James Craig - Sydney to Melbourne

After a fantastic sail from Geelong yesterday, we´re back in
Williamstown, and out for another day sail. Again, it´s a good breeze
for the ´Craig´, and one could be no happier than the 84-year-old
Finn, Thor Lindquist, who is enjoying his first trick on the wheel of
a sailing ship for sixty-one years.
Thor went to sea in the three-masted schooner ´Alf´ in 1936, aged 15,
then joined the four-masted barque, ´Passat´, the following year. He
made two circumnavigations of the globe in her, taking timber to Cape
Town, and wheat from South Australia to Europe by way of Cape Horn.
He then joined the four-masted barque, ´Lawhill´, and stayed in her
for 5 years. It was a tough and brutal life, and many crew deserted -
some preferring to go to war, which had now broken out in Europe and
in the South Pacific. Thor had risen to the rank of able seaman in
the ´Passat´, and became sailmaker in ´Lawhill´. He doubled the Horn
six times, and signed off in Cape Town in May 1945. He then worked in
steam ships, and later emigrated to Australia in 1955. From 1958 he
worked in trading ketches all around our coast, and finally left the
sea in 1976. He was then employed to rig the Irish barque, ´Polly
Woodside´ (b.1885), in Melbourne, where he still volunteers to this
day, at the Melbourne Maritime Museum.
It´s a great privilege to have these men from the great days of sail
aboard our ship. There are not many of them left, but their skills
and traditions are being passed on to the new generation of sailors.
--- James Parbery.