Page:Yachting wrinkles; a practical and historical handbook of valuable information for the racing and cruising yachtsman (IA yachtingwrinkles00keneiala).pdf/127

 I remember how fascinated I was as a boy by the perusal of "Lord Anson's Voyage Round the World," telling how that famous English navigator, in his stout ship Centurion, doubled Cape Horn in 1740, visited the romantic isle of Juan Fernandez, and enriched himself and his accompanying bold seadogs by the capture of a Spanish galleon literally laden with treasure. Incidentally, the book describes the surprise experienced by the ship's company at the first sight of the proa, as used by the natives of the Ladrones. In a copy of the first edition of the work, in my father's library, was a quaint illustration of the proa under sail, with a plan drawn to scale, from which I made a crude model, and sailed her on an arm of the sea that washed the beach not fifty yards from our front door. I was not slow to recognize the advantage of the type in windward work. It was my good fortune in the year 1870, from the deck of the East Indiaman Hurkaru, bound to Madras, to obtain my first view of the Singhalese type of flying proa off the coast of Ceylon. The sight was novel and picturesque, and, being young and impressionable in those days, it was photographed indelibly on my mind.

The southwest monsoon was blowing briskly and the Hurkaru was bowling along with stunsails set at a nine-knot gait. It was my forenoon watch below, and I was suddenly awakened by a ship