“Up at 6 feeling a bit better for a very bad night & managed to eat some beef & an egg for breakfast which fortunately was not wasted. Wind NW in the morning & making a little headway but it soon changed to NE & now we are not making any progress. Watched the sun set which was very grand and then went to bed early.

During the night we were awakened by a most horrible noise which afterwards turned out to be the song ‘Whisky for my Johnny’. Imagine yourself in bed & 15 noisy fellows singing at the top of their voices whilst pulling on the ropes & you have the right thing, only it must be about 2.30am.”

The joys of sailing across the world in 1878 recorded in these extracts taken from A.Whelen’s travel diary