-Rameq

SESS
The thousands of visitors

a few moments to look at the

kum, 38-foot Indian canoe in which

“who
come to Thunderbird Park in
Victoria each year always stop for

Tili-

Captain Voss crossed the Pacific,

Indian and Atlantic Oceans.

The cruise

of the Tilikum

‘teen

By BERT WHYTE

IT was in 1903 that I first met Voss. I was combing the

beaches of Table Bay, South

Africa just then, and one

€ day I came upon a strange and tiny craft hauled out
Ubon the sands. A little man was busily tacking pieces of
erosene tin on her. ragged bilge.

, Morning,” said if
You've got there, Mister.”
“Oh, she’s all right,”

I Yo

“That's a queerlooking boat

said the small man.

“Maybe,”’ I replied, “but she won't do for these waters.

ws hard in this bay at times and our soweasters raise

@ sea that would sink that little
ere did you get her from?”
“Victoria, B.C.,” said the small man.

thing in two seconds.

“Just sailed her

over here via Sydney and Auckland.” : wae
AsI object to Morne my leg pulled, I looked knowing

and left that place. And.as I went away

I said to myself,

-That’s only a very small man; but, by Jove, he’s certainly

@ most monumental liar!”’

Now that little boat was the Tilikum, and the little

man
(and

was Captain J. C. Voss, FRGS
the Sales a too, I expect) that ever sailed

Mound this world since this ieee
Weston Martyr, in his introduction to Voss i

— the smallest ship

world was made.

The Venturesome Voyages of Captain Voss.

QFFiciat language turns gold
‘at 0, Woss; the,clearance filed
to the customs house in Vic-
ria on May 20; 1901 gave no
‘Ndication that one of the great-
hic @22 adventures in man’s
‘story had begun: :
P Cleared: Schooner yacht
‘tetan, J. C. Voss, master; four
Sa two men; for Tahiti, South
vevslands, with ballast and
The Pelican (soon to be re-
°a the Tilikum) was a
wilt Indian war canoe, 38

eb
tong, hollowed out of a

ible log of red cedar.

in ahiti, lying 4,438 miles away
He Southern Pacific seas,
the first stop in a
Voyage which ended

Margate, England after
SAN Voss (aided by a suc-
cession of mates) had crossed
the Pacific, Indian and South
Atlantic Oceans, on a route
which had taken him to Aus-
tralia, New Zealand, South
Africa, Pernambuco in South
America, and the Azores.

Jaimed from the banks of
oe ihieened in 1930, where she
lay neglected and rotting, the
Tilikum was brought home to
vittoria, repaired and repainted,
and now rests in state in Thun-
derbird Park, beneath a board
map showing the 40,000-mile
route she traversed under the
skilled handling of Captain
Voss. | ?

a

_ Here is the story of her travels,
as related in newspaper files
and in Voss’ own book.
> *

Voss, a small man who sported
a big moustache, was a seaman
of the old school, whd mourned
the passing of square-riggers
and hated the victory of steam.

“If I could be almighty only
for a short while,” he wrote,
“the first thing I would under-
take would be the wiping of all
those old smoke-pots off the
seas and replacing them by fine,
fast, square-rigged sailing ships,
a delight to every seaman’s eye.”

He first went to sea in 1877
as deck boy on a sailing vessel,
and in the next two decades
worked his way up to master.
Before the turn of the century
he had made an abortive trip to
Cocos Islands in search of buried
treasure; after the expedition
failed, he setled down in Vic-
toria and became a hotel keeper.
' Life ashore irked the doughty
captain. Living was cheap (for
50 cents he could dine at the
Poodle Dog on puree of game
soup, stuffed young turkey,
stewed tomatoes, mashed pota-
toes, strawberry short cake’ with
whipped cream, and coffee) but
there was little excitement, ex-
cept for the occasional runaway
horse on Government Street.
“When a magazine writer
named Norman K. Luxton ran
into Voss one day at the Queen’s

’ Hotel, and spoke mysteriously

of $5,000 they could split. by
travelling in a two-man ship
across three oceans, he found ‘a
willing listener. ~ :

It wasn’t long before Voss had
bought a staunch, salmon-smel-
ling war canoe from one of the
“illahees” of, one a oe of
Vancouver and, and was
busily remodelling it. He fitted
her with a keel, added oak ribs

braced with iron, secured ballast
so she would right herself in
any sea, built two water-tight
compartments, and put up three
masts. ‘

Loaded down with enough pro-
visions to last eight months, plus
guns, ammunition, medicine,
two cameras and an assortment
of Indian curios, Voss and Lux-
ton cleared customs May 20,
1901, and began their voyage
the following day.

*

The adventurers were in no
great hurry. At Dodges Cove,
five miles northwest of Cape
Beal, they tied up at an Indian
village for several weeks, visit-
ing a storekeeper named Mc-
Kenzie and spending the days
gathering clams, hunting and
fishing. :

Finally they headed out into
the Pacific, running 150 to i170
miles a day under full sail.

At Penrhyn Island they found
friendly natives, and went
ashore to gather cocoanuts,
bread-fruit, yams and taro, pigs
and poultry.

Passing Danger Island with-
out stopping, they sailed the
Tilikum without incident to
Samoa, where they got drunk
‘on kava. |

Luxton left the Tilikum at

_ Suva, capital of the Fiji Islands,
and took a steamer to Sydney.
Voss signed on Louis Begent, a
31-year-old native of Tasmania,
but they were only a few days

out to sea when a_ breaker.

struck the canoe and washed
Louis overboard.

Along with Louis went the
compass and-binnacle, and Voss
had to head for Sydney, some
1,200 miles away, “guided only
by the sun, moon, stars and the
ocean swell.”

At Sydney the Tilikum was
put on exhibition in Manly
Park. (admission sixpence) and
Captain Voss turned showman,
hanging photographs of natives
of the South Sea Islands around

the canoe to attract customers. .

.. When the Tilikum was being
hoisted ashore for repairs at
Melbourne a rope broke and
part of the canoe was caved in.
To earn money for repairs Voss

. accepted an invitation from some
residents of Ballarat to bring
his boat 100 miles inland to
their thriving mining community
of 40,000 people. ‘

On to New Zealand, where
Voss gave a public lecture in
Wellington, and again shipped
his craft by rail to an inland
city, Palmerston North, at in-
vitation of a Maori chief.

The Maoris came by the hun-
dreds to examine the Tilikum,
and seeing it “strengthened their
belief that in days of yore their
ancestors had emigrated in large
canoes to New Zealand from
some distant region of the
Pacific.”

* After a short respite in Auck-
land, Voss put out to sea again,
with another mate aboard, and
west of Cocas Keeling Islands
in the Indian Ocean he speared
a dolphin,
“The following morning,” he
wrote, “our bill of fare consisted
of cream of wheat with cream,
fresh fried dolphin, hot biscuits
with New Zealand butter and
coffee. Such was our break-
fast after 85 days at sea. Now,
you landlubbers, -do you think
you can beat it?” |
Becalmed three miles out-
side Durban Harbor, Voss hailed
a passing tugboat.
“What's your charge for tow-
ing deepwater vessels intd port?”
_ he enquired. :
“Sixpence a ton,” was the re-
ply. :
“Give me your towline, then,”
Said Voss.
“What is your tonnage ?” en-
quired the captain.
“About three tons.” :
“Hardly enough to pay for a

MARCH 23,

whiskey-and-soda,” snorted the
skipper, and rang for “full
speed ahead.”

At the urging of an old Vic-
toria friend whom he ran across
in Durban, Voss sent the Tilikum
600 miles inland to Johannes-
burg, where it was placed on
exhibition in a football grounds.

“You have established a
world’s record,’ commented one
visitor. ‘We ‘arg here about
6,000 feet above sea level. I
feel pretty sure that no other
deepsea vessel has ever reached
such an altitude.”

In Pretoria a horse kicked the
Indian figurehead off the Tili-
kum while it was on exhibition,
but the canoe itself was not
damaged.

Just 17 days after leaving

Cape Town the Tilikum drop-
ped anchor off the coast of St.
Helena, and Voss_ visited
Napoleon’s last residence.
_ It took another 18 days to reach
Pernambuco, and Voss noted
that the date was May 21, 1904,
exactly three years since he had
set out from Victoria. He had —
succeeded in crossing three ©
oceans and his contract with
Luxton was fulfilled.

On June 4, heading for Eng-
land, the wanderer turned phil-
osophical and wrote:

“Who will wonder that the
little vessel by that time had
become to me something more

*than inanimate wood? Patting
her side, I said, ‘Tilikum, after
all the ups and downs you have
experienced in surveying the
three oceans you have taken it
cheerfully, and it was to you like
a picnic. You have weathered
heavy gales; seas have broken
over you; every bone in your
body was crushed at Mel-
bourne, and at one time even
your head was knocked off.
Still, here you are, looking as
well as ever, and working dil-
igently your way over the salt
waves towards your final des-
tination. Sure enough, it is
quite a long way yet, 6000 miles
across the ocean; but if we look’
after each other as we have
done in the past we are bound
to make it! We shall then, on
our arrival in London, have the
satisfaction of laughing at all
those didn’t-I-tell-you people
and other skeptics who prophe-
sied at our outset from Victoria
that we would perhaps get to sea
but would never return to land
again’.” _

*

On September 2 at four o’clock
the Tilikum rounded the jetty
at Margate while thousands of
people cheered from the banks.

In‘the following months Voss
lectured at Edinburgh and Glas-
gow, was elected a Fellow of the
Royal Geographical Society in
London, lived the gay life of a
man-about-town.

Then the glamor faded, and
the little captain became rest-
less again. Soon he disappeared
from public view.

In 1911 Voss was a_ sealer
aboard the Chickishima Maru
and visited Yokohama after a
voyage to the Siberian coast.

On July 27, 1912, he started a
roung-the-world trip in the®Sea
Queen, a small vessel carrying -
only two crew members. But
the following month a typhoon
damaged the ship and forced it
back to port for major repairs.

People forgot about Voss, and
they forgot the Tilikum, too.
The vessel lay on the banks of
the Thames until 1930 when a
London publisher issued a cheap
reprint of Voss’ book, The Ven-
turesome Voyages of Captain
Voss (first published in. Yoko-
hama in 1913) and interest in
the voyage as an historic saga
of the sea revived. Some Vic-
toria citizens found the ancient
Tilikum, brought her home, re-
ees her, and placed her on
exhi ition in Thunderbird Park, ay