60 years on... journal reveals teen’s headline hitting boat trip from Gwynedd to Brisbane
AFORGOTTEN journal recounting a father and daughter’s epic 17,000-mile voyage from Caernarfon to Australia via the Caribbean has been rediscovered.
The sea diary and papers were found by chance hidden in the compartment of an old sewing box and recount the amazing adventures of Ann Thomas, a then 19-year-old ‘Girl Friday’ who set sail with her dad Dick Thomas aboard a tiny trawler 60 years ago.
The unlikely adventurers, both from Anglesey, and two crew members cast off on a 48ft, 20-ton trawler called Isabel May from Caernarfon’s slate quay harbour on April 8, 1959. They were waved off by around 200 cheering well-wishers as they headed for Brisbane.
It took them eight months to reach their destination and the first thing Dick, then aged 58, did was to send a cable: “Arrived Brisbane. Both well. Inform Daily Post.”
It was a journey many at the time thought was foolhardy, although exciting enough to write a book about. Ann’s plan to do just that was never fulfilled.
She died four years ago, aged 75, but now her story has been shared to a wider audience thanks to her husband Ronnie Parry, 73, who found her journal.
At his home at Llanfaes, near Beaumaris, Mr Parry, a former town councillor and GPO engineer, said: “She was a fantastic woman. What courage it must have needed to sail all that way in all the dangers. I had not known her closely before she made the voyage but when she came back I did some odd jobs at her father’s farm. I really fancied her and we eventually walked out together and married in 1965.
“Ann lost two stones on the voyage. She rarely spoke about going out to Australia and didn’t wish to go back because her family are here.”
In her notes, Ann explained her father had been to New South Wales and always dreamed of going back one day before he got too old.
“He had always wanted to do it the hard way under his own steam. He said it was now or never.”
Strangely she referred to him in the papers as Mr Thomas and rarely as Dad. The sea was in his blood and three of his brothers were master mariners, Mr Parry said.
When they set sail in the shadow of Caernarfon Castle, they received a blessing from two local ministers and Dick’s wife Eluned gave him a Bible and prayer book.
Then they were off – but four miles into the Irish Sea they had to tie up because high winds delayed their departure. The living quarters below deck were a bare eight by 10 feet.
Ann wrote: “We were all happy at last to be going but a little scared of the unknown.”
The father and daughter were accompanied on board by Captain John Evans, 56, of
Llanallgo, Anglesey and two crew, who were selected out of 150 volunteers, after Dick made a public appeal.
They were Irishman Peter Campbell, 25, and Scotsman Bill Pollock, 29, the mechanic.
But Bill left after reaching the Canaries on the first leg on May 4, after an argument with Dick.
The others sailed on across the Atlantic, ran in to a huge Caribbean storm and, when they reached St Lucia, John Evans also quit.
He told the Daily Express: “It was not a happy ship. Early in the voyage we scraped the bottom in a Welsh bay. The compass was not properly adjusted until we reached Las Palmas. We could not get GMT on the radio when we were 500 miles out. We sailed to St Lucia. When repairs were made there to the hull the Lloyds agent said we were lucky not to have foundered, I decided it would be madness to carry on due to the condition of the vessel, we also had no mechanic.”
He worked his way back to Britain. Once back home he said : “It looks like suicide to go on but Dick will probably make it. He has the luck of the devil.”
After the Isabel May left St Lucia in a rough sea Ann recorded in her diary: “One morning Peter came up on deck and had an argument with Dad. Next I think Peter got hold of Dad and they were having a fight. I was having a turn at the wheel and threatened to leave it. That did the trick. Dad wanted to report Peter for threatening mutiny on the high seas but for the fact I stood up for Peter.”
They sailed on to Panama and during a gale a propeller was fouled, bending it and damaging the shaft, meaning a delay of several weeks before sailing through the Panama Canal with two other small craft.
Dick, Ann and Peter sailed across the Pacific to the Galapagos, where Ann was told she was the first Welsh girl the islands had seen.
Her mother Eluned said: “My husband knows what he is doing but if I had known this was going to happen I wouldn’t have let my daughter go.”
Ann wrote: “To help out my father I learned to steer the ship, it did take some time though. I steered the ship every four hours just like the crew all the rest of the voyage. The strain and long hours were beginning to tell on us all.
“After I’d cooked a meal no one would be able to eat it so it was thrown overboard... it proved to be quite difficult to cook on the gas stove when the ship was rolling.”
They were joined in the Galapagos islands by a German, 28-year-old Bill Walling, who was anxious to get to Australia and who brought the crew up to four.
In their next port of call, the Marquesas islands, they found the local postbox containing 18 letters, with a request for any passing vessel to pick them up and post them at the next port – in their case Tahiti. They left in the box a letter of their own to Prince Charles telling him about the voyage – and later Mrs Thomas got an acknowledgement from the Queen.
The crew hurled buckets of water at each other to celebrate crossing the Equator. “For over 3,000 miles we never saw any ships, it was very hard on the crew, tedious and lonely... I don’t think a cruise like ours has ever been undertaken with a girl of 19 on board.”
Ann wrote about the arrival at one island: “We were greeted warmly by a Liverpool man called Bob McIndrick who told us he had spent 52 years here and remembers the place under the rule of cannibals. Mr McIndrick was like a captain in charge, white-haired and suntanned. He generously gave us food and took us around. As Mr Thomas walked around here with me I held on to his arm tight and never let go, it was so dangerous.”
After their South Sea island-hopping Tahiti was a happy place, the food good, and they stayed several weeks. They were taken in canoes by the islanders, diving in the coral. “They are so warm and friendly people and gave us such a warm welcome. The crew had a good break in Tahiti and we made the most of it.”
There was one regret – Peter, on board all the way from Caernarfon, decided to leave, joining a yacht bound for Canada. Dick was upset “but they shook hands as mates”.
A new crewman, Maurice Savler, joined them as far as Suva, in Fiji which they reached in September.
Ten miles after leaving Suva the Isabel May hit a sandbank. Dick radioed for help and a New Zealand air force plane dropped lights and guided the trawler to a safe lagoon. They were towed back to Suva where superficial damage was repaired, then they headed to New Caledonia. There three more crew members came aboard for the final voyage to Brisbane, two of them New Zealanders.
When they arrived in Brisbane on December 3, 1959, after surviving yet another violent storm they were besieged by reporters and photographers, amazed that this little trawler had sailed across the world.
Ann wrote: “The men all had a good laugh and chats. I often wished I could have had a girl friend with me. It was so trying to be in the company of men always.”
Ann celebrated her 21st birthday in Melbourne, and she joked that she had done so hours earlier than her twin sister Mary. She flew home to Anglesey in September 1961 and later opened a hairdressing salon at Menai Bridge.
Dick’s luck ran out in February 1961 when he was given petrol instead of paraffin for the galley stove, and was badly burned. His wife flew to his bedside in Melbourne. Dick eventually returned to Anglesey after six months and died in 1969.
And the Isabel May? No one knows her fate. “We assume she came to her end in Australia,” said Mr Parry.