H.M.S. COMUS and H.M.S. TOURMALINE. [HELBY, Harold Wildey Hasler].
Log Book. Hong Kong, Singapore, Palau, Yokohama, Vancouver Island, San Francisco, Callao, Valparaiso, Tierra del Fuego, Falkland Islands, Montevideo, San Vicente, Plymouth, Sheerness …
Dec 1881-Feb 1884.
Folio, ff. 141 of manuscript entries, the remainder blank; 3 ff. of full-page illustrations, including frontispiece to the Comus section, signed ‘Kept by H.W.H. Helby’, a copy of a Punch cartoon and a watercolour ‘Bon Voyage’, showing a boy in a dinghy with a sinking ship on the horizon; numerous drawings and watercolours laid and tipped in, including cross-sections on wax paper and in watercolour, and watercolour views depicting ships and lighthouses; two folding maps charting the global courses of Tourmaline and Comus and that of Comus in the Americas; two original photographs depicting sailors on board taking soundings, captioned in pencil to reverse; very good in original half sheep and blue buckram boards, fairly rubbed, joints cracked but holding firm, strip missing from upper joint and wormtracks to joints; slightly bowed; marbled endpapers.
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Log Book. Hong Kong, Singapore, Palau, Yokohama, Vancouver Island, San Francisco, Callao, Valparaiso, Tierra del Fuego, Falkland Islands, Montevideo, San Vicente, Plymouth, Sheerness …
A characterful log book charting the voyage of Royal Navy steamer H.M.S. Comus, beginning with its berth in Hong Kong and following its course around the Pacific, before its passage home across the Atlantic. It records the technicalities of cruising by steam; the significant international naval presence in China and the Pacific; and the sailors’ daily pattern of drills, target practice and divine service, punctuated by astronomical marvels (the aurora borealis, comets and eclipses), passing whales, illnesses and desertions. The logger is midshipman Harold Helby, who signs a number of his drawings. At first Helby is aboard H.M.S. Tourmaline which is docked at the Cosmopolitan Dock in Kowloon, Hong Kong, having sailed there from Australia and Japan according to Helby’s map. In February Tourmaline follows to Singapore, on the way dropping targets in the water and firing torpedoes. Upon arrival there Helby joins the steamer Comus, announcing his new station with a splendid frontispiece.
Comus’s tour of the China station (the 1881 census records Chinese crew members on board) takes it first from Singapore to Labuan, where the ship pauses for the small arms companies and guns to be exercised on shore. Comus then sails to Palau where the ship is moored off Koror, Pelelieu and Babeldaob, before returning to Koror, where on April 22nd the officers alight and hold a ‘palaver with [the] chiefs of Araklong concerning payment of fine’. Comus then returns via Peleliu and Labuan to Singapore, arriving on Monday 15th May. The week there is spent re-coaling (216 tonnes received) and cleaning, the guns and gatling are given target practice, and Helby observes a Russian man of war. The ship then sails for Hong Kong on May 23rd and on to Yokohama on June 10th, arriving there on the 24th. At Yokohama they find the British China Squadron at anchor and exchange salutes with men-of-war from Russia, France and the United States.
In the second, longer part of the log book Comus crosses the Pacific from Yokohama to Vancouver Island. There is a large folding watercolour map depicting the voyage in the Americas, with a steamer depicted inset. Comus’s main purpose on this side of the Pacific is the conveyance of the Governor General of Canada, the Marquis of Lorne, and Princess Louise from San Francisco to Esquimault, and back again. For the crew this royal honour simply means extra work: the carpenters are set to building enlarged royal cabins; there is bunting to be hung on birthdays and almost continuous royal salutes made to every passing ship and fort; and the marines are sent ashore to act as an honour guard for the Governor. After the royal couple have disembarked for the second time, in San Francisco, two sailors clearly decide they’ve had enough of all this: ‘Michael Harris and Abraham Thurston deserted by swimming ashore having stolen two life belts from cutter.’ The royals being safely deposited, Comus then steams south to Peru, where it is forced to moor on San Lorenzo island at Callao apparently because of sickness; a surgeon, Ferguson, joins the ‘temporary sick quarters’ there, before departing for the hospital at Valparaiso in Chile with a sick boatswain, R. Martin. When the ship reaches Valparaiso two formerly sick sailors, Lieutenants Warren and Burrows, board the ship, though with no mention of the unfortunate Martin. Comus continues down the coast of Chile, here engaging in signalling with H.M.S. Satellite, using morse code and a signalling station, which is depicted in a watercolour. On board the Satellite there is a court martial for desertion of R. Sly, gunner, and C. Baker, boatswain. Comus then enters its tortuous passage of the Tierra del Fuego, where they encounter ‘a solitary family of Indians living in a hut’, before returning home to Plymouth and finally Sheerness by way of Montevideo, the Falkland Islands, and San Vicente.
There is a log book for Comus dated 1884-1888, though apparently unattributed, at the Royal Museums Greenwich.
