Bonhams 1793 : BOWERS (HENRY ROBERTSON) Log of the Loch Torridon, kept by Bowers on a voyage from London towards Adelaide, 1902

Log of the Loch Torridon, kept by Bowers on the voyage from London towards Adelaide and signed by him on nearly every page, this portion beginning off the coast of South Africa on 28 November 1902 and ending on 24 December with the first sighting of Althorp Islands on the way in to Adelaide, 28 pages (the last left blank), filled out in pencil on printed sheets, previously stapled, large 4to, 1902

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Footnotes

Bowers, born in Greenock, first went to sea at the age of fourteen as a cadet in the merchant service, training on HMS Worcester. He joined the four-masted iron barque Loch Torridon in 1898, where he rose to be Chief Officer and sailed around the world five times. The present log was kept on the third of these voyages, the ship completing the trip to Adelaide in an admirable 79 days. "On his third voyage around Cape Horn [he] wrote in his diary on 5 December 1902: 'We are in the vicinity of ice ... This nearness to the Antarctic Circle always gives me a longing'... His immediate future, though, lay in tropical waters: he was appointed a midshipman in the Royal Naval Reserve in September 1904 and gazetted a sub-lieutenant in the Royal Indian Marine service on 28 February 1905" (ODNB).

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