HINDMARSH, Alice A.

Inquire · Offered by Peter Harrington

Lengthy diary of time spent on board a merchant vessel plying the Vancouver to Shanghai trade route, including records of two periods spent holidaying in Shanghai. A female traveller's lively and fast-paced record of carefree adventure on both land and sea. Visiting Shanghai, the "Paris of the East", for the first time and returning to the city a couple of months later, Alice Hindmarsh enjoys a hectic life of shopping, socializing, and dinners, during which laughter and fun are ever present, whether while sipping a tipple in a German-run beer garden or watching a motorcycling daredevil.Born in 1886 in Britain, Hindmarsh travelled in the company of her husband, Jack, who was employed as a seaman on merchant vessels during the 1920s and 1930s. This diary spans Jack's eight-month posting to the Oakworth, a 400-foot cargo vessel, for two return voyages from North America to Shanghai.Hindmarsh is entirely comfortable with life at sea. Her entries record longitude and latitude and distances travelled, and she freely uses naval terminology. The first volume opens with a short voyage from Manchester to Canada to rendezvous with Jack, during which she sits at the captain's table - "I sit at the Captain's right hand as I'm a sailor's wife and a member of the sacred profession" (14 May) - records with interest the acquisition of 18,000 stems of bananas in Panama, and stays fiercely independent ("lunch time we had such a discussion on marriage - I said I'd never say 'obey' to any man and

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