Thursday, November 21, 1929
Fine day this but a blamed chilly wind this afternoon. Spent the day scraping oil and grease and chipping rust from the winches aft. The “madhouse,” as Slim calls it, has sobered up again.
Must reverse a statement. There are lots of nationalities aboard. The Old Man, Madden, is American I guess. The 23-year-old 2nd is from some small English islands in the East Indies. The first is probably a Yank, a (Ellis) captain whose ship is being repaired. The Third, Seeman, is from one of the small states on the Baltic created after the war. Johnson is half Norwegian, half Swede; Pete a Sicilian, Chip’s Dutch, bos’n Norwegian. The rest are probably Scotch, Swedes, Norwegians, Germans, and Pilipinos.
We must be near 1,600 miles from Honolulu, therefore over a third of the way there. Have some books from the library (such as it is) and the first is The Story of a Great Schoolmaster by H.G. Wells.