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Sea Wake and Jungle Trail
by H. Warington Smyth
Frontispiece from the 1925 Edition

Sea Wake and Jungle Trail (1925)
by H. Warington Smyth

"Mr. Warington Smyth, who is head of the Mines Department in South Africa, is not only one of those fortunate authors who is equally skilled with pen and pencil, but also an exceptionally expert, practical sailor, as his previous book, Mast and Sail, testifies. He is thus able to depict as well as to describe his various experiences and adventures during many years’ travel. His devotion to animals and to the sea is such that he has the power of treating them as personal friends, and, above all, he has the gift of humour, which enables himand his friendsto see the bright side of everything." (From the publishers advertisement for Sea Wake and Jungle Trail).

"God of Nations, I thank Thee for all the joy I have had in life."
Earl Bryhtnoth in Ely Cathedral.

Introduction

AMID the artificialities and complexities of modern life and civilisation, I like the consoling thought that five thousand years hence, as five thousand years ago, the familiar rain-laden south-west wind will still vex the North Atlantic, and render soft the air to the children’s cheeks in England; the racing north-east trade will still blow forth its laughing cohorts of white-crested seas beneath the snow-clad peak of Teneriffe, and the high mists of Cape Varela and Hong-Kong; and still the great westerlies will drive the mighty grey-beard seas thundering in tireless array upon their courses from Horn to Cape.

And when the stores of coal and oil are finished, and electricity is stored in vast storage batteries charged by forests of steel wind mills, or when the intra-atomic forces within all matter have been harnessed to the use of mankind, I feel sure that men will still put off to sea, and with rope and canvas, use the cheapest and the most godlike of the sources of power in the worldthe circling windsto reach up the Straits, or run their easting down.

I said something of this to the crew just settling snugly in their bunks, but the practical Jim broke in" Now then, Skipper, it’s time for a yarn-a true one! Something you saw yourself-one about your elephants." Jim, the cook, had just finished stowing the last tin-mug in the galley for’ard on the starboard side. He ran a wet cloth over the cabin table, hung the cloth up, pulled his shorts down as far as they could come, smoothed his hair back, put a lump of chocolate in his mouth, and sat himself down with a contented sigh upon the foot of my bunk.

"Ware bucket," cried a voice from the companion hatch as that article was swung in deftly by its lanyard and clattered into place by the galley. Bob, the owner of the voice, came grinning into sight, his bare legs and arms burnt a brown russet colour matching his old khaki shirt and his mop of hair all glistening with rain. He gave himself a rapid rub down, and subsided on the starboard side producing an expostulatory grunt from the Cherub, first mate, who had to draw up his feet to make room.

This individual, who had just reached those years of discretion when man’s indiscretions commence in earnest, had gathered unto himself a pipe of elegant design with the aid of which he was now engaged in attempting to emulate his elders in the great art of blowing rings. Moreover, as became the Mate, he was more clad than the junior members of the crew, and displayed a certain superior appreciation of the comforts of life as they exist on board a six-tonner. He settled himself carefully on his back, and placed his feet, encased in seaman’s half boots, elegantly against the cabin roof which his legs could just reach conveniently from his bunk.

Outside a fresh clatter of rain descended and the harp-notes of the wind in the wire rigging rose to a high treble, as a hard westerly rain-squall fled across the dock basin and lashed the ripples along the white side of our little yawl. To shoreward dense clouds of mist piled themselves about the base and sides of Table Mountain, lost in the night. The booming notes of heavy seas bursting on the massive breakwater to windward came down the hatch and added to our sense of well-being.

We had had a hard wet race in a big sea during the afternoon and the snug cabin, although damp from the sea-water which had been swishing about above the cabin floor during the race, seemed now the very limit of luxury and comfort. "The snuggest place in Africa," we used to call the cabin of the Irex on such nights. To Jim’s invitation I grumbled a protest on behalf of a tired and comfortable skipper enjoying an evening cheroot of just suitable strength and blackness.

"No," said the Cherub, "I’ve heard all those before; tell us the one about the squall when you were on your beam ends for forty-five weeks-or was it seconds?"

The Mate’s somewhat malicious reference to a yarn of certain happenings which he, being accustomed only to craft with big cockpits and with proper beam, could never credit, was lost on Bobby, who interjected a brilliant and original suggestion.

"Look here, Skipper," he said, "some of us have heard some of your yarns, and some of us haven’t you know what I mean! Now, why don’t you publish a book with all of them in and then we could have them ourselves; and when you are up-country we could read them on board on nights like thislike you used to read those Yankee yarns to us."

"Yes, but when you go into print, my dear Bobby, especially in these days of horror-magazines and lady novelists, you’ve got to put up some tall stuff in the way of episodes, and terrific descriptive matter to match. Whereas all I’ve got to tell you is things as they happened and as I saw them."

"Skipper," said Jim, who was evidently not the least discouraged by my pessimism and considered the whole matter settled, "put in lots of sketches of baby elephants and boats and things, that’d be grand."

Here the Mate came in. "I’d like to see what the other people think about that beam-ends stunt. Anyway, Skipper, do please write a book about all the boats you’ve sailed inincluding those Burmese pearlers. I’m sure all the yachting chaps would like them. There is so little proper ship literature in the world, take it all round. You go and look in all those book-shops in Adderley Street, and hardly ever see anything decent; that’s to say about the sea!"

"You bring up visions," I said, "of the despairing look of my dear and valued friend John Murray, who when he looked at the untidy MS of Mast and Sail, said in a hopeless voice, But what public are you going to appeal to?"

"What did you answer, Skipper? and did he publish it for you after all? " asked Jim.

" Oh, my only reply was, Well, all the merry men who like boats not only yacht owners don’t you know. Yes, he published it and it sold out more or less. But this is differentschool pranks and canoe voyages, elephants and deep sea they don’t mix."

At this stage, for the first time, the small form of a gentleman known as the Kitten, or the Bilge-Boy, emerged from a rug on the for’ard bunk right up in the not very roomy fo’c’sle, and his piping treble voice spoke up "Oh, please; just try, Skipper. I’ll buy a copy when I am grown up. And you must have a picture of Irex."

Thus, my dear crew, and you other merry folks who care for boats and puppy dogs of every kind, and the wide spaces and great winds of Heaven, I pass on to you a few casual yarns about some of the good comrades, men and animals, I have met in the Sea Wake and on the Jungle Trail.

H. WARINGTON SMYTH.
ROYAL CAPE YACHT CLUB, September, 1924.

Contents

Introduction

The Mother Elephant

A Little Elephant

"Rover"

A Monsoon Squall

The Magic Shores

The Rajah And The Prior

Singora

The Escapade Of Chang

The Three Hundred Peaks

An International Situation

Left!

The Whale And The "Meercat"

A Backhand Gale

Breakers

The Tramp In War

The Retardation Of The Abbey Clock

A Way Of Life

L’Envoi

About the Author of Sea Wake and Jungle Trail

Herbert Warington SMYTH was born on June 4, 1867 and died December 19, 1943 at age 76, He was a Barrister and was widely traveled. He was to serve as Director of the Department of Mines in Siam, Secretary for Mines in the Transvaal, Commissioner for Mines in Natal and as Secretary of Mines and Industries in the Union of South Africa. He was the author of several books, including: Five Years in Siam, Mast and Sail in Europe and Asia, Sea Wake and Jungle Trail and Chase and Chance in Indochina. He was a Fellow of the Geological Society and the Royal Geographical Society, a Lieutenant-Commander in the Royal Navy Voluntary Reserve (1915-1918) and was honored as a Companion of the Most Distinguished Order of Saint Michael and Saint George and as Commander of the Order of the White Elephant of Siam. He married Amabel Mary Sutton in 1900. He was first cousin to Robert Stephenson Smyth Baden-Powell (B-P, founder of the World Scouting Movement).

Books by H. Warington Smyth

		Five Years in Siam (1898). Chapter I: The River and Port of Bangkok.
		Mast and Sail in Europe and Asia (1906). "Illustrated from drawings by E.W. Cooke, R.A., W.L. Wyllie, A.R.A., W. Robins, Sir W. Warington Smyth, F.R.S., Major Nevill Smyth, V.C., and the author. A momentous work of reference for world sail. There is more concentration of eastern sail types in this book than in any of our other reference volumes on the subject and each is fully illustrated in a volume that is just stuffed with illustrations…. There are also line drawings and/or sail plans of a number of the craft described, including a Norwegian Pilot Boat, a Northland Boat, a Norwegian Skiff, a Redningskoite, a Scotch Fifie and a Scotch Zulu. A thorough-going reference indeed!" (Description from D. N. Goodchild, "The Shellback’s Library").
		Chase and Chance in Indochina (1934). "Autobiographical, fictional account, Chase and Chance in Indo-China, might be read alongside this publication (Five Years in Siam) for insights into Smyth’s outlook. Its narrator, "H. W.," works with people who have the same names and personalities as did Smyth’s actual associates in Siam. His duties at the Department of Mines, the time period and even the episodes are familiar. There is, however, an element of fantasy that the rubric of fiction allows him to pursue." (From the Introduction to Five Years in Siam by Tamara Loos of Cornell University).

		Sir Warington Wilkinson Smyth, M.A., F.R.S. was the father of H. Warington Smyth and Sir Nevill Maskelyne Smyth. He was a brother of Henrietta Grace Smyth Baden-Powell and Uncle to B-P. He was Professor of Mining and Mineralogy at the Royal School of Mines, President of the Geological Society of London in 1866-1868 and a Fellow of the Royal Society. After university, he spent more than four years in Europe, Asia Minor, Syria and Egypt, paying great attention to mineralogy and mining. Among his published works were A Year with the Turks (1854), and A Treatise on Coal and Coal-Mining (1867). He was knighted in 1887.
		Sir Nevill Maskelyne Smyth, son of Sir Warington Wilkinson Smyth, brother of H. Warington Smyth and B-P’s first cousin. He had a distinguished career in the army, rising to the rank of Major-General. He won the Victoria Cross at the Battle of Khartoum.
		Admiral William H. Smyth, grandfather of H. Warington Smyth, rose through the ranks of the Royal Navy to retire as an Admiral in 1863. He was a noted hydrographer and astronomer and was Vice President of the Royal Society. According to his great-grandson, his charts of the Mediterranean were still in use in 1961. His "Cycle of Celestial Objects" remains a classical text in the history of astronomy and was republished in 1986.
		B-P’s Mother: Henrietta Grace Baden-Powell, 1824-1914. Links to Admiral W. H. Smyth (B-P’s grandfather) and other members of the Smyth family including: Charles Piazzi Smyth, Sir Warington Wilkinson Smyth, H. Warington Smyth, General Sir Nevill Maskelyne Smyth and Nevil Maskelyne. She was the aunt of both H. Warington Smyth and General Sir Nevill Maskelyne Smyth.
		Baden-Powell Family History. A series of links based on the research of Robin Baden Clay, a grandson of Baden-Powell. They are focused on the genealogy of the Powell family. The author is extremely grateful to Mr. Clay for sharing the results of his labors with the Scouting community. Links are provided to pages for three of B-P’s brothers: Baden, Warington and Sir George Baden-Powell as well as to the genealogy of the Smyth and Warington families.
		Baden-Powell Home Page

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