Tzu Hang moored in the Yarra River, Melbourne, December 1956.

Among the rushing, excited crowds in downtown Melbourne during the 1956 Summer Olympics, the presence of a 46’ ketch on the Yarra River, even though it was flying the Red Ensign, would have scarcely been noticed, especially since it was dwarfed by the Royal Yacht, Britannia, moored opposite, which drew daily crowds.

Those who did make enquiries would have found that it was called Tzu Hang, had been built in Hong Kong from teak, with bronze and copper fastenings, and shipped to England in 1939.  It was purchased in 1951 by Beryl and Miles Smeeton, an English couple who had settled on Salt Spring Island in British Columbia, Canada, and had been sailed out there via the Panama Canal, with only their 14-year-old daughter, Clio, as crew, before crossing the Pacific Ocean in 1956.  The ketch was now bound for England via Cape Horn.

 

Clio, left, with her dog, Poopah, Beryl holding Pwe, and Miles Smeeton, upon their arrival in Victoria, British Columbia, June 1952.

 

Beryl and Miles were unknown then, as was their young crewman, John Guzzwell, but all three of them would go on to become household names among anyone with an interest in voyaging under sail.  On 14 February 1957, Tzu Hang pitchpoled in the Southern Ocean on their way to Cape Horn as recounted in the book Miles wrote, Once is Enough, first published in 1959, and still in print, a story that captivated the world.

 

Miles and Beryl Smeeton, left, with John Guzzwell, right, and Clio seated behind, in Tzu Hang's saloon during their Pacific crossing in 1956.

 

John Guzzwell also published an account of that event, in his evergreen book, Trekka round the World, but his story, and that of his 20’ 6” yawl, will have to wait for another time.  The story of Beryl and Miles is more than enough to fill an entire biography, let alone a short article.  They were extraordinary people.  If ever a couple were made for each other, it was these two.  They were equally fearless, courageous and tough.  Miles, who retired from the British Indian Army with the rank of brigadier in 1947, was famous for standing up in his armoured vehicle during battle in WW2, directing the action, heedless of enemy fire, and was revered by his troops, while Beryl was known for riding a horse from Ecuador to Tierra del Fuego, and later walking from Shanghai to Rangoon in the 1930s, both journeys considered insane for an unaccompanied woman, or possibly anyone.

 

Miles and Beryl Smeeton aboard Tzu Hang in Hawaiian waters.  Photo: John Guzzwell.

 

Beryl, who was also in the army when they met, was married to someone else, but they recognised each other immediately.  Before long, they were scaling mountains and trekking across deserts together, and married in 1938.  I get the impression that, in many ways, Beryl was the driving force behind their partnership.  It was she who declared that she’d like to sail Tzu Hang back to England via Cape Horn, and who talked a reluctant Miles into it.  In Because the Horn is There, the account of Tzu Hang’s third, and finally successful attempt to round Cape Horn, Miles wrote that he would have been quite content to leave things as they stood (two failed attempts), but that Beryl never liked giving up on things, and that the failure had rankled her for years.  He also mentioned a military report about his conduct in the army, which read, ‘This officer has an ability to get himself out of situations he never should have gotten into in the first place.’  Miles claimed the report should have read, ‘situations his wife got him into…’

 

Miles and Beryl on the bow of Tzu Hang, a couple who were made for each other.

 

In a new edition of Trekka Round the World that John Guzzwell produced in 1999, he reinstated some passages that were edited out of the original book by his first publisher, Adlard Coles, including a hilarious account of picking up a mooring with Tzu Hang at the Akarana Yacht Club in Auckland, in full view of the commodore and other club members.  The episode shows something of Beryl’s steely character.  Unknown to the crew, the engine’s gearshift lever had disengaged from the transmission, with the consequence that when Beryl put the gear lever in reverse and revved the engine to stop the yacht, it charged ahead at 7 knots, ramming Miles in the dinghy and capsizing it.  He was just able to leap out of the dinghy as it went under, and climb up the bobstay, while John hastily thew over the main anchor.

 

Beryl looks like she is in command here, but there is no doubt their strengths complimented each other, and shored each other up against any weakness.

 

Miles had been yelling at Beryl to put the motor in reverse, which apparently upset her, since she knew she had followed his instructions.  ‘Did I get the bastard?’ she asked John coldly, adding, “Oh, good!’ when she saw the upturned dinghy disappearing astern.  Luckily, the anchor dug in, Miles climbed up the bobstay and cut the engine, and the boat, which had been steaming around in circles, came to a halt.  Beryl had gone below and was knitting on the saloon settee.  John noted that he and Miles knew when to shut up.

I remember reading Peter Pye’s description of meeting them by chance at his local boatyard in Essex, UK, one cold, autumn morning.  Peter, who’d recently returned from a voyage to the Caribbean with his wife, Anne, aboard their gaff-rigged cutter, Moonraker, said that there was a keen north wind blowing down from the Arctic, and the smell of snow was in the air, but Miles and Beryl wore no overcoats or hats, and the shirt Miles was wearing had a couple of buttons undone, with the hairs on his chest peeping out.  They were laughing gaily at something, faces full of delight at being alive.

The Smeetons said they were looking for a yacht, despite having never sailed before, in which they proposed to sail back to Canada.  It sounded foolish, and plenty of other dreamers in those post-war years never got beyond England’s shores, but not many people are as capable as the Smeetons.  When introduced to Peter Pye, Miles mentioned, perhaps with a lack of tact, that he’d met a friend of theirs, who told him, to paraphrase slightly, ‘If that man could cross the Atlantic in a boat like his, I am sure you can.’  The Smeetons found Tzu Hang shortly after, and the two couples became close friends, so much so that the Pyes sailed Moonraker out to British Columbia, via Panama and Tahiti, to visit the Smeetons the following year, as recounted in Peter Pye’s book, The Sea is for Sailing.

I remember an amusing incident, recounted by Miles in The Sea was our Village, when Peter and Anne sailed Moonraker past Tzu Hang for the first time, and Miles called out, ‘What do you think of her?’  To which Peter replied, ‘Too much freeboard,’ perhaps a fine retort to Miles’ earlier comment.  Miles later said that ideas about appropriate freeboard have changed since those days, and he considered Tzu Hang’s freeboard to be just about perfect.

Moonraker, as Miles pointed out to a crestfallen Beryl, had hardly any freeboard.  It was just an ancient fishing boat, with old cogwheels and cannonballs (I kid you not) wedged in the bilges for internal ballast.  Anne Pye famously said that they sailed with one hand in God’s pocket (and the other, perhaps, on the bilge pump).  But the story of Peter and Anne Pye will also have to wait for another day.

 

 Moonraker setting sail from England in June 1952, bound for British Columbia to visit the Smeetons.

 

Another vignette recounted by Peter Pye was of the misty day when he and Miles stood together on the deck of Tzu Hang, and Miles said, looking out beyond the bowsprit, over the low banks of the river that seemed to disappear into space, ‘The world would be intolerable if adventure were not just around the corner.’  The Smeetons sailed Tzu Hang out to British Columbia via Panama without incident over the following year, a remarkable feat for people who had never set foot on a boat before.  The plan was conceived as a way to get their funds out of Britain, which had a monetary freeze in place, but by the time they got home, they’d fallen in love with ocean cruising as a way of life.

 

Tzu Hang tied up to the landing at Sat Spring Island, BC, after the Smeeton's voyage from England.

 

A few years later, they sold the farm on Salt Spring Island and set sail for the Melbourne Olympics.  They met John Guzzwell and Trekka in Sausalito, California, in July 1955, after his inaugural passage south from Victoria, BC, and the two boats rendezvoused in various ports across the Pacific to New Zealand.  Guzzwell left Trekka in storage there and joined Tzu Hang for the passage to Melbourne via Sydney, then on to the Southern Ocean.

 

John Guzzwell and Trekka outward bound from San Francisco  towards Hilo, Hawaii, after his initial meeting with the Smeetons.

 

In Trekka Round the World, John Guzzwell gives an amusing account of building a new mainmast for Tzu Hang on the island of Maui in Hawaii.  A Hawaiian of short stature approached John in the workshop, asking how tall he was, and where he came from.  John replied that he was six feet tall, was born in England, but lived in Canada now.  Then Raith Sykes, a 6’ 3” Canadian who was crewing on Tzu Hang, and also originally from England, arrived in the workshop.  Finally, 6’ 6” Miles turned up, with 14-year-old Clio, who was already 6’ tall, and the Hawaiian was convinced that English-born Canadians were a race of giants.  They wouldn’t let Beryl visit, as she was only 5’ 7”.  To add to Miles’ stature, he stood ramrod straight, possibly the consequence of a lifetime of military service, and his posture, along with his height and reserved demeanour, gave him a commanding presence that was often commented upon.

 

Miles Smeeton in later life.  Peter Pye wrote that Miles had a face carved sparingly from teak.

This reserved demeanour is very noticeable in Miles Smeeton’s books, all except the last one, The Sea was our Village, published in 1973, which happens to be my favourite.  Recounting their first voyage, from England to Vancouver, BC, in 1951-2, but written a few years after they made their final passage aboard Tzu Hang, the writing is very relaxed and playful, resulting in a vibrant story.  I am not sure what the Smeetons thought of the ‘hippie movement’ in the 1960s (not much, I suspect), but something of the social mores of that era seems to have infused this work, and allowed Miles to relax his somewhat rigid public persona.

 

Tzu Hang, as the boat looked in the years during which they roamed the world after their pitchpole in 1957, re-rigged without a bowsprit to maker sail handling easier, since they usually sailed without crew.

For the next twenty years, the Smeetons roamed the oceans of the world, along with their faithful Siamese cat, Pwe, who became almost as famous as them, and Miles wrote several books about their voyages.  What they are best known for, though, is the book, Once is Enough, recounting their first two attempts to sail around Cape Horn, and Tzu Hang’s subsequent travails.  On their first attempt, running down the westerlies from Melbourne with John Guzzwell aboard, they pitchpoled in the approaches to Cape Horn, losing both masts, the coachroof and the rudder.  For a while, it looked like the ship would founder, but somehow Tzu Hang rose over the following sea, despite being waist-deep full of water, and with a gaping hole in the deck where the coachroof had been.  Realising they had a chance, they bailed furiously until most of the water was out, then began emergency repairs.

 

One of the last photos John Guzzwell took before Tzu Hang pitchpoled.

 

This short film was made from footage, taken by John Guzzwell, that survived the pitchpole.  The last minutes of the film show the extraordinary severity of the weather.

 

Amazingly, they all survived, even Pwe, who was in poor shape for many days after the disaster.  They nailed sails over the gaping holes on the deck, built a jury mast and later a steering oar, and brought themselves to landfall in northern Chile, near Coronel, some 34 days after the storm.  They were lucky that the ship did not founder, and their survival skills were par to none, but their self-rescue was what people did in those more self-reliant days, when offshore sailors did not have EPIRBS or satellite phones.

 

Tzu Hang limping north towards Chile under jury rig after the pitchpole.  The large, white square in the deck is a sail covering the gaping hole where the coach house had been.

Undaunted, the Smeetons set sail for Cape Horn again the following summer, without John Guzzwell this time, who had returned to Trekka in New Zealand.  This time, they were rolled over while lying ahull in a gale, losing both masts, but did not suffer as much damage as the first time.  Capsizing a vessel, while dangerous, is far less violent than a pitchpole.  Limping back to Chile, they chose to ship Tzu Hang back to England for a proper rebuild.  As Clio said to her mother, once was enough, but twice was definitely too much!

John Guzzwell fishing while Tzu Hang limps up to northern Chile under jury rig.  Beryl sits beside him, cuddling Pwe.

 

From England, after completing repairs, they set sail to the east, through the Mediterranean, the Red Sea, East Africa, Durban - South Africa, the Seychelles, SE Asia, Japan, the Aleutian Islands, Canada, Panama, and back to England, completing a decade-long eastabout circumnavigation without drama, recounted in several books.  Finally, in 1968, they set their sights on one last attempt at Cape Horn, with Bob Nance, an Australian, as crew.

 

Working on the foredeck during Tzu Hang's third, and finally successful, rounding of Cape Horn

 

Bob’s brother, Bill, incidentally, had recently completed one of the most daring circumnavigations of all time, eastabout via the Southern Capes, including Cape Horn, in the 25’ Vertue-class yacht, Cardinal Vertue, known earlier for its participation in the inaugural Singlehanded Transatlantic Race in 1960, under the command of Dr David Lewis.  Bob had himself recently rounded Cape Horn on the 31’ Australian-flagged, Carmen-class sloop, Carronade, built in Sydney by it skipper, the equally young Andy Wall.

 

Bill Nance at the helm of 25' Cardinal Vertue, during his magnificent voyage around the world via the southern capes.

 

This time they made a successful voyage back to British Columbia via Cape Horn, Chile and Hawaii, after which Miles and Beryl sold Tzu Hang to Bob and retired to a life ashore, prompted possibly by a life-threatening medical emergency Beryl suffered in Honolulu.  After retiring from the sea, they founded an endangered-species animal sanctuary with their daughter, Clio, in Alberta, Canada.  Beryl passed away in 1979, and Miles died in 1988, but not before making one last ocean passage, this time as crew, aboard John Guzzwell’s 45’ Laurent Giles-designed cutter, Treasure, sailing from Victoria, BC, to Honolulu, Hawaii.

Every generation produces exceptional sailors and adventurers, though with the advent of satellite communications and navigation systems, it is arguable that we will never again know people with the independence and resilience of the Smeetons.  Even in their era, when going to sea meant casting off from the land and not being heard of again for weeks or months, until making your next landfall, they stood head and shoulders above most of their contemporaries.

 

Early books by Beryl Smeeton:

 

The Stars my Blanket.

Winter Shoes in Springtime.

 

Sailing books by Miles Smeeton:

 

Once is Enough.

Sunrise to Windward.

The Misty Isles.

Because the Horn is There.

The Sea was our Village.

 

Other books by Miles Smeeton:

 

A Taste of the Hills.

A Change of Jungle.

Completely Foxed.

Moose Magic.

Alligator Tales: and Crocodiles Too.

 

 

A note about the author:  Graham Cox is a singlehanded sailor, historian of small-boat voyaging, and author of the just-released, Last Days of the Slocum Era, Volume One and Volume Two.  The print versions of this two-part sailing memoir / selective history of cruising under sail since the mid-1960s, will be available from Amazon.com or Amazon.com.uk, in late May, 2024, or can be ordered from your local bookshop or library.  The ebook versions will be available from the above sources as well as from Kobo, or Barnes and Noble.  Graham is also the author of the Junk Rig Hall of Fame, and currently lives aboard his Cavalier 32, Mehitabel, in Kawana Waters Marina, Mooloolaba, in Queensland.

Walkabout on the slips in Durban, South Africa, December 1954. Photo:Eric Hiscock.

Walkabout is a 32', 12-ton, Alden-designed ketch with strong links to Australia. A sistership to W. A. Robinson's famous Svaap, it was built from Jarrah in Freemantle, Western Australia, by two brothers, the Driscolls, launched in 1952, and sailed to Durban, South Africa, in 1954, where they sold it. I first came across a reference to the boat in Eric Hiscock's Voyaging Under Sail in 1968, but could find no trace of it in Durban during my teenage years there, and nobody I spoke to knew where the ship had gone. People who had sailed on Walkabout out of Durban said it was massively strong, quite fast, and very wet at sea. It had a reputation for winning heavy weather offshore races.

In 1972, the boat turned up in Durban again, sailed by a couple from what was then known as Rhodesia, and their four young children. They had bought the boat in a remote area of Mozambique, and fitted it out there with great difficulty, due both to distance and the geopolitical realities of two countries sliding into civil war. Reading of their tribulations makes you wonder how they ever got away, and also assures you that people with such determination were sure to succeed in their endeavours.

Walkabout was designed in an era when sea-keeping took precedence over accommodations, so it was tight squeeze below for two adults and four children.

They were bound for Cape Town, Rio de Janeiro, the Caribbean and ultimately, England. I saw them again in Cape Town later that year, when I was leaving South Africa to migrate to Australia. In 1976, I was walking past a bookshop in Cairns, Far North Queensland, Australia, on my way back to Sydney from Rabaul, Papua New Guinea, after sailing David Lewis’s yacht, Ice Bird, across the Coral Sea, when I saw Mike's book in the window. In a rush of adrenaline, I went into the shop and bought it. In those days, I bought every ocean cruising book I could lay my hands on, but it became one of the select few that I would never part with. 

 

I still remember the thrill of spying this cover-jacket in that bookshop window in Cairns.

 

Besides the drama of undertaking such an adventurous cruise with four young children, the book provides a wonderful portrait of the dynamics of living together in such a small space for a significant period of time. It wasn't always easy, but Mike writes with such affection for his wife, Liz, and the children, Kevin, Mark, Bruce and Rachel, that it made me dream of being a part of their family, or having a salty gaff-rigged ketch and a brood of wild children myself. The youngest child, Rachel, had to sleep on the engine box, and complained bitterly when the rest of the crew kept invading her space! Photos of them all in the cabin together demonstrate just how crowded it was.

 

 

Meals were a hectic time, with everybody crowded around the saloon table.

This was an age before helicopter parenting became a thing, but even so, the Saunders children were given a remarkably free rein, and were often riotously exuberant. Walkabout's dinghy, known as Crawlabout, and deeply loved by the children, was stowed upright on the cabin top, and was a favourite haunt of the kids, where they read, played games, and indulged in flights of fancy, often imagining great voyages of their own. Once, on the way to Cape Town, Walkabout was overtaken by a gale while the children were in the dinghy. By the time Mike and Liz had the rig sorted out, the kids were so excited that getting them under control and safely down below seemed more challenging than dealing with the weather.

Not a helicopter parent in sight. The kids playing a boisterous game called bottom s'ils, where they hung over the side of the boat and got dunked in the sea as Walkabout rolled down the trades.

I love the photo in the book where the kids are hanging out over the side of the boat in their harnesses, playing a game called bottom s'ils, where their bottoms got dunked into the sea as Walkabout rolled down the trades. The two older boys were working members of the crew, standing watches and assisting with maintenance and navigation, while the younger two occasionally assisted.

Mark recording the time as Mike Saunders takes a sight of the sun with his sextant.

They all became resilient and self-confident, making friends in various ports, handling foreign currencies and adapting to local customs. The kids loved it most when they met other yachts with kids aboard, or if there were good toyshops ashore, but they would also row across to any yacht that interested them and introduce themselves, invariably being invited aboard and initiating new friendships for their parents as well.

The kids in the cockpit after making landfall, eager to go ashore and meet new friends.

The voyage was only intended to last a year, except that the youngest boy, Bruce, fell and broke his wrist in Cape Town. Winter was already upon them, so they decided to stay until the beginning of summer. Mike went off to work, and the boys demanded to go to school. Eventually, on 13 November 1972, they set sail for Rio de Janeiro via Saint Helena Island. It took some time to adjust to being at sea again, and to the motion of rolling down the trades, but eventually they all got their sea legs, and Mike and Liz worked out how to get the best out of the boat. From Rio, they sailed up to the Caribbean and on to the Azores Islands, then finally to England. Mike paints alluring portraits of all these places, and of the people they met along the way.

Rolling down the trades. Note the upright dinghy, which was a favourite place for the kids to play.

One of the best aspects of The Walkabouts is the author’s sense of humour, and how he captures the excitement of the children when special occasions occur, like landfalls and birthdays. They spent Christmas at sea between Saint Helena Island and Rio de Janeiro, and the build up to the day is hilarious. The day itself sounds like great fun, with the children putting on a play that they wrote themselves, and a great feast. Because I am a solo sailor, reading this book can sometimes make me a little wistful.

Bruce, the youngest boy, was a keen fisherman, and also had a vivid imagination. Mike paints an endearing portrait of his shenanigans.

He also writes with some detail about Walkabout's unusual ketch rig, which had a gaff mainsail and a bermudan mizzen with a mast the same height as the mainmast. He came to love this rig, unlike the Driscolls, who reported to Eric Hiscock that the mizzen was useless and that they wanted to convert the boat to a sloop. Mike Saunders would have been grateful that they didn't. He found that by rigging a vang from the end of the mainsail's gaff to the mizzen masthead, he could prevent the gaff from sagging to leeward, and make the boat perform well to windward. Off the wind, he sometime flew a squaresail, and at other times a mizzen staysail, noting that the options for adjusting the rig and the centre of effort were almost limitless, and that each sail was small enough to be easily managed by one person.

Walkabout close-reaching with the vang from the end of the mainsail gaff sheeted home to the head of the mizzenmast, stopping the gaff from sagging off to leeward, and greatly enhancing the boat's windward performance.

Ultimately, Mike Saunders' book, The Walkabouts, is a lively, entertaining and informative read that gives the reader a clear insight into the realities of cruising long-distance on such a small boat with a large family, in the days before modern communications and navigation systems came along. By the end of the book, you feel as if you know these people personally, and that Walkabout must be just about the ideal small bluewater cruising yacht. Or at least I did.

And now for a portrait of one of the most iconic yachts of all time, certainly the best known junk-rigged yacht in the world.  Blondie Hasler conceived Jester, his carvel-planked, 25' Folkboat, after some years of conventional ocean racing, having decided there must be a better way to cross oceans that to spend hours at a time on the foredeck, often in less than ideal conditions, cold, wet, tired, and at risk of being washed overboard, while reefing or changing sails.

After flirting with the Lapwing rig, he devised a simplified version of the Chinese lug sail rig, or junk rig as it is colloquially known, and proceeded to prove its efficacy by sailing it to New York and back across the North Atlantic Ocean in the inaugural Singlehanded Transatlantic Race, later known as the OSTAR, in 1960.  He was also the organiser of the OSTAR, as well as inventing the servo-pendulum, wind-driven self-steering system, and the self-tailing winch.

Jester and Blondie Hasler at the start of the 1960 Singlehanded Transatlantic Race.

Jester's guiding principle was that the boat could be handled at sea entirely from the small, circular, central hatch, which he called the control station.  All running rigging led here, and there was a vertical whipstaff below decks, with lines running back to the tiller, which came in through a slot in the transom, sealed with a watertight gasket, allowing Blondie to steer when necessary from the comfort of the hatch.

The view aft while underway, with Blondie controlling Jester from the central control station.  The box on the deck behind him contains the tails of the sheet and halyard.  He also invented an ingenious, rotating pramhood for the circular, central hatch, which could be rotated so that the opening was always to leeward, allowing the hatch to remain open for watch-keeping and fresh air in all but the most extreme weather.

Blondie peering out of Jester's rotating pramhood.

Blondie Hasler and Jester at the start of the 1964 OSTAR.

Blondie Hasler sailed Jester in the first two OSTARs, coming second to Francis Chichester in 1960, who was sailing the 40' sloop, Gypsy Moth 111, with an elapsed time of 48 days, compared to Chichester's 40 days, a remarkably close race result for two very unevenly matched boats.  After the 1964 race, he sold Jester to his friend, Mike Richey, founder of the Royal Institute of Navigation, who sailed the boat in a further 13 transatlantic passages, the last at the remarkable age of 81.  Throughout all of this passagemaking, Jester remained the simplest of boats, with no engine or electrics.  In later years, Mike Richey took a hand-held GPS receiver with him, but no other gadget ever came aboard.

This is one of my favourite photos of Jester and Mike Richey, taken by Henri Thibault at the start of the 1992 OSTAR, and published in the February edition of Cruising World magazine, illustrating an article about Mike Richey written by Herb McCormick.

Like a monk in his cell, Mike Richey felt at home in Jester's minuscule cabin.  He once considered the life of a monk, and took solace in the solitude of the ocean.

For me, Blondie Hasler's simplified junk rig for western yachts is one of the most brilliant design developments in the cruising world,  and it is certainly ideal for older, or geriatric sailors like myself.  At the age of 72, I no longer feel I can work the foredeck on a small yacht at sea, and even going to the mast to reef the mainsail does not appeal.  Because I sail in tropical and sub-tropical waters, I don't feel the need to stay inside the vessel, as the skipper does in Jester, but am happy to have a rig that allows mew to stay in the cockpit, especially one with a solid dodger and cockpit roof, as I fitted to my Tom Thumb 24, Arion.

Arion en route from Middle Percy Island to Digby Island, in central Queensland, May 2016.  Photo by Helen Palmer, SV Alchemy.