“Up at 8.15. Been doing about 5 knots an hour till 10 when the breeze freshened. Nothing particular occurred today. They have been painting to make us look nice & smart. Cards in the evening & bed at 10pm” Extract from A.Whelen’s Australia travel journal aboard the Hesperides sailing from England to Melbourne in 1878 […]

“Up at 8.30. Another beautiful day & this morning they had every sail set; in all 26 & I should have liked to have seen her at a distance for she must have looked nice I am sure. The wind has fallen off again this morning & we are doing 5 knots an hour now. […]

“Plenty of rolling all night so had only very little sleep for a change. Early this morning we only had 8 sails up as it was blowing a stiff breeze & we were doing 10 knots an hour. It is the tallest sea today that we have had yet & we are continually shipping large […]

“Up at 8.30. You will no doubt have noticed how lazy we have been getting but there is really nothing for us to do if we do get up so we stop in bed till we are nearly pulled out. We are now in 43 15” & Long 95 11”E & still about 2,200 miles […]

“Up at 8.45 It is a splendid day but the rolling is something awful from the heavy swell on. The men have been busy all day cleaning the ship & making everything nice & the carpenter has been making a punt to paint the ships sides from. Nothing very fresh today except for fresh water. They […]

“Today is Daisy’s birthday so the cook provided us with a little better dinner. And we enjoyed ourselves as much as was possible with the rolling. Joey has been fishing all day but could not catch anything so has gone to bed very much disgusted. The wind has been changing all day but still continues […]

“7 – 10 knots an hour all day, but very wet. Played cards morning afternoon & evening. & went to bed early” This was the entry A.Whelen made in his journal on this date when sailing from England  to Australia in 1878 aboard the iron clipper ‘Hesperides’  

“Heard this morning that we had had a very bad night; they thought that once or twice that our house would cave in as one green wave went right over & fell on the other side with a crash. I heard nothing whatever of all this as I am a good sleeper, but the ladies […]

“At 7.30 this morning we were called by the cabin boy to see a ship which was close by but we did not believe him as he so seldom tells the truth but on looking myself I found it to be quite true – So I turned out sharp. They were so close we could […]

“Yesterday we did 278 miles in the 24 hours an average of 11 and a half knots an hour. Last week we only did 7 knots on average every day. Although only a little better I got up today as it is such dreadful slow work being shut up there for 36 hours at a […]