AT SEA AND ON LAND
NOT IN THE LOG, by Main Royal; Pegasus Press, Christchurch, 17/6. HIS is an agreeable collection of experiences at sea and on land by a sailor with a seeing and remembering eye and an unpretentious happy style. In its combination of sail and steam, foc’sle and cabin, boxing matches and
sight-seeing, it is unlike anything I have read. We may take it "Main Royal" is a New Zealander-he tells us he left home to make his first voyage in a barque out of Lyttelton-but he wrote this book in London. The sail chapters are good, but because we get so little about foc’sle life in steam. I found even more interesting the account of a voyage in a tramp round the Horn. The fireman who went mad and had to be shut up may have been a rarity, but prising others out of a\bar in Monte Video and going on with ‘bad coal must have been fairly common experiences. People count for most, and "Main Royal" has a gallery of them, from skippers and mates to national assortments in the foc’sle, third-class passengers via Suez, and exotics in an Italian tub in the Mediterranean. The most violent happenings are one or two "rough-houses" and several boxing matches, but the tale holds the reader, even when the narrator mixes with tourists. Among the boxing matches all described in detail, are the two best he ever saw-a bare-fist set-to in an Australian shearing shed, and a bout in the New Zealand University Championships. One of the best things in the book is the least exciting adventure, that of the author and two shipmates when they go wheat harvesting in Canterbury. Nothing happens but hard work, bountiful meals, good fellowship among all concerned, talk, and picnics at weekends, but the result just shows what can be done with
workaday material. One of the sailors makes a comment that supports Oliver Duff’s view of New Zealand’s lack of wit. "What we want is a Cockney or two, something to liven up the outfit. They’re damn good workers, but slow as a wet week in thinking up something
to say."
A.
M.
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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/periodicals/NZLIST19540430.2.23.2
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 30, Issue 771, 30 April 1954, Page 12
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362AT SEA AND ON LAND New Zealand Listener, Volume 30, Issue 771, 30 April 1954, Page 12
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Copyright in the work University Entrance by Janet Frame (credited as J.F., 22 March 1946, page 18), is owned by the Janet Frame Literary Trust. The National Library has been granted permission to digitise this article and make it available online as part of this digitised version of the New Zealand Listener. You can search, browse, and print this article for research and personal study only. Permission must be obtained from the Janet Frame Literary Trust for any other use.
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