Former York Sheriff's Lady Brenda Tyler edits her uncle's diaries from his days as a merchant seaman on sailing ships

ON Wednesday February 22, 1922, a sail-rigged cargo ship out of Sweden was beating its way around the north of Scotland on the first leg of a long voyage south to Australia, carrying a cargo of Scandinavian timber.

The Transocean was a steel-hulled ship crewed by Scandinavians and one young Englishman, Godfrey Wicksteed.

The ship had already endured several days of buffeting winds ranging from what Ordinary Seaman Wicksteed described, in his diary, as 'light air' to 'hurricane'.

That Wednesday he was at the wheel in the afternoon watch. "All hands were out again taking in the Fore and Main Topsails in a strong wind," he wrote in his diary later. ""Before they could get 'em in a most furious squall struck us and caused the braces (which we have to pull as tight as bars) to seem like garter elastic... I don't think I ever remember hearing the wind make such a fearsome drone before. It's something altogether different to any howling or shrieking."

The winds endured off and on for several days until, in a moment of relative calm on February 26, the crew were able to observe the damage.

"We looked out and saw that the sea had busted up the port fore-rigging, taken the forward life-boat and hung it up to dry on the mainstay with its stern resting in the chocks of the starboard boat, which in its turn was trying to leave the ship without permission but was prevented by the backstays," Wicksteed wrote. "Aft, the port lifeboat had inverted itself upon the small 'go-ashore' boat and broken the back of it. The one remaining lifeboat had behaved pretty well."

There were compensations to these battles with the elements, however. On February 20, Wicksteed and his crewmates had been treated to a spectacular display in the northern skies.

The sea was playing 'second fiddle fortissimo and out of time', Wicksteed wrote. "(But) we got a fair display of Northern Lights for about a quarter of an hour. One saw many apparently parallel shafts of light which separately shone and faded in such a manner as to suggest somehow invisible fingers playing over harp strings which emitted light rather than sound."

Health and safety wasn't particularly high on the list of priorities of ship owners in those days. So, despite having only one lifeboat in good repair, the Transocean continued on her four month voyage to Melbourne, Australia - sailing down the coast of Africa, round the Cape of Good Hope, then across the width of the southern Indian Ocean. Wicksteed recorded the entire voyage in his journal. And then, for good measure, he recorded the second leg of a round-the-word voyage, in which the ship carried a cargo of grain across the Pacific to the Peruvian port of Callao; and finally the third leg, in which the Transocean sailed from Callao round Cape Horn and up the length of the Atlantic to Dunkirk.

He recorded every day of the journey in his often understated and sometimes dryly humourous diary entries. Easing out of harbour at Callao, he noticed two Peruvian warships. "One was a submarine that couldn't be submerged, and the other was sunk and couldn't be salvaged," he noted. "Nevertheless, there were seven Admirals in charge of this fleet." On January 13, 1923, they rounded Cape Horn in 'a very genuine gale of wind'. "The Skipper thought it likely that the wind might shift to the south'ard and ...he therefore held well off while the wind was still west, so that now we find ourselves in 58 degrees S within the floating ice limit, over a hundred miles south of the Horn," he wrote.

In all, the young Wicksteed kept diaries during three major voyages: one on the Transocean, and two more on a Liverpool-built sailing ship, the Bellands.

The diaries, hand-written on board ship so long ago, have now been edited and published in a new book, Trading by the Wind, produced by Wicksteed's niece - none other than Brenda Tyler, the York children's author and illustrator who, a couple of years ago, was also Sheriff's Lady.

The book is illustrated with black and white photographs taken by Wicksteed and his companions - and also by sketches and maps drawn by both Wicksteed himself, and by Brenda.

It provides an unforgettable account of the final days of the great ocean-going sailing ships: the daily routines of shipboard life, the battles with high seas and high winds, accounts of the sealife spotted and the various ports the ships called in at.

The ships were totally dependant on the wind, Brenda says - and on the compass and sextant for navigation. "There was no wireless communication, or modern equipment. The officers and crew worked with the elements to trade their cargoes of linseed, timber, wheat and nitrates across the oceans. Teamwork and camaraderie (were) vital for their survival."

Brenda's uncle had begun his life at sea as a 17-year-old when he was called up to serve in the First World War.

A Quaker conscientious objector, he ended up in the Merchant Navy, bringing wounded soldiers home across the Channel.

At the war's end, he decided to continue his career at sea, signing on to the Bellands, and later the Transocean, as an ordinary seaman. He rose through the ranks, eventually becoming the last Englishman to qualify as Master of a full-rigged merchant sailing ship.

But the age of a sail was quickly coming to an end. "These wonderful vehicles of ocean trade were disappearing - laid up never to sail again, lost at sea and not replaced, or stripped to become coal hulks," Brenda writes, in her introduction to Trading by the Wind.

Wicksteed himself went on to become a schoolmaster at top public school Gordonstoun, where he taught sail training to a new generation of pupils - among them the future Prince Philip.

Brenda has sent a copy of Trading by the Wind to Prince Philip - and has had a reply from the Prince's assistant private secretary Rachel Loryman. "The book will be a splendid addition to His Royal Highness's library," she wrote.

And so it will.

Trading by the Wind by Godfrey Wicksteed, edited by Brenda Tyler, is printed in hardback by First Printing. It is available, priced £15.99 plus £3 p&p, direct from Brenda at tomtecards@btinternet.com