Wednesday, May 01, 2024

Mayday - and other maritime adventures

 Happy May day.

Over here it is the first day of Winter.

I greeted the day with tshirt and three Sun salutations at my yoga class. We ended it with parent teacher interviews.

However my evening got hijacked by a chance encounter with an article in the personal section of a northern newspaper in 1920.

this article


I was actually looking for his wife to check on when she was meant to have arrived and found an article that took James Augustus Edwards from "veteran of the Crimean War" (from an article about his son) and "bad author (from unkind - but probably true - reviews) to "orphan at 10, at sea at 13, cabin boy to a newspaper artist on Crimean warship at 14, ran away to Australia at 15" & more & more in a happy 79th birthday greeting.

Odds are, he might even be in this picture - Sunday morning divine service on board the "Caesar" in the Baltic fleet.

3 comments:

gz said...

A brilliant find!

Kelly said...

Happy May Day to you, as well. I can remember May Poles in school when I was very young. I mark the seasons by the solstices and equinoxes. (so I won't acknowledge summer here until mid-June.

jeanie said...

I shan't acknowledge until at least June if I can help it Kelly!

It was gz - he was also a terrible poet - I logged in to clean up the original article (which he probably put in himself) and found a poem he had written just below - https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/173786402/20156411#

(I just realised that there are 3 gmail accounts signed in on this computer - Mum's, one for Mum and Dad and mine!!)