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The Mariners Library #48
金色船隊：史上最後運榖大賽
There was a time not long past when the world's oceanic cargo moved in beautiful wind-driven sailing ships. They were successors to millenia of less noble craft, but at their zenith, in the 19th century, they dominated the seas.
Eric Newby had the good fortune to sail on one of these clippers. Shortly before WW II, he signed aboard as deckhand on a ship in the grain trade, out-bound for Australia with a cargo of wheat.
"This marvelous recollection of a young man's great adventure is funny, poignant, thrilling and memorable." (B-O-T Editorial Review Board)
324 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1956
80 people are currently reading
1174 people want to read
About the author
Eric Newby
42 books173 followersGeorge Eric Newby CBE MC (December 6, 1919 – October 20, 2006) was an English author of travel literature.
Newby was born and grew up near Hammersmith Bridge, London, and was educated at St Paul's School. His father was a partner in a firm of wholesale dressmakers but he also harboured dreams of escape, running away to sea as a child before being captured at Millwall. Owing to his father's frequent financial crises and his own failure to pass algebra, Newby was taken away from school at sixteen and put to work as an office boy in the Dorland advertising agency on Regent Street, where he spent most of his time cycling around the office admiring the typists' legs. Fortunately, the agency lost the Kellogg's account and he apprenticed aboard the Finnish windjammer Moshulu in 1938, sailing in what Newby entitled The Last Grain Race (1956) from Europe to Australia and back by way of Cape Horn (his journey was also pictorially documented in Learning the Ropes). In fact, two more grain races followed the 1939 race in which Newby participated, with the last race being held in 1949.
Newby was born and grew up near Hammersmith Bridge, London, and was educated at St Paul's School. His father was a partner in a firm of wholesale dressmakers but he also harboured dreams of escape, running away to sea as a child before being captured at Millwall. Owing to his father's frequent financial crises and his own failure to pass algebra, Newby was taken away from school at sixteen and put to work as an office boy in the Dorland advertising agency on Regent Street, where he spent most of his time cycling around the office admiring the typists' legs. Fortunately, the agency lost the Kellogg's account and he apprenticed aboard the Finnish windjammer Moshulu in 1938, sailing in what Newby entitled The Last Grain Race (1956) from Europe to Australia and back by way of Cape Horn (his journey was also pictorially documented in Learning the Ropes). In fact, two more grain races followed the 1939 race in which Newby participated, with the last race being held in 1949.
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September 25, 2019
I am a big fan of Eric Newby's writing, and I was pleased to pick up a copy of this book, published in 1956, which I understand to be his first book.
It follows his adventure in 1938/39 as a youngster who signs on in Belfast as an apprentice seaman on a four-masted barque bound for Australia, then back with a cargo of grain.
Other than its obvious English language, this book contains two other languages practically unintelligible for me. Finnish, which is the language on the ship for all commands is the first - and one Newby has zero knowledge of on arrival. He learns the names for the sails and other components, and the names for the actions he is expected to carry out quickly. He assists the reader in learning these for the most part, but quickly gives up repeating the command - and with my limited capacity (and inclination, to be fair) to learn these Finnish words too, it does eliminate some of the understanding of the narrative as the story progresses. While I am not overly concerned about this, given the other language, mentioned below, is the nautical terminology, and I have little understanding of that either, if Newby had translated all of the commands throughout - I probably still wouldn't have understood much more!
So yes - the nautical terms were the other language. There is an incredibly complicated diagram at the start of the book. This labels the 31 sails (mizzen staysails omitted for clarity) and the 79 running rigging identified (buntlines, clewlines, lifts, downhalls and some sheets omitted for clarity, some halliards also omitted.) Even with all those omissions it is bizarre and complex, and it sits still on the page, as opposed to its operation in the Southern Ocean in heavy swell (or worse). So again, so much of what is going on is a blur and/or a mystery to me in this book.
The action in this story is almost all at sea. Leaving from Belfast, there is a brief stop at Tristan da Cunha (where they don't leave the ship), a reloading in Australia, and then an end to the journey in Queenstown, Ireland (which I understand to be Cobh, near Cork).
Irrespective of those complaints, Newby's writing is still very good, which at times is very funny. The reader enjoys his enthusiasm, his frustrations and his fears. Overall it probably drops a half star for these issues, but to be honest it would add another 30% to the text, and still be largely illegible if he were to change it.
3.5 stars, rounded up.
One quick quote. P157.
To set the scene - they are in Port Lincoln, South Australia, where the ship is being loaded. Newby and others of the crew had slept on shore - most of the crew busy getting laid, Newby still a shy lad - just got boozed instead.
It follows his adventure in 1938/39 as a youngster who signs on in Belfast as an apprentice seaman on a four-masted barque bound for Australia, then back with a cargo of grain.
Other than its obvious English language, this book contains two other languages practically unintelligible for me. Finnish, which is the language on the ship for all commands is the first - and one Newby has zero knowledge of on arrival. He learns the names for the sails and other components, and the names for the actions he is expected to carry out quickly. He assists the reader in learning these for the most part, but quickly gives up repeating the command - and with my limited capacity (and inclination, to be fair) to learn these Finnish words too, it does eliminate some of the understanding of the narrative as the story progresses. While I am not overly concerned about this, given the other language, mentioned below, is the nautical terminology, and I have little understanding of that either, if Newby had translated all of the commands throughout - I probably still wouldn't have understood much more!
So yes - the nautical terms were the other language. There is an incredibly complicated diagram at the start of the book. This labels the 31 sails (mizzen staysails omitted for clarity) and the 79 running rigging identified (buntlines, clewlines, lifts, downhalls and some sheets omitted for clarity, some halliards also omitted.) Even with all those omissions it is bizarre and complex, and it sits still on the page, as opposed to its operation in the Southern Ocean in heavy swell (or worse). So again, so much of what is going on is a blur and/or a mystery to me in this book.
The action in this story is almost all at sea. Leaving from Belfast, there is a brief stop at Tristan da Cunha (where they don't leave the ship), a reloading in Australia, and then an end to the journey in Queenstown, Ireland (which I understand to be Cobh, near Cork).
Irrespective of those complaints, Newby's writing is still very good, which at times is very funny. The reader enjoys his enthusiasm, his frustrations and his fears. Overall it probably drops a half star for these issues, but to be honest it would add another 30% to the text, and still be largely illegible if he were to change it.
3.5 stars, rounded up.
One quick quote. P157.
To set the scene - they are in Port Lincoln, South Australia, where the ship is being loaded. Newby and others of the crew had slept on shore - most of the crew busy getting laid, Newby still a shy lad - just got boozed instead.
On Sunday morning I woke at ten o'clock to hear rain drumming on the corrugated iron roof, the first they'd had for four months. I lay in bed gazing lazily at the ceiling thinking how wonderful it was to be undisturbed.
After a large breakfast at which I was once again able to indulge my morbid craving for toast, I plowed through the rain to the post office with Jack. Officially it was shut, but I found a back entrance and stormed into the sorting room bellowing for letters.
A man with a hatchet face and steel rimmed spectacles screeched: 'Yes four for you and one for a joker with a name like the wind whistling in a barmaid's fanny. For Chris' sake take it away and put me out of his misery.'
Taking my four letters and one for Vytautas, and thinking of how refreshingly different the Australian Civil Service seemed to our own, I sat down in a puddle on the steps of the post office and read them.
May 5, 2017
In 1938 Eric Newby was a bored 18-year-old working in a London advertising agency. When it lost an account, many of his colleagues were sacked. To his disgust, he wasn’t. Apparently he was not important enough to sack. So he left anyway and signed on as an apprentice on a windjammer for a round-the-world voyage. The Last Grain Race is the story of that voyage. Published nearly 20 years later, it was the first book from one of the best-loved of British travel writers.
The windjammer era was brief. Today we celebrate them as the “tall ships”, and those still at sea are usually training vessels. In their heyday, they were hard places. They were the last trading ships of sail, usually four-masted barques with steel hulls, and their era started some time in the late 19th century. Their purpose was to carry non-perishable bulk cargo such as coal, grain and nitrates at lower cost than the new steamships, by using the prevailing winds, and taking as long as they needed on the journey. They fought harder and harder to compete; costs were slashed, crews were small – sometimes almost too small to work the vessel – and the conditions on board were basic. By the 1930s only one large operator remained – Gustav Erikson of Mariehamn, in Finland’s Swedish-speaking Åland Islands. In 1934 he had bought one of the largest and best windjammers left afloat, the 30-year-old Moshulu, for just $12,000.
It was this ship that Newby joined at Belfast in September 1938. She, like the rest of the Erikson fleet, was to sail in ballast via the Cape of Good Hope and the Indian Ocean to South Australia, where she would load several thousand tons of grain; then she would return via the Southern Ocean and around the Horn. The journey would take from September until the following summer. Moreover Newby was indentured; his father had paid £50, no small sum in 1938, and would forfeit it if Newby failed to discharge the terms of his apprenticeship. (If he was killed, his father would of course get it back. This would look likely on several occasions.)
It is unlikely Newby thought the voyage would be easy. If he had any such thought, he was quickly disabused of it. Boarding at Belfast, he is sent straight up the rigging, in unsuitable shoes. It is a good move because he does not seem to have felt such terror again. He will have more trouble in the forecastle, where he is the only Englishman in a bunch of very hardboiled Scandinavians. He is not popular. Eventually he finds a turd in his cigarette-tin. He takes on the perpetrator in a fist-fight; it is a close contest but Newby prevails, hurting his opponent badly, only to be told later that the turd has been left by someone else. But that isn’t the point.
Life in the forecastle is rough. In bad weather the water sloshes around inside and nothing is ever dry. Work is hard, a constant battle against changing winds, decaying ropes and rust. In the high (e.g. low) latitudes of the Southern Ocean, bound for the Horn, they are thrust into a force 10 gale that lasts for days. On one occasion Newby is thrown from the rigging and is lucky to be caught in a cradle of ropes some 5ft down. There is little sympathy for him. Yet throughout this he never loses his sense of adventure, or his eye for the beauty. Sunsets of bright yellow as the light slants under dark grey clouds across a rough sea; great albatrosses swooping around the ship; the warmth as the ship turns north after rounding the Horn – it’s all there. To read this book is to be dumped right in the middle of a world that is gone forever.
It would vanish sooner than Newby imagined. Not long after the Moshulu returned to Belfast, the war broke out and the windjammer grain trade – the last in which they were profitable – came to an end. It never really re-started after the war. Erikson himself died in 1947. The Moshulu was dismasted during the war and spent most of the next 30 years as a floating grain store. Yet for her, at least, it was not the end. Fitted with dummy masts and rigging, she was brought to Philadelphia, where today she is a floating restaurant. The owners do seem to respect the ship’s history, which is recounted in some detail on the restaurant’s website.
The food has clearly improved. That served in the forecastle, according to Newby, was terrible. Early in the voyage they are served something very pungent that Newby thinks is fried herring. “Ees not fish,” says Newby’s enemy, Sedelquist. “Ees bacon, smelly like English girl.” It is, says Newby, “ghastly and apparently putrefying”. He throws it overboard. Later he learns never to waste even the worst food and to eat what he can get. Were he to visit the Moshulu today, he would be offered “Herb-rubbed Italian-style pork sandwich, Ciabatta Roll, Provolone, Pickled Eggplant & Hot Pepper Relish; House Cut Fries”. One wonders what Newby (or Sedelquist) would have thought of that.
You do need patience with this book now and then. It’s full of Swedish and Finnish jargon. There is also a great mass of top-gallants, buntlines, clewlines, crojacks and more that could be tiresome if you are really not interested in ships and the sea. But I think it is worth it. The Last Grain Race is an achievement, and is a reminder that the greatest travel books aren’t just a journey through geographical space. They transport us across more than one dimension, bringing alive something that we could not experience and may not now exist.
The windjammer era was brief. Today we celebrate them as the “tall ships”, and those still at sea are usually training vessels. In their heyday, they were hard places. They were the last trading ships of sail, usually four-masted barques with steel hulls, and their era started some time in the late 19th century. Their purpose was to carry non-perishable bulk cargo such as coal, grain and nitrates at lower cost than the new steamships, by using the prevailing winds, and taking as long as they needed on the journey. They fought harder and harder to compete; costs were slashed, crews were small – sometimes almost too small to work the vessel – and the conditions on board were basic. By the 1930s only one large operator remained – Gustav Erikson of Mariehamn, in Finland’s Swedish-speaking Åland Islands. In 1934 he had bought one of the largest and best windjammers left afloat, the 30-year-old Moshulu, for just $12,000.
It was this ship that Newby joined at Belfast in September 1938. She, like the rest of the Erikson fleet, was to sail in ballast via the Cape of Good Hope and the Indian Ocean to South Australia, where she would load several thousand tons of grain; then she would return via the Southern Ocean and around the Horn. The journey would take from September until the following summer. Moreover Newby was indentured; his father had paid £50, no small sum in 1938, and would forfeit it if Newby failed to discharge the terms of his apprenticeship. (If he was killed, his father would of course get it back. This would look likely on several occasions.)
It is unlikely Newby thought the voyage would be easy. If he had any such thought, he was quickly disabused of it. Boarding at Belfast, he is sent straight up the rigging, in unsuitable shoes. It is a good move because he does not seem to have felt such terror again. He will have more trouble in the forecastle, where he is the only Englishman in a bunch of very hardboiled Scandinavians. He is not popular. Eventually he finds a turd in his cigarette-tin. He takes on the perpetrator in a fist-fight; it is a close contest but Newby prevails, hurting his opponent badly, only to be told later that the turd has been left by someone else. But that isn’t the point.
Life in the forecastle is rough. In bad weather the water sloshes around inside and nothing is ever dry. Work is hard, a constant battle against changing winds, decaying ropes and rust. In the high (e.g. low) latitudes of the Southern Ocean, bound for the Horn, they are thrust into a force 10 gale that lasts for days. On one occasion Newby is thrown from the rigging and is lucky to be caught in a cradle of ropes some 5ft down. There is little sympathy for him. Yet throughout this he never loses his sense of adventure, or his eye for the beauty. Sunsets of bright yellow as the light slants under dark grey clouds across a rough sea; great albatrosses swooping around the ship; the warmth as the ship turns north after rounding the Horn – it’s all there. To read this book is to be dumped right in the middle of a world that is gone forever.
It would vanish sooner than Newby imagined. Not long after the Moshulu returned to Belfast, the war broke out and the windjammer grain trade – the last in which they were profitable – came to an end. It never really re-started after the war. Erikson himself died in 1947. The Moshulu was dismasted during the war and spent most of the next 30 years as a floating grain store. Yet for her, at least, it was not the end. Fitted with dummy masts and rigging, she was brought to Philadelphia, where today she is a floating restaurant. The owners do seem to respect the ship’s history, which is recounted in some detail on the restaurant’s website.
The food has clearly improved. That served in the forecastle, according to Newby, was terrible. Early in the voyage they are served something very pungent that Newby thinks is fried herring. “Ees not fish,” says Newby’s enemy, Sedelquist. “Ees bacon, smelly like English girl.” It is, says Newby, “ghastly and apparently putrefying”. He throws it overboard. Later he learns never to waste even the worst food and to eat what he can get. Were he to visit the Moshulu today, he would be offered “Herb-rubbed Italian-style pork sandwich, Ciabatta Roll, Provolone, Pickled Eggplant & Hot Pepper Relish; House Cut Fries”. One wonders what Newby (or Sedelquist) would have thought of that.
You do need patience with this book now and then. It’s full of Swedish and Finnish jargon. There is also a great mass of top-gallants, buntlines, clewlines, crojacks and more that could be tiresome if you are really not interested in ships and the sea. But I think it is worth it. The Last Grain Race is an achievement, and is a reminder that the greatest travel books aren’t just a journey through geographical space. They transport us across more than one dimension, bringing alive something that we could not experience and may not now exist.
May 31, 2021
Eric Newby must have kept a detailed diary of his time aboard the Moshulu as he wrote this almost 20 years after his stint as a seaman on the last of the working 4-masted squre-rigged barques to ply the high seas at their peak. Steamships and WWII put the nail in the coffin of these magnificent ships.
In 1938, as a young 18 y/o disillusioned with the corporate world and most likely soon to be fired from his job after the loss of an account, he impulsively signs on to work on an Erickson line of sailing vessels. He speaks of being fascinated by the tall tales of the sailing the sea around the world and thought this would be the opportunity for his own grand adventure. That it was, but incredible hard work too and death-defying tasks of furling and unfurling the huge sails during storms at sea.
Newby had to overcome his fear of heights, learn all about sailing as well as some Finnish & Swedish as he was the lone Englishman amongst the 28-man crew. And quite a crew of characters they were! The Grain Trade required these sailing vessels to sail from the UK through the Atlantic ocean around the Cape of Good Hope to Australia to pick up grain/wheat and sail back to the UK along the Pacific route. The Grain Race was the informal name of the unsanctioned competition between the ships on their way home along the Pacific route. Newby wouldn't know at the time that this would be the last Grain Race. A fast passing from Australia to the UK was considered anything under 100 days. I discovered that there were a couple of ships that after WWII did make this sail & that 1949 was definitely the last time the journey was undertaken under sail.
There are plenty of details about the the various types of sails ( 29 sails in all!) and all the structures and equipment involved in sailing the barque. Newby's descriptions and detail are so vivid, I felt I was experiencing this journey with them! I was bored when the crew was bored and was there with them in the challenge of keeping everything together during the storms. I felt the claustrophobia of their quarters and the monotony of the food. 4.5 stars!
The Moshulu, although not with all her original structures, is currently berthed in Philadelphia and has been a floating restaurant since 1970.
In 1938, as a young 18 y/o disillusioned with the corporate world and most likely soon to be fired from his job after the loss of an account, he impulsively signs on to work on an Erickson line of sailing vessels. He speaks of being fascinated by the tall tales of the sailing the sea around the world and thought this would be the opportunity for his own grand adventure. That it was, but incredible hard work too and death-defying tasks of furling and unfurling the huge sails during storms at sea.
Newby had to overcome his fear of heights, learn all about sailing as well as some Finnish & Swedish as he was the lone Englishman amongst the 28-man crew. And quite a crew of characters they were! The Grain Trade required these sailing vessels to sail from the UK through the Atlantic ocean around the Cape of Good Hope to Australia to pick up grain/wheat and sail back to the UK along the Pacific route. The Grain Race was the informal name of the unsanctioned competition between the ships on their way home along the Pacific route. Newby wouldn't know at the time that this would be the last Grain Race. A fast passing from Australia to the UK was considered anything under 100 days. I discovered that there were a couple of ships that after WWII did make this sail & that 1949 was definitely the last time the journey was undertaken under sail.
There are plenty of details about the the various types of sails ( 29 sails in all!) and all the structures and equipment involved in sailing the barque. Newby's descriptions and detail are so vivid, I felt I was experiencing this journey with them! I was bored when the crew was bored and was there with them in the challenge of keeping everything together during the storms. I felt the claustrophobia of their quarters and the monotony of the food. 4.5 stars!
The Moshulu, although not with all her original structures, is currently berthed in Philadelphia and has been a floating restaurant since 1970.
November 8, 2018
Now I confess to being a confirmed landlubber who cannot tell a spanker from an inner jib but I do love a good account of a thrilling sea voyage. Eric Newby was a cracking travel writer, I have enjoyed a lot of his books but this was a favourite. As an 18 year old he took an apprenticeship aboard the four-masted sailing ship 'Moshulu' as it sailed from Belfast to Australia and back. It was an extremely tough and gruelling trip with lots of danger and hardship but Newby lived to tell the tale and how well he does it. There are lots of technical sailing terms but you don't need to understand them to appreciate the book.
February 11, 2023
The Last Grain Race was quite good. I admit to laughing out loud a few times at the situations and antics of the sailors under grueling circumstances at sea under sail. Newby is a skilled writer with a bit of flair, although the book’s title is misleading. It was not the last grain race. It was the last race of the four-masted square-rigged barque Moshulu. Grain races from Australia by sailing vessels bound for European markets continued after World War II. The true “last race” was in 1949.
If you like nautical adventures told with wit and veracity, I recommend The Last Grain Race. It's a reminder that no matter the era, sailors haven't changed.
If you like nautical adventures told with wit and veracity, I recommend The Last Grain Race. It's a reminder that no matter the era, sailors haven't changed.
August 7, 2017
I knew then that I would never see sailing like this again. When such ships as this went it would be the finish. The windbelts of the world would be deserted and the great West Wind and the Trades would never blow on steel rigging and flax canvas again.
Eric Newby's book about his time on the Moshulu in 1938-1939 is, in my opinion, spellbinding. When an author writes about the winds of the world as though they were human, that certainly gets my attention. The four-masted steel barque was built in 1904 and remains the last original windjammer in existence, albeit as a floating restaurant in Philadelphia. The author describes his adventures as a crewman, a rookie learning the ropes and dealing with the language barrier (English vs Swedish vs Finnish) and tough-as-nails crewmates.
He has to quickly memorize the different sails while also dealing with nauseous food, not to mention the various chores (latrine cleaning, dishwashing, scrubbing). And bugs. His description of the appearance of the army of bugs as they cross the equator is yucky-fying (it turns out that the Belfast dockhands loaded two dead dogs into the hold...for fun). This isn't a travelogue about sailing to islands and having fun. There is no land until they reach Port Lincoln in Australia and even then, they must wait to go ashore due to the number of ships ahead of them.
The return trip is fascinating, as they go back via Cape Horn and the terrifying Southern Ocean, where they nearly capsize (a previous ship was lost just a year earlier on the same route) under the huge waves.
She was running before seas that were being generated in the greatest expanse of open ocean, of a power and size unparalleled because there was no impediment to them as they drove eastwards around the world.
Terror appears from out the blue, when, by PURE CHANCE, Newby spots three jagged rocks right in the ship's path during a sinister night of lookout duty. I was white-knuckled by that point. Newby writes so well, acknowledging his own weaknesses while admitting the difficulties of such a trip. I also loved having a page showing the sails and their names, which was very helpful in understanding what everyone was doing when something had to be unfurled.
Thumbs up.
Book Season = Spring (gloggle, gloggle, gloggle)
Eric Newby's book about his time on the Moshulu in 1938-1939 is, in my opinion, spellbinding. When an author writes about the winds of the world as though they were human, that certainly gets my attention. The four-masted steel barque was built in 1904 and remains the last original windjammer in existence, albeit as a floating restaurant in Philadelphia. The author describes his adventures as a crewman, a rookie learning the ropes and dealing with the language barrier (English vs Swedish vs Finnish) and tough-as-nails crewmates.
He has to quickly memorize the different sails while also dealing with nauseous food, not to mention the various chores (latrine cleaning, dishwashing, scrubbing). And bugs. His description of the appearance of the army of bugs as they cross the equator is yucky-fying (it turns out that the Belfast dockhands loaded two dead dogs into the hold...for fun). This isn't a travelogue about sailing to islands and having fun. There is no land until they reach Port Lincoln in Australia and even then, they must wait to go ashore due to the number of ships ahead of them.
The return trip is fascinating, as they go back via Cape Horn and the terrifying Southern Ocean, where they nearly capsize (a previous ship was lost just a year earlier on the same route) under the huge waves.
She was running before seas that were being generated in the greatest expanse of open ocean, of a power and size unparalleled because there was no impediment to them as they drove eastwards around the world.
Terror appears from out the blue, when, by PURE CHANCE, Newby spots three jagged rocks right in the ship's path during a sinister night of lookout duty. I was white-knuckled by that point. Newby writes so well, acknowledging his own weaknesses while admitting the difficulties of such a trip. I also loved having a page showing the sails and their names, which was very helpful in understanding what everyone was doing when something had to be unfurled.
Thumbs up.
Book Season = Spring (gloggle, gloggle, gloggle)
December 7, 2012
My dad read this book every fall as he sat tending a grain dryer full of corn. He wore that paperback out. I remembered seeing the book lying in the small heated office as mom and I would bring him his supper as she always did when he was on "duty" hours into the night. Eventually we had to get him another copy and he read that two more times even though his days of grain drying were over. It is so inscribed on the front page of the book in his own hand.
I ran across the book in going through things after he passed so I decided to read it and see what brought him back to it each year. The book was not for me as I think a knowledge of sailing would be helpful to the reader. Dad was not a sailor but he knew quite alot about many things and I'm sure the rigging on a schooner was one of them. I believe though, what really drew him to the book was his sense of adventure, the courage of the main character to set out on an unknown journey, and the story of the last of the tall ships that delivered goods around the world.
I ran across the book in going through things after he passed so I decided to read it and see what brought him back to it each year. The book was not for me as I think a knowledge of sailing would be helpful to the reader. Dad was not a sailor but he knew quite alot about many things and I'm sure the rigging on a schooner was one of them. I believe though, what really drew him to the book was his sense of adventure, the courage of the main character to set out on an unknown journey, and the story of the last of the tall ships that delivered goods around the world.
July 4, 2013
I'll lay my cards on the table. I love Eric Newby. So much so that I named one of the characters in my 'Danny Lansing' books after him. The Last Grain Race is an enormously entertaining book about an extraordinary adventure at the end of the era of sail. Newby is an extremely self-effacing and likeable narrator and the book is a joy from start to finish. Who can't like a chap who turns up at the quayside for his first voyage on a brutally tough sailing ship - with his belongings packed in Loius Vuitton luggage!
March 16, 2021
It was a bit of a jolt to realise that Newby was inspired to make the voyage by reading Round the Horn Before the Mast, which was itself already a nostalgic classic by this point - to us, all sailing ships from Hornblower to the Cutty Sark seem part of the same era, and indeed the rituals of life on board seem to have varied very little up until the end of sail, but the surrounding world had changed enormously. (In the background to this voyage was the outbreak of the Second World War, gleaned by the crew only in moments of rumour and by and large of far less interest than the ship's progress.)
As always when reading these accounts, I'm left with the shaming knowledge that, even though I've been in a square-rigged ship and worked to make and furl sail, I couldn't possibly have undergone what the crew were expected to perform on a regular basis; I can't even climb up the outside of the futtock shrouds, let alone swarm up to the masthead by climbing a bare pole, as the author was ordered to do on his first day. But Lubbock was pretty graphic about the hardships before the mast in his account, so presumably Newby had some idea of what he was getting into in advance. (He even falls backwards off a yardarm in the middle of a gale, only to be blown into the lower rigging by the sheer force of the wind; presumably if it hadn't done so the book would never have been written, for obvious reasons...)
But in addition to the danger and squalor of the voyage - and the tensions of a crew consisting largely of ill-paid 'apprentices' under twenty, giving it the air of a public-school hazing - the author also conveys the power and excitement of a full-rigged ship under sail, whether driving deeply-laden around the Roaring Forties at fifteen knots or gliding beneath a tower of canvas in the tropics. I don't know if this book in its turn inspired a further generation of sea-struck youth; there would be no opportunity. The Second World War effectively put an end to commercial sail transport, and Erikson's square-riggers were sold off in 1949 signalling the close of an era.
However, I was astonished to learn that 'Moshulu' herself is still afloat, eighty years after the 'Last Grain Race' so eloquently described in this volume. She is currently moored in America and serving as a luxury floating restaurant, billed as "the world's largest four-masted sailing ship still afloat". A far cry from endless rust-chipping by apprentices around the Horn!
As always when reading these accounts, I'm left with the shaming knowledge that, even though I've been in a square-rigged ship and worked to make and furl sail, I couldn't possibly have undergone what the crew were expected to perform on a regular basis; I can't even climb up the outside of the futtock shrouds, let alone swarm up to the masthead by climbing a bare pole, as the author was ordered to do on his first day. But Lubbock was pretty graphic about the hardships before the mast in his account, so presumably Newby had some idea of what he was getting into in advance. (He even falls backwards off a yardarm in the middle of a gale, only to be blown into the lower rigging by the sheer force of the wind; presumably if it hadn't done so the book would never have been written, for obvious reasons...)
But in addition to the danger and squalor of the voyage - and the tensions of a crew consisting largely of ill-paid 'apprentices' under twenty, giving it the air of a public-school hazing - the author also conveys the power and excitement of a full-rigged ship under sail, whether driving deeply-laden around the Roaring Forties at fifteen knots or gliding beneath a tower of canvas in the tropics. I don't know if this book in its turn inspired a further generation of sea-struck youth; there would be no opportunity. The Second World War effectively put an end to commercial sail transport, and Erikson's square-riggers were sold off in 1949 signalling the close of an era.
However, I was astonished to learn that 'Moshulu' herself is still afloat, eighty years after the 'Last Grain Race' so eloquently described in this volume. She is currently moored in America and serving as a luxury floating restaurant, billed as "the world's largest four-masted sailing ship still afloat". A far cry from endless rust-chipping by apprentices around the Horn!
September 13, 2022
In 1938, at the age of eighteen, Eric Newby signed on as an apprentice on one of the last of the great four-masted sailing ships that every year raced each other to Australia and back to bring vast quantities of wheat to the UK. Twenty years later his experiences formed the basis of The Last Grain Race, the first in what was to prove a bestselling series of travel books. Newby’s adventurous spirit and resolve in the face of physical discomfort and peril - the same qualities that would serve him so well in his wartime exploits and later travels - are very much in evidence here, as is his familiar deadpan humour. His ship, the Moshulu, is Finnish owned and crewed largely by Scandinavians. some of the technical naval technology and Nordic expressions is hard to keep on top of; in the end, I just let that wash over me and enjoyed the personalities and the sense of being on board a ship in the high seas.
January 16, 2018
‘We were all of us awed by what we saw and heard beyond the common experience of men.’
This contains spoilers. I tried to keep it short, but there was too much worthwhile not to mention.
An enthralling account of working life in a tall sailing ship.
Desperate for adventure and to experience something fulfilling, Newby feels suffocated in his London office job and has had enough of the daily commute and glaring office managers.
‘I was furious, The porter had been wrong, I hadn’t ‘ad it’. I was perhaps the only member of staff who would have actively welcomed the sack. Wurzel’s was a prison to me. All the way home in the Underground I seethed…… too unimportant to be sacked……. At Piccadilly train station the train was full but the guards packed in more and more people. At Knightsbridge two of them tried to force an inoffensive little man into the train by putting their shoulders into the back of his head and shoving. Someone began to baa loudly and hysterically. There was an embarrassed silence and nobody laughed. We were all too much like real sheep to find it funny.’
Newby decides to sign on as an apprentice on the four masted ship Moshulu, one of the last commercial voyages for ships of this nature.
This book is a gem and is a great time capsule into seafaring and a character of men we are unlikely to meet in this day and age. The young lad Newby is an incredibly likeable and self-effacing narrator. He is a companion to the reader through the monotonous graft on the ship, and recounts his feelings and experiences in great detail.
Despite the often grim reality, the book is full of stomach hurting humour and fabulous descriptions of the sea, weather, wind and shipmates. The reader is transported to the high cross trees with the lads as they grasp thick painful rope and sail, facing diagonal rain and hail and ferociously fierce seamen. From Belfast dockworkers leaving rotting canine corpses, hidden on board (only to be discovered much later in hotter climes). To intensely claustrophobic/close-knit living quarters. The reader feels the utter tiredness of Newby as he fights his way through and gazes at the incomprehensible beauty and indifference of the world around him.
‘Establishing a routine so strong that the outside world seemed unreal; we took refuge in the present’.
The book features great technical accounts of the details of the elements of the ship and sails and skilled labour involved in its maintenance and creation. Not only this, but the book includes personal photographs from Newby himself.
As soon as he steps on board, Newby realises he will have to toughen up or face being walked over by others on board, or even killed by the dangerous working environment.
‘ I also began to be on better terms with my companions who, in the mysterious way of human beings, began to like me better when they were unable to take advantage of me’.
Newby is thrown headfirst into adventure. His senses heightened: Adrenaline, fear, exhaustion, awe. Newby has to deal with conflicting elements of raw physicality, zero personal space, endurance, camaraderie and utilise his personal guile, fearlessness and self-reliance. All with the sea spray and wind on his face.
The book features some incredible descriptions of the natural world. The utter awe Newby feels when he encounters these spectacular sights: Dragonflies, dolphins, exotic birds, stars, rainbows, electric storms, and waves as big as three storey houses.
‘She was running before seas that were being generated in the greatest expanse of open ocean, of a power and size unparalleled because there was no impediment to them as they drove eastwards around the world. She made pigmy too by the wind, the wind that was already indescribable, that Tria said had only now begun to blow. '
‘At this moment, for the first time I felt certain of the existence of God an infinitely powerful and at the same time merciful God. Nearly everyone on the ship felt something of this, no one spoke of it. We were all of us awed by what we saw and heard beyond the common experience of men.’
These descriptions reminded me of themes in other seafaring books such as Moby Dick. How Ishmael contemplates religion and characters like Fedallah. The seamen have great ponderings on the milkway and the sea as the ship almost flies though it all.
This is truly a great adventure book. It’s as if you too, the reader, are lying in a hammock gazing at the stars with the great overwhelming mass of sea and universe all around.
In an age when most things can be looked at with a click of a button, we cannot forget the importance of physical experience. In a time when humans think everything can be controlled and everything has been discovered, the sea is still such a great uncontrollable, intimidating, unpredictable mass. It’s deepest depths like space. It’s waves incomprehensible.
Eric Newby grinned, grafted and fought his way all the way through.
‘I went aloft in the fore rigging, out of the comparative shelter of the fore- sail, into the top, and higher again to the cross-trees, where I braced myself to the backstays. At this height, 130 feet up, in a wind blowing 70 miles an hour, the wind was an unearthly scream. Above me, was the naked topgallant yard and above that again the royal, which I presently climbed. I was now used to heights but the bare yard; gleaming yellow in the sunshine, was groaning and creaking on it’s tracks. The high whistle of the wind through the halliards sheaf , and above all the pale illimitable sky, cold and serene, made me deeply afraid and conscious of my insignificance. ‘
This contains spoilers. I tried to keep it short, but there was too much worthwhile not to mention.
An enthralling account of working life in a tall sailing ship.
Desperate for adventure and to experience something fulfilling, Newby feels suffocated in his London office job and has had enough of the daily commute and glaring office managers.
‘I was furious, The porter had been wrong, I hadn’t ‘ad it’. I was perhaps the only member of staff who would have actively welcomed the sack. Wurzel’s was a prison to me. All the way home in the Underground I seethed…… too unimportant to be sacked……. At Piccadilly train station the train was full but the guards packed in more and more people. At Knightsbridge two of them tried to force an inoffensive little man into the train by putting their shoulders into the back of his head and shoving. Someone began to baa loudly and hysterically. There was an embarrassed silence and nobody laughed. We were all too much like real sheep to find it funny.’
Newby decides to sign on as an apprentice on the four masted ship Moshulu, one of the last commercial voyages for ships of this nature.
This book is a gem and is a great time capsule into seafaring and a character of men we are unlikely to meet in this day and age. The young lad Newby is an incredibly likeable and self-effacing narrator. He is a companion to the reader through the monotonous graft on the ship, and recounts his feelings and experiences in great detail.
Despite the often grim reality, the book is full of stomach hurting humour and fabulous descriptions of the sea, weather, wind and shipmates. The reader is transported to the high cross trees with the lads as they grasp thick painful rope and sail, facing diagonal rain and hail and ferociously fierce seamen. From Belfast dockworkers leaving rotting canine corpses, hidden on board (only to be discovered much later in hotter climes). To intensely claustrophobic/close-knit living quarters. The reader feels the utter tiredness of Newby as he fights his way through and gazes at the incomprehensible beauty and indifference of the world around him.
‘Establishing a routine so strong that the outside world seemed unreal; we took refuge in the present’.
The book features great technical accounts of the details of the elements of the ship and sails and skilled labour involved in its maintenance and creation. Not only this, but the book includes personal photographs from Newby himself.
As soon as he steps on board, Newby realises he will have to toughen up or face being walked over by others on board, or even killed by the dangerous working environment.
‘ I also began to be on better terms with my companions who, in the mysterious way of human beings, began to like me better when they were unable to take advantage of me’.
Newby is thrown headfirst into adventure. His senses heightened: Adrenaline, fear, exhaustion, awe. Newby has to deal with conflicting elements of raw physicality, zero personal space, endurance, camaraderie and utilise his personal guile, fearlessness and self-reliance. All with the sea spray and wind on his face.
The book features some incredible descriptions of the natural world. The utter awe Newby feels when he encounters these spectacular sights: Dragonflies, dolphins, exotic birds, stars, rainbows, electric storms, and waves as big as three storey houses.
‘She was running before seas that were being generated in the greatest expanse of open ocean, of a power and size unparalleled because there was no impediment to them as they drove eastwards around the world. She made pigmy too by the wind, the wind that was already indescribable, that Tria said had only now begun to blow. '
‘At this moment, for the first time I felt certain of the existence of God an infinitely powerful and at the same time merciful God. Nearly everyone on the ship felt something of this, no one spoke of it. We were all of us awed by what we saw and heard beyond the common experience of men.’
These descriptions reminded me of themes in other seafaring books such as Moby Dick. How Ishmael contemplates religion and characters like Fedallah. The seamen have great ponderings on the milkway and the sea as the ship almost flies though it all.
This is truly a great adventure book. It’s as if you too, the reader, are lying in a hammock gazing at the stars with the great overwhelming mass of sea and universe all around.
In an age when most things can be looked at with a click of a button, we cannot forget the importance of physical experience. In a time when humans think everything can be controlled and everything has been discovered, the sea is still such a great uncontrollable, intimidating, unpredictable mass. It’s deepest depths like space. It’s waves incomprehensible.
Eric Newby grinned, grafted and fought his way all the way through.
‘I went aloft in the fore rigging, out of the comparative shelter of the fore- sail, into the top, and higher again to the cross-trees, where I braced myself to the backstays. At this height, 130 feet up, in a wind blowing 70 miles an hour, the wind was an unearthly scream. Above me, was the naked topgallant yard and above that again the royal, which I presently climbed. I was now used to heights but the bare yard; gleaming yellow in the sunshine, was groaning and creaking on it’s tracks. The high whistle of the wind through the halliards sheaf , and above all the pale illimitable sky, cold and serene, made me deeply afraid and conscious of my insignificance. ‘
April 23, 2012
I was ready to drive from Seattle to San Francisco when I stopped at the library for some road music and a book on tape. This particular day, I found a jewel by one of the greats, Eric Newby's "The Last Grain Race". Eric Newby has done so much, and has been so many places that it boggles the mind. This book chronicles the beginning of his life as a true adventurer, when on the eve of WWII, he shipped out as a complete novice seaman on one of the largest sailing vessels ever built, bound for Australia and back.
Though I've been reading his books for 20 years, for some reason I'd never run across "The Last Grain Race", and for well over 1000 miles I listened to the reading of this book, and when I got to Portland on my return leg, my first stop was at Powell Books to grab a hard copy of the book.
This is one of the finest books I've ever read. I was going to say "seafaring books", but that is too restrictive.
Eric Newby's commentary and sense of humor are first-rate, like always. While listening, and while reading, I was transported by this book. The conditions seem indescribable, but Newby succeeds in describing them, and paints cold, wet portraits of the days and nights in the rigging and the foc'sle of the barque "Moshulu". I subsequently found a book of the photographs of this voyage, Newby's "Learning The Ropes", which gives us faces to the cast of "Great Grain Race".
Old friends of my youth came to visit while I was engrossed in this book, Sterling Hayden's "Voyage", the film "Windjammer", and the loss of the sailing ship "Pamir" in the late 1950's. The "Moshulu" survives today, as a restaurant ship in Philadelphia, but she was interned on Lake Union in my hometown of Seattle during WWI, and her consort, the "Monongahela" was the last tall ship to pass under the George Washington (Aurora) Bridge before it was closed to tall-masted ships.
An interesting sidelight: While recently rewatching "Godfather II", I noticed that in the scene where young Vito Andolini (Corleone) arrives in New York, the ship he's on is the "Moshulu".
Eric Newby is one of a kind. Now that he is gone we'll never see his like again.
Though I've been reading his books for 20 years, for some reason I'd never run across "The Last Grain Race", and for well over 1000 miles I listened to the reading of this book, and when I got to Portland on my return leg, my first stop was at Powell Books to grab a hard copy of the book.
This is one of the finest books I've ever read. I was going to say "seafaring books", but that is too restrictive.
Eric Newby's commentary and sense of humor are first-rate, like always. While listening, and while reading, I was transported by this book. The conditions seem indescribable, but Newby succeeds in describing them, and paints cold, wet portraits of the days and nights in the rigging and the foc'sle of the barque "Moshulu". I subsequently found a book of the photographs of this voyage, Newby's "Learning The Ropes", which gives us faces to the cast of "Great Grain Race".
Old friends of my youth came to visit while I was engrossed in this book, Sterling Hayden's "Voyage", the film "Windjammer", and the loss of the sailing ship "Pamir" in the late 1950's. The "Moshulu" survives today, as a restaurant ship in Philadelphia, but she was interned on Lake Union in my hometown of Seattle during WWI, and her consort, the "Monongahela" was the last tall ship to pass under the George Washington (Aurora) Bridge before it was closed to tall-masted ships.
An interesting sidelight: While recently rewatching "Godfather II", I noticed that in the scene where young Vito Andolini (Corleone) arrives in New York, the ship he's on is the "Moshulu".
Eric Newby is one of a kind. Now that he is gone we'll never see his like again.
April 14, 2022
This is an engaging memoir of Newby's experiences as an 18 year old crew member on a tall ship on a round the globe, West to East voyage from Ireland to Australia via the Cape of Good Hope and the Indian Ocean with a return trip to Britain via the Roaring Forties and Cape Horn.
Newby does a wonderful job of presenting the members of the crew and the day to day life aboard a four masted, steel hulled, sailing vessel in the year prior to the start of W.W.II. The descriptions of weathering storms at sea are especially harrowing and memorable. Not quite at the level of Joseph Conrad but a very good adventure, told in Newby's own way.
Newby does a wonderful job of presenting the members of the crew and the day to day life aboard a four masted, steel hulled, sailing vessel in the year prior to the start of W.W.II. The descriptions of weathering storms at sea are especially harrowing and memorable. Not quite at the level of Joseph Conrad but a very good adventure, told in Newby's own way.
April 19, 2017
End of an era
18-year old Eric Newby signs on as an apprentice on the barque Moshulu in 1938, bound for Australia for grain. His middle-class background contrasts with the Finns and Ålanders serving alongside him in the fo’csle of this last example of a sailing merchant ship. With humour and warmth he tells the tale of sailing round Africa to Australia and back via Cape Horn.
A great read, like all books by Newby.
18-year old Eric Newby signs on as an apprentice on the barque Moshulu in 1938, bound for Australia for grain. His middle-class background contrasts with the Finns and Ålanders serving alongside him in the fo’csle of this last example of a sailing merchant ship. With humour and warmth he tells the tale of sailing round Africa to Australia and back via Cape Horn.
A great read, like all books by Newby.
April 30, 2022
Though the shipping terms and technicalities went over my head, this is a tremendously enjoyable account of one of the last journeys of the sailing ships, before the world started to go mechanised. This is the best kind of travel writing, unflinching, funny, and recording something that will never happen again. Glorious.
March 22, 2015
Absolutely brilliant. A wonderful read, especially for those in the nautical frame of mind. Much like Two Years Before the Mast but in the 20th century, which illustrates how not much has changed between the early 19th and 20th as far as sailing ships, and how so much has changed since then.
June 16, 2019
(FROM MY BLOG) My first (and toughest) encounter with physical labor didn't come my way until I was 20 years old. (A few days per summer picking strawberries doesn't count, nor does the summer I was 19, working in an airconditioned laboratory performing chemical analyses.) I was working in the "wet end" of a paper mill, doing tedious, dirty, and disgusting work, the sort of work that was avoided, if possible, by regular employees.
Filled with horror, I felt life was demanding too much of me, requiring me to do mindless and exhausting work for a full three months, before returning to my idyllic life on a beautiful campus.
Eric Newby was a middle class boy from London, educated at prestigious St. Paul School, who had been fascinated by stories of sea adventure since childhood. In 1938, at the age of 18, he signed on as an apprentice on the Finnish four-masted windjammer Moshulu, agreeing to remain with the ship as it carried ballast from Belfast to Port Victoria, South Australia, where it dumped its ballast and picked up a full load of Australian grain, and to stay with it until it returned with its cargo to Queenstown (now Cobh), Ireland. His father paid a £50 deposit (about £3,400 in today's money) to ensure his son's completion of his contract, and signed with reluctance the indenture agreement (at 18, his son was a minor), to be interpreted under Finnish law.
At 130 feet, he reached the topsail yard.
The rest of the story is hardly anticlimax: The length of time it took just to find the right winds to break free of the Irish sea. The long sail to reach the Cape of Good Hope, using prevailing winds to first sail almost to Brazil. The frightening seas during the long period of isolation crossing the South Pacific. Rounding Cape Horn. And the horrific storm the ship survived in the South Atlantic.
Although the arc of the story will appeal to everyone, the details will be most appealing to those who have some experience sailing, if even only a small pleasure craft. Newby, to a large extent, assumes a knowledge of the terminology one uses to describe the myriad sails used on a four-masted ship, and the mechanics of raising and lowering them. (Not done, for the most part, with the help of mechanization. Men were required high in the rigging on virtually a daily basis.) Also, Newby was one of the few men on the ship who spoke English. He joins the reader in his own confusion by his constant quotation of Finnish (or often Swedish) commands, insults, and daily conversation. The more critical dialogue he translates, but much of the remainder can be guessed only from the context.
The "Race" of the title refers to an unofficial contest between the sailing ships -- all of which sailed at approximately the same time, presumably because of the available winds and/or the availability of the Australian grain cargo -- to make the fastest return trip from Australia. The effect of the drama will not be spoiled if I tell you that the Moshulu, sailing under its tyrannical and single-minded captain, won easily.
After reading this book, I doubt if you'll mind having missed the opportunity of signing on as a sailing vessel apprentice. But you may well feel that we all have lost something in no longer caring about the great ocean currents that move the seas, and the strong prevailing winds -- and especially the trade winds -- on whose consistency a successful voyage depended absolutely until the last century.
A book of hardship, rough companionship, and good humor -- and a healthy dose of historical technical data on how to manage a tall ship.
At the end of the sail, the captain asked Newby, "Coming again? … Make a man of you next time."
"I'll think it over," he answered. He didn't. Once he left the Moshulu, he never saw the ship or its crew again.
Filled with horror, I felt life was demanding too much of me, requiring me to do mindless and exhausting work for a full three months, before returning to my idyllic life on a beautiful campus.
Eric Newby was a middle class boy from London, educated at prestigious St. Paul School, who had been fascinated by stories of sea adventure since childhood. In 1938, at the age of 18, he signed on as an apprentice on the Finnish four-masted windjammer Moshulu, agreeing to remain with the ship as it carried ballast from Belfast to Port Victoria, South Australia, where it dumped its ballast and picked up a full load of Australian grain, and to stay with it until it returned with its cargo to Queenstown (now Cobh), Ireland. His father paid a £50 deposit (about £3,400 in today's money) to ensure his son's completion of his contract, and signed with reluctance the indenture agreement (at 18, his son was a minor), to be interpreted under Finnish law.
I remember that he was particularly concerned to find out whether the death penalty was still enforced and in what manner it was carried out.Newby nervously boarded the ship dressed in street clothes, and reported to the Second Mate near the main mast. The Second Mate looked him over, and asked if he'd ever been aloft on a sailing ship before. "No," Eric allowed. "Op you go then." Impatiently the Second Mate refused to give Eric time to change from his slippery street shoes.
At 130 feet, he reached the topsail yard.
I stood gingerly on the this slippery construction; the soles of my shoes were like glass; all Belfast spread out below. I looked between my legs down to a deck as thin as a ruler and nearly fell from sheer funk.But he was far from done. "Op to the royal yard," the Mate yelled. At about 160 feet, he reached the top yardarm. "Out on the yard!" came the cry. He edged out on a line that ran along the yardarm, and looked down "What I saw was very impressive and disagreeable." The Mate summoned him back to the mast, where he was told to shimmy up the remaining height of the mast. He reached the top of the main mast at 198 feet.
Since that day I have been aloft in high rigging many hundreds of times and in every kind of weather but I still get that cold feeling in the pit of the stomach when I think of the first morning out on the royal yard with the sheds of the York Dock below.As someone who, not much younger than Eric Newby, froze on the gently-sloped roof of our family home while doing some sort of maintenance work, and had to be carefully guided down to the ladder, my blood curdled reading of this initiation to Newby's eight months at sea. I felt less cowardly when a friend, to whom I was describing the voyage, admitted, "I just couldn't handle it."
The rest of the story is hardly anticlimax: The length of time it took just to find the right winds to break free of the Irish sea. The long sail to reach the Cape of Good Hope, using prevailing winds to first sail almost to Brazil. The frightening seas during the long period of isolation crossing the South Pacific. Rounding Cape Horn. And the horrific storm the ship survived in the South Atlantic.
Although the arc of the story will appeal to everyone, the details will be most appealing to those who have some experience sailing, if even only a small pleasure craft. Newby, to a large extent, assumes a knowledge of the terminology one uses to describe the myriad sails used on a four-masted ship, and the mechanics of raising and lowering them. (Not done, for the most part, with the help of mechanization. Men were required high in the rigging on virtually a daily basis.) Also, Newby was one of the few men on the ship who spoke English. He joins the reader in his own confusion by his constant quotation of Finnish (or often Swedish) commands, insults, and daily conversation. The more critical dialogue he translates, but much of the remainder can be guessed only from the context.
The "Race" of the title refers to an unofficial contest between the sailing ships -- all of which sailed at approximately the same time, presumably because of the available winds and/or the availability of the Australian grain cargo -- to make the fastest return trip from Australia. The effect of the drama will not be spoiled if I tell you that the Moshulu, sailing under its tyrannical and single-minded captain, won easily.
After reading this book, I doubt if you'll mind having missed the opportunity of signing on as a sailing vessel apprentice. But you may well feel that we all have lost something in no longer caring about the great ocean currents that move the seas, and the strong prevailing winds -- and especially the trade winds -- on whose consistency a successful voyage depended absolutely until the last century.
A book of hardship, rough companionship, and good humor -- and a healthy dose of historical technical data on how to manage a tall ship.
At the end of the sail, the captain asked Newby, "Coming again? … Make a man of you next time."
"I'll think it over," he answered. He didn't. Once he left the Moshulu, he never saw the ship or its crew again.
September 30, 2019
The era of commercial sailing vessels finally died the death in the years just before WWII, and Eric Newby was aboard the last ship, or nearly the last ship, for the occasion. The opening chapters of The Last Grain Race (about Newby’s call to sea) are hilarious. Newby’s character sketches throughout are terrific. And his chronicle of life aboard the Moshulu in its 1938-39 transit from England to Australia and back again is thick with adventure, foolhardiness, and (finally) a powerfully affecting melancholy.
At this point (with two Newby titles under my belt) I will read pretty much anything the man wrote, if I can get hold of it. In fact, here’s a suggestion for the good folks at NYRB: American editions of Newby’s best books, please.
At this point (with two Newby titles under my belt) I will read pretty much anything the man wrote, if I can get hold of it. In fact, here’s a suggestion for the good folks at NYRB: American editions of Newby’s best books, please.
July 12, 2023
In 1938, an 18-year-old Eric Newby had been sent by his parents to work in an advertising firm in London. He detested the work. Instead, Newby sent out a letter to the owner of a Scandinavian shipping line, one of the last featuring four-masted, steel square-rigged sailing ships hauling wheat from Australia to Western Europe. It turned out to be the adventure of a lifetime, a story he tells in The Last Grain Race. (And in another book, Learning the Ropes.) The voyage was in turns harrowing (especially during the many severe storms) and tedious and hilarious. The crew primarily spoke only Finnish and a broken English, which Newby recreates to comic effect. The Last Grain Race is also a coming of age story, an adventure that pushed the author out of advertising for good and into a career as a travel writer. (Also recommended: A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush and The Big Red Train Ride.)
August 9, 2025
A delightful opportunity to spend time with the author as he sails to Australia and back in the last few months before the Second World War, and in a fleet of sailing ships on their last collective season plying the grain trade route … the discomfort, hunger, fear and challenges are all conveyed in a manner which could incite others to follow if those opportunities still existed, and one senses the author himself was aware his journey was a not to be repeated odyssey and it reads all the better for that.
December 12, 2017
Interesting account providing insights into a now long-vanished way of life – tall sail ships acting as cargo vessels. Written in the mid 1950’s about a voyage which took place in 1939 and – due to the imminent WW2 and the introduction of new technologies (ships with engines) – was one of the last such journeys to take place.
The text was far too technical and complex with lots of talk about top gallants, royal mains, halliards and bunt lines – and I had to skim read those bits as I didn’t really understand them. But overall, despite the impenetrable vocabulary – which wasn’t helped by the liberal use of Swedish when recounting conversations with other crew members – you could get a flavour of what the life on board ship was like.
I have a few other gripes: Newby never once articulated the fact that there was an annual race of all these grain-holding sailing ships back to the UK from Australia; it was implied once he started his account of the return leg (they sailed down from Dublin to Australia in ballast, then loaded up with grain and then headed back to Ireland.) Some scene-setting early in the book would have helped.
It is a book of its time. Unsurprisingly there are tiny glimpses of casual racism and sexism though on the whole this wasn’t too bad. The fight scene was gratuitous.
Newby demonstrably had a sense of humour. In places the reporting of his interactions with his shipmates was a little strongly worded for the 1950s – but he managed this by a clever footnote in chapter 5 which says ‘Fock – a Swedish word meaning foresail’!
Eric Newby himself was an extremely interesting character. He went on to serve with distinction in the Black Watch in the war being awarded an MC. He served in the Special Boat Squadron – the nautical wing of the SAS, so he was clearly was an elite soldier. He was a prisoner of war in Italy (twice) and then after the war went on to have an interestng and successful career as an explorer and travel writer; his most famous book being ‘A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush’
The text was far too technical and complex with lots of talk about top gallants, royal mains, halliards and bunt lines – and I had to skim read those bits as I didn’t really understand them. But overall, despite the impenetrable vocabulary – which wasn’t helped by the liberal use of Swedish when recounting conversations with other crew members – you could get a flavour of what the life on board ship was like.
I have a few other gripes: Newby never once articulated the fact that there was an annual race of all these grain-holding sailing ships back to the UK from Australia; it was implied once he started his account of the return leg (they sailed down from Dublin to Australia in ballast, then loaded up with grain and then headed back to Ireland.) Some scene-setting early in the book would have helped.
It is a book of its time. Unsurprisingly there are tiny glimpses of casual racism and sexism though on the whole this wasn’t too bad. The fight scene was gratuitous.
Newby demonstrably had a sense of humour. In places the reporting of his interactions with his shipmates was a little strongly worded for the 1950s – but he managed this by a clever footnote in chapter 5 which says ‘Fock – a Swedish word meaning foresail’!
Eric Newby himself was an extremely interesting character. He went on to serve with distinction in the Black Watch in the war being awarded an MC. He served in the Special Boat Squadron – the nautical wing of the SAS, so he was clearly was an elite soldier. He was a prisoner of war in Italy (twice) and then after the war went on to have an interestng and successful career as an explorer and travel writer; his most famous book being ‘A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush’
October 13, 2016
I read my father's paperback. I read it twice. I don't like to spend too much time thinking about how wonderful the past was because we'll never know it but I envy Newby's carefree manner and how he went sailing because his advertising job folded. I'm going to learn to sail through a course and official channels and i'm considered half mad for taking a year out to do this. This book is testament to doing something wonderful, I admire Eric Newby. Not only this but it's a great read and you don't need to know too much about sailing, rigging and tides to understand it. I love books about sailing and found some knowledge helped reading The Riddle of the Sands but anyone could pick this up and read it on the Central Line and easily imagine all the chapped lips and oilskins. The writing has great humour and pace and we learn about what made the callow teenager a man. I'm envious to the adventure; to have been part of the events that are listed in the book and admire the tremendous understatement in the achievement. Books like this are great because we're safe in knowing the events are real and suspect that the best parts are unknown. As such, this book is inspirational, and I think maybe my favourite book of all time.
February 21, 2017
In 1938, at the age of 17, Eric newby signed on as an apprentice seaman on the Moshulu, one of the last of the commercial sailing ships. Moshulu was part of a Scandinavian fleet sailing to Australia to pick up a cargo of grain. Eric newby's account of his experiences on this voyage is both enthralling and at times appalling. the horrible living and working conditions, disgusting food, fights, bullying etc, are vividly described, but also you get a sense of how exciting it was to be on a great sailing ship, and there are many humorous incidents. the voyage home is a race to see which of the great ships will get back first, and the poignancy comes from the awareness that this was the last time, WW2 put an end to any further grain races, and the age of commercial sailing was finally over. This is a fascinating look at a way of life that was about to vanish forever.
August 18, 2015
This is arguably the best of Eric Newby's numerous travel books, all of which are excellent. Rich in detail, unique in setting, intriguing characters met along the way. In addition to spinning a good yarn about a hard voyage and life at sea under sail, Newby enlivens his account with self-deprecating humour.
April 8, 2018
Of course it’s 5 stars, it’s an Eric Newby.
June 13, 2017
Eric Newby was born for adventure. In the case of "The Last Grain Race" the adventure was signing onto one of the last commercial tall sailing ships lugging grain around Cape Horn, all at the tender age of 18. Not only did Newby have to contend with being thrown into a world of sailing he knew nothing about, but he had to establish himself in the pecking order of the rough and tumble crew, and all this in Swedish, a language he had to pick up on the voyage.
In the case of "Love and War In The Apennines" it's the story of his capture in WWII in Italy, his meeting during captivity with his future wife, his escape from captivity, his life evading recapture and hiding out with Italian farmers in the Po valley.
He writes about it all with great humour and humility. An unforgettable character.
In the case of "Love and War In The Apennines" it's the story of his capture in WWII in Italy, his meeting during captivity with his future wife, his escape from captivity, his life evading recapture and hiding out with Italian farmers in the Po valley.
He writes about it all with great humour and humility. An unforgettable character.
January 30, 2018
This book is a must read for anyone interested in the story of sail. Eric Newby beautifully describes his life as an apprentice on "Moshulu". Throughout the book he tells his tales of hardy seamanship and day to day troubles as well as the problems with foreign crew-mates and lack of food and money. Newby describes these anecdotes very vividly, his descriptions of heavy weather and the inhospitable seas of the Southern Ocean are especially moving.
Although some of the sailing terminology associated with 4 masted barques is sometimes rather technical its more than worthwhile to take a little extra time and get acquainted, it only makes the book more enjoyable. For any keen sailor I recommend "The Last Grain Race" it will only grow your respect for the sea and the true sailors of the clipper fleets.
Although some of the sailing terminology associated with 4 masted barques is sometimes rather technical its more than worthwhile to take a little extra time and get acquainted, it only makes the book more enjoyable. For any keen sailor I recommend "The Last Grain Race" it will only grow your respect for the sea and the true sailors of the clipper fleets.
February 4, 2019
Let me start by saying I know nothing really about sailing or sailing ships and had no particular interest in them. I read that this was the first book of Eric Newby, who went on to become a great travel writer. I wanted a book about an adventure for a reading challenge and somehow stumbled upon this one (which I had to order through interlibrary loan). I'm so glad I did.
The book requires some patience with the garble of Swedish and Finnish terms and the details of sailing terms that are only generally explained. Yet somehow that didn't deter me at all from wanting to follow along on the voyage and hear about all of the hard conditions on board the ship. Newby didn't know anything of sailing when he signed on to the crew, nor did he speak the ship's language, but no one seemed to mind.
The photographs in the book are awesome.
The book requires some patience with the garble of Swedish and Finnish terms and the details of sailing terms that are only generally explained. Yet somehow that didn't deter me at all from wanting to follow along on the voyage and hear about all of the hard conditions on board the ship. Newby didn't know anything of sailing when he signed on to the crew, nor did he speak the ship's language, but no one seemed to mind.
The photographs in the book are awesome.
January 9, 2020
My First Read of 2020 and a book from a time now forgotten.
This started off slowly and I found the first 40 pages or so hard going. But once the Voyage got going the book came alive.
I have read reviews of people who have read this book several times and I can see why. I expect there are new things to find in the pages (much like the Journey itself) with each read.
It is told in a strange Language of pigeon English-Swedish and Sailing Terms, which I eventually picked up, but I think it does add to the picture being told.
It started off a three out of five but by the end its not far off being a full five. Its a story of a Journey and a way of life that went on for Centuries and now with the modern world never does or never will again. Its a shame.
This started off slowly and I found the first 40 pages or so hard going. But once the Voyage got going the book came alive.
I have read reviews of people who have read this book several times and I can see why. I expect there are new things to find in the pages (much like the Journey itself) with each read.
It is told in a strange Language of pigeon English-Swedish and Sailing Terms, which I eventually picked up, but I think it does add to the picture being told.
It started off a three out of five but by the end its not far off being a full five. Its a story of a Journey and a way of life that went on for Centuries and now with the modern world never does or never will again. Its a shame.
August 11, 2023
The title pretty much says it all. In 1938, the last of the great merchant sailing ships went from Europe to Australia to load the grain harvest and bring the grain around South America and back to port. Motorized ships were taking over the trade, and the start of the war shortly ended the days of sail. This is a detailed account of how a sailing ship operated, and by detailed I mean highly technical in the language of the working sailors. I learned SO much, and even though I often had no idea what they were doing running up and down the masts in all kinds of conditions, every moment was fascinating. Oh, and the author took photos, even from above in violent weather, and there's an extensive photo section in the book. Terrific adventure, amazing story.
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