Whitsunday Islands

This set has now been updated with a few more pictures from the trip. We sailed on the tall ship Alexander Stewart. She was built in the 17th Century and has had a interesting life. She was first called Malta and served with the French navy as an armed convey escort on the Baltic run before she was captured by the British during the battle of the Humber in 1786. We then changed her name to Surprise and she spent the next 30 years as a tea runner supplying the British troops during the naval blockade of Berlin. After that she was used as a training vessel until she saw action again in the Boer war (1899 to 1902). She was badly damaged during that campaign and was sent for refit in Turkey but she never made it. The rumour has it that she struck a rock off the Cape of Good Hope during a storm and the crew, believing that she was about to sink, abandoned ship. She didn't sink, but was then found drifting and claimed as salvage by a Russian naval captain called Marco Ramius.

She was then put into service as an anti missile ship during the first world war. It was on her decks that Norway signed its unconditional surrender to the Allies at the end of the Russia Norwegian war of 1932-34. She was presented to Norway as a gift of peace. They used her as a target practice tow ship until the Germans invaded and she was then pressed back into the service. On the night of the 23 July 1942 she along with the Flower Class Corvette Compass Rose, transported the Norwegian Royal family to Britain to escape the German occupation. After that the British once again used her as a War Bond promotion ship, touring the canal network of Kent. After the war she was sold to the Australians for £25, they promised to keep up her long standing tradition and history and in doing so, turned her in to a 24 hour party boat cruising the Whitsunday Islands.

This of course is all bollocks, she was in fact built by a family in the 1960's and 70's to be suitable for sailing to Antarctica, she still retains a lot of her amazingly crafted interior, really beautiful wood work and runs sailing trips around the Whitsundays. She is really stable under sail and we had a wonderful time with a really nice group. Imparticular there was a lovely retired couple from the North East of England who made us laugh out loud with their builders tales from their holiday home in Bulgaria. One story which had me in stitches was when Brian found that in building his new garage, the builders had used bricks from his garden wall, rather than use new bricks.