Transport: Girl Pat

“I want you to get me right from the start, and no misunderstandings. I’m no Captain Bligh. But I’m no harbour loafer either. I’m a man who’s sailed the North Sea in 50 storms. . . . Who’s looked death in the face many a time without hatting an eye. So you’ll realise that I’m not sticking out my chest and bawling just because I’ve managed to get across from Grimsby to British Guiana in the Girl Pat.”

Ever since last June, when the truant British trawler Girl Pat, whose crew ran away with her on All Fools’ Day, was finally nabbed at Georgetown, British Guiana (TIME, June 8, 22 & 29), England has been kept atwitter by a series of Rover-Boys-at-Sea personal accounts by the Girl Pat’s doughty Skipper George Black (“Dod”) Orsborne spreadeagled across the pink pages of London’s sensational Sunday newspaper The People. Other excerpts:

“‘We’re with you, Dod,’ the men declared, ‘even if you sail her into hell!’ . . . If I live to be 100 I’ll never hear sweeter music than the chuckle of the sea past the Girl Pat’s bows, the soft whistle of the wind in her rigging, and the slap-slap of the waves against her creaking timbers as she dug her blunt nose into deep water. … At Tenerite … an elderly native came sidling up to me. … He started to praise his daughter and—well, although to me she was only some sort of a dark-skinned female out of Africa, my gorge rose and I socked him one and left him something to think about British seamen! … A million memories I’ve got of the cruise of the Girl Put.”

Last week, Britain’s sensation-reading public had something else to ponder besides Skipper Orsborne’s memories artfully ghost-written in third-rate Kiplingese. Up in Bow Street Court stood Skipper “Dod” and his Brother Jim Orsborne to hear themselves indicted for stealing the Girl Pat. Trial begins next month in Old Bailey, promises to provide some Grade A nautical sensations. As the two accused sailors stepped out of the iron-grilled prisoners’ dock, their lawyer, Christmas Humphreys, hinted: “Very serious allegations will have to be made against certain witnesses for the prosecution.”

When Skipper Orsborne and his three freebooting cronies were lugged cursing to the Georgetown jail at the end of their jaunt, they were mysteriously released at once. Seamen John Hector Harris and Howard (“Ginger”) Stephens presently journeyed home to England via New York. The Brothers Orsborne landed back in jail for street-fighting, were kept there on complaint of the Girl Pat’s owners, Marstrand Fishing Co., who have already collected £3,000 insurance for her loss.

Left behind in Georgetown, the tubby little Girl Pat lay at her wharf while Lloyd’s agents suspiciously awaited “allegations.”