable.
In fact, the Brasseys fell in love with Tahiti. It had just that mixture of ideal climate, colour, native charm and European civilisation to appeal to them. Even when they made a safari to the interior they found their sophisticated tastes well catered for. They passed the night at the tiny Hôtel de l’Isthme, run by two retired French sailors:
The dinner itself really deserved a detailed description, if only to show that one may make the tour of Tahiti without necessarily having to rough it in the matter of food. We had crayfish and salad as a preliminary, and next, an excellent soup followed by delicious little oysters, that cling to the boughs and roots of the guava and mangrove trees overhanging the sea. Then came a large fish, name unknown, the inevitable bouilli and cabbage, cotelettes aux pommes, biftek aux champignons, succeeded by crabs and other shellfish, including wurrali, a delicate-flavoured kind of lobster, an omelette aux abricots, and dessert of tropical fruits. We were also supplied with good wine, both red and white, and bottled beer.
Unfortunately, ‘bed’ did not reach the same standard as ‘board’:
The heat in the night was suffocating, and soon after twelve o’clock we both woke up, feeling half-stifled . . . In the moonlight I could see columns of nasty, brown cockroaches ascending the bedposts, crawling along the top of the curtains, dropping with a thud onto the bed, and then descending over the side to the ground. At last I could stand it no longer, and, opening the curtains cautiously, I seized my slippers, knocked half a dozen brown beasts out of each, wrapped myself in a poncho – previously well shaken – gathered my garments around me, surmounted a barricade I had constructed to keep the pigs and chickens out of our doorless room, and fled to the garden.18
Christmas and New Year were spent at Honolulu and on 4 January 1877 Sunbeam headed for Japan – and sailed into the worst weather of the voyage. Days of tall seas and shrieking winds threw the yacht around. One wave tore away the fore gig. Another snapped off the jib-boom. Several times Sunbeam bottomed out with a juddering thud which convinced the crew that she had struck rock. She lost the top of her foremast with the topgallant spars and yards. The crew, some of whom were weakened with influenza, coped expertly with the crises. Annie was seasick:
Nothing annoys me more than to find that, after having sailed tens and tens of thousands of miles, I cannot cure myself of sea-sickness . . . many are the days when nothing but the firmest determination not to think about it, but to find something to do, and to do it with all my might keeps me on my feet at all. Fewer, happily, are the days when struggling is of no avail, when I am utterly and hopelessly incapacitated . . . and when no effort of will can enable me to do what I most wish to accomplish.’19
Mrs Brassey was certainly a tough lady, as adventurous and emancipated as Victorian convention permitted. She was determined that her sex would deny her no experience throughout the voyage. She hitched up her skirt to tramp mountains, daringly divested herself of outer garments to swim from tropical beaches, had herself hauled to the masthead to admire the view and braved the fierceness of the elements although she knew she had no stomach for it. She was a woman of spirit and we should not be too hard on her if her cultural vision was blinkered by a Victorian detachment and an assumption of superiority.
Japan, where the Brasseys spent a month in enthralled sightseeing, was in the grip of winter. Snow and frost gave way to steady rain. But nothing dampened the visitors’ ardour for exploration. They made a frenzied tour of palaces, temples, ornamental gardens, castles and markets. Tom was even presented to the Mikado. And, of course, they had to buy souvenirs. It is surprising that there was any space left below decks for more curios. At every port of call hours had been spent bartering with the natives for basketwear, needlework, horse harness, jeweller
y and other examples of local crafts. Now they added to the collection toys, clothes, fans, embroidered silks and brocades, lacquerwork, vases – and birds. The quantity of livestock on board was by now prodigious:
I bought some fine bantams at Yokohama, and a whole cageful of rice-birds. They are the dearest little things, and spend most of the day bathing and twittering, occasionally getting all together into one nest, with their twenty-five heads peeping out . . . I hope I shall take them home alive, as they have borne the cold very well so far. We have also some mandarin ducks on board, and some gold and silver fish with two tails. Our sailors have over a hundred birds of their own . . . don’t know where they can keep them.20
This was obviously in the days before quarantine restrictions and health regulations governing the import of livestock.
If Japan was to Annie’s liking, China or, at least, Canton, the only city she visited, was not. Why, the people actually ate the flesh of cats and puppy dogs – ‘you could see the poor creatures hanging, skinned, in the butchers’ shops.’ As for Canton, itself, it was ‘a filthy city, full of a seething, dirty population, where smells and sights of the most disgusting descriptions meet you at every turn.’21
