WITH GOD AT SEA

New Zealand Listener, Volume 2, Issue 37, 8 March 1940, Page 33

WITH GOD AT SEA

ESCAPE TO THE SEA: THE ADVENTURES OF FRED REBELL. With Fourteen Illustrations. Introduction by Richard Hughes, John Murray Some men are born lucky, and some to be the children of God. Mr. Rebell is both. On the last day of 1931 he set off from Sydney to Los Angeles in an eighteen-foot open racing boat without any previous experience of sailing, and with no more knowledge of navigation than he had been able to pick up, in a ridiculously brief period, in the Sydney Public Library. His charts were two pencil copies of maps in an out-of-date atlas, his instruments a sextant made out of hoop-iron and. a hack-saw blade, two cheap watches functioning as a chronometer, and an alarm clock converted into a patent log. Boat and instruments cost £25, but he arrived, in the strength of the Lord, one year.and one week after he set out. Unbelievers will call it luck, but he himself calls it the hand of God. For this is not merely a story of seamanship! — one of the most extraordinary since Kupe’s. It is a spiritual pilgrimage as well. He left Australia partly because ‘he was tnerfiployed, partly because he owed money, partly because he had been unlucky in love, partly because he wanted to come to terms with his Creator. This he does do, after some struggles, and questionings, and realistic tests, and when he says good-bye in California he has travelled all the way from scepticism and indifference to Holy Rolling. If he is mad, he says, it is a good kind of madness, but if there is one soul astray in the "Valley of Despair," his book may show the way out. For that reason, and that only, he asks God to grant his final prayer — that his MSS will find a publisher. This most attractive volume is the proof that God does.