Monday, Jun. 05, 1933

Grain Race

In the middle 19th Century softwood clipper ships raced with light cargoes from Australia and China to Europe, riding high, running dry, sailed by full crews of crack sailors, by masters who drove their ships under full sail all the way.sb They carried tea and gold in a hurry. Last of the cargoes now carried in sail are Chilean nitrates and Australian wheat and wool. There is no hurry about getting cheap wheat from Australia to Britain. Sailing ships give free warehousing. On the long slow way the price of wheat may go up. Every winter since the War a fleet of Finnish, Swedish and German windjammers has set out for Britain from Australia, scupper-deep with Australian wheat. They call it the "grain race."

Last January Australians watched the first two of the old steel-hulled plugs sail off on the 15th race, reviving ghosts of the oldtime crack clippers, booming under sails like cumulus cloud banks. Until late April the others followed: 16 Finnish, two German, one Swedish, carrying a total of 900,000 bags of wheat. Some were so old that the sailors could not chip the hull for fear the chipping hammers would go clean through the plates. Built from 16 to 45 years ago, sailed on a capital representing scrap value, the ships were uninsured./- Their masters knew they could not drive them for fear of losing one of their two suits of old sails, losing all the voyage's small margin of profit. As compared to a clipper ship's one able seaman for every 100 register tons, they had one to every 1,000 register tons. Most of the crews are 17-year-old boys who want to serve in square-rigged sail, required by many governments to qualify for officers' papers in the merchant service. They are paid from $5 to $10 a month, the masters about $50 a month. Some of the apprentices pay for the privilege of signing up. They know that about one in 20 of them is lost over the side. Some ships have crews of 13, most less than 20, none more than 40.

None of this year's grain "racers" had a radio. Ten of them belonged to Captain Gustaf Erikson, a retired master mariner of Mariehamn, Finland. Though every ship had a 100 A-1 rating at Lloyd's, one or more might vanish, capsize or stagger into port without masts. Running far out of the steamer routes, few planned to show lights at night. Most would take four months, some five, a few would crowd to get in under three months.

Such was the four-masted barque Parma, setting out early last March. In 1931 the Australian writer-adventurer Alan Villiers with a syndicate, bought her, from a Hamburg break-up yard. A onetime German nitrate trader, she was about to become razor blades and sardine cans. A fellow-buyer was the man Villiers calls "the best sailor in the world": Finnish Captain Ruben de Cloux, 48, 35 years in sail, 18 years in the Cape Horn traffic. Captain de Cloux would like to be a sailor on the moon because the moon is smaller than the Earth to sail around. Outward bound for Australia after the 1929 grain race, he was sailing the barque Herzogin Cecilie when she rolled over on her beam ends. He managed to right her and sail on. In the 1932 race he sailed the Parma through Horn hurricanes, South Atlantic ice and North Atlantic calm into Falmouth Bay in the winning time of 103 days, beating 19 other skippers, nine of whom he had trained himself. About that voyage Alan Villiers wrote a book: Grain Race (currently published in the U. S. by Scribner's).

Last March Villiers sailed as second mate with Captain de Cloux on the Parma. two months behind the first of the fleet. Mate Villiers had served as seaman in two previous races. Members of the big crew of 32 were the Captain's daughter Marie Ann and one Elizabeth Jacobsen, 19, pretty, brawny daughter of a retired Brooklyn sea-captain. There were 14 other apprentices. On the voyage Villiers made a film with Miss Jacobsen (screen alias: Sonia Lind) cast as heroine. Captain de Cloux's chief rivals were the Herzogin Cecilie with which he had won the race five times and the 16-year-old Priwall, racing for the first time. He made Cape Horn in a fast 30 days. On the leg north he did not know that the Pamir had reached Land's End in the excellent time of 92 days. Into Falmouth Harbor last week staggered the Penang which had left Australia in late January. Its time was 122 days. Close behind it came the Parma, having finished the 15,000 mi. in the amazing time of 83 days, fair time even for a clipper. Said Villiers, "We had a good ship, a good captain--one of the best in the world--a good time and good weather." Last week the fleet admitted that the Parma had probably won the 1933 grain race, although the race is not over until the last ship is in. There is no prize.

sbFamed clippers: James Baines, Red Jacket, Lightning, Cutty Sark, Sovereign of the Seas. Best time from Liverpool to Australia: the Thermopylae's 63 days, 18 hours. Later and much slower were the iron & steel wool clippers, the still later four-masted barques competing with steam.

/-The highest insurance on wheat cargoes ($1.75 per $100 value in mid-October) is carried by ships out of Canada's new artificial Port of Churchill on Hudson Bay (TIME. Sept. 14, 1931). Last October the 5. S. Bright Fan, out of Churchill with 253,000 bu. of wheat, steered off her course in Hudson Strait, her compass swung untrue by the nearby north magnetic pole. She crashed into an iceberg and went down in three hours in 900 ft. of water. Canadians feared the Bright Fan's end would make Lloyd's drastically step up insurance rates on Churchill cargoes. But last week Canada's Department of the Interior announced a new agreement with Lloyd's, giving Churchill cargoes even better rates, extending the August-September insurance season from July 10 to Oct. 20.

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