Speechification

You wouldn’t expect much direct connection between South Australia and Finland perhaps, save the odd bit of migration. Yet this edition of Hindsight tells tall tales of the tall ships that sailed between the top and bottom of the world (or vice versa, depending on your point of view.) The ‘windjammers’ carried grain from Cape Victoria up to the Aland Islands and to keep the journey economically viable, they raced via Cape Horn, perhaps the most dangerous waterway in the world.

Running as late as 1949, when steam ships finally took over, the tall sailing ships were manned by young Australians often with little or no experience of sailing at all, never mind racing up and down such a precarious route. So lash yourself to the mast and hold tight for memories of majestic ships heaving through giant waves in freezing seas, and some pig blood pancakes.

Hindsight: The Cape Horners (mp3)

This entry was posted by by dan on Thursday, February 14th, 2008 at 1:33 am . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.