During our recent Pacific Crossing we found a little treasure hidden in our bookshelf onboard Beaver, it turned out to be over triple the age of all of us.
It was given to me with a bunch of other books by some friends last year in Martinique and I didn’t really look much into it until now. What I discovered is that it was actually first published in 1921, so it’s a hundred years old! It is even signed and dated by who I guess was the first owner in 1924, a ‘Clara Miller’ if I interpret the handwriting correctly (??)
The book contains a collection of old famous sea stories as they were written in the captains log books such as ‘The Mutany of the Bounty’ and ‘Moby Dick’. It felt like a novelty to be reading these old stories while we were far out at sea ourself. You could really imagine the challenges and hardships they would have faced back then without all the modern help and equipment we have these days. You actually had to be a true seafarer.
I wonder how many hands it has gone through and who has been reading the same pages before me the past hundred years. Such a special book and thank you so much for handing it down to us, this is definitely one to keep.
Make sure you sign it too and when you finish sailing the sea, hand in on to someone else who is starting out. In the meantime it is a wonderful thing to have onboard.
That’s a great idea!