The crew of the Joseph Conrad
The Australian National Maritime Museum has published a series of photos of Alan Villiers’ ship Joseph Conrad and it’s on Flickr.
Legendary writer, photographer and sailor Villiers bought the old square rigger, Georg Stage just as the training ship was about to be scrapped, renamed her the Joseph Conrad and set out from Ipswich on a circumnavigation in October 1934. The crew were mostly boys rather than men, as the photo above shows.
The ship crossed the Atlantic Ocean to New York City, then turned south to Rio de Janeiro, Cape Town, and across the Indian Ocean and through the East Indies.
After stopping at Sydney, New Zealand and Tahiti, Joseph Conrad rounded Cape Horn and returned to New York on 16 October 1936, having traveled a total of some 57,000 miles.
Villiers wrote three books about the trip: Cruise of the ‘Conrad’, Stormalong and Joey Goes to Sea.
For more on the Joseph Conrad, click here, and for more on Villiers click here.