The Merman of the Waratah

Chapter 2: A Voyage of Humanity

On July 7th, 1909, Waratah was ready to depart from Adelaide. George and Arion wished that they would be taking a much larger ship, for she had a 465-foot hull, a 59 foot beam and two quadruple expansion engines that could generate up to 1,003 horsepower. Her top speed was 13.5 knots, pretty slow compared to a regular ocean liner. Her displacement weight was exactly 10,000 tons. The cost of building and fully equipping Waratah had reached over £139,900. Her operator, the Blue Anchor Line, was expecting a good return on its investment.

The Browns and Arion were given comfortable cabins on the promenade deck: a triple berth cabin for the women, an exclusive stateroom for Edwin and a double berth for the boys. Arion liked this privacy as it would give him and George some time alone. Joining them would be 211 other passengers and crew and her ship's captain was Joshua Edward Ilbery. He had thirty years of experience with the Blue Anchor Line and many passengers felt safe under his command. Among the passengers was a convict being extradited to Transvaal Colony.

"Do you think you will be able to last?" asked George once they had settled into their cabin. "This voyage will take us a few weeks."

"I dunno, I've never been on a boat before."

At noon, the ship cast off her moorings and set off for Durban and Cape Town, carrying a special cargo of flour, wool, dairy, frozen meat, and 7,800 bars of bullion. The Brown women were looking forward to a great deal of social events with Captain Ilbery, who would lead Sunday services and mingle with them at parties and dinners. In addition to the cabins and the dining room, there was also a music room where people could sit and listen to concerts and a smoking room for men. No doubt Edwin was pleased to hear that.

Arion and George spent their first day aboard walking around the ship. First, they took a stroll around the promenade deck, had a race on the boat deck, played hide and seek in the hallways, had a big lunch of white meat in the dining room (Arion obviously did not want to eat fish) and listened to a concert in the music room. After a nice dinner of soup, they went back to the cabin and read a few books that George had taken with him. One of them was Hans Christian Anderson's The Little Mermaid.

"What you read about in that book is mostly true," Arion was saying to George as they were 30 pages in. "Hans Christian Anderson was among the few humans we could trust. He actually looked for us as research and he put them all into this book."

"He was?" asked George in surprise.

"Yes, or so the other merpeople tell me."

"Does that mean you'll live to be 300? Because that would be wonderful if we could live that long."

"You'd be bored, a short life of a hundred is better."

"I guess even merpeople have standards?"

"Of course, like not eating fish. They are our friends after all."

"Are any of them bad?"

"Only a few, but we never punish them by eating them, that's human business."

"Not that you like us eating fish."

"No, but now that you have me, I might make a vegetarian out of you."

"Only to fish if it pleases you. Maybe we'll have something different tomorrow."

So they went to sleep, wondering about tomorrow.

Tomorrow brought a clear sky, with temperatures of high 70 and low 70. The girls relaxed on the deck while the boys decided to have some fun by exploring the ship's boilers and cargo hold. They snuck in quietly, as not to be seen by the crew. The heat of the fire came down upon them as they set foot into the large, dark boiler rooms, the only light being the red-hot flames from the furnaces. They watched in awe at the stokers going back and forth with their shovels, picking up coal and throwing it into the boilers. They were tired, and sweaty, but they kept up the good work. To these men, a slave's life in the Old South in North America was a pleasure cruise compared to the lives they lead.