The last grain race - Eric Newby

At the age of eighteen, Eric Newby signed on as an apprentice on the four-masted barque Moshulu of Erikson line for the round trip from Europe to Australia and back, outwards by way of the Cape of Good Hope in ballast and homewards round Cape Horn with a cargo of grain. Moshulu was the largest of the dozen or so sailing ships still engaged in the grain trade which strove annually to make the shortest passage home. Newby signed on in the autumn of 1928. This was to be an historic voyage, a dramatic personal adventure. It also marked the debut of an exceptional travel writer.

'Enthralling - I know of no other book about square-riggers that gives such a lively account of the daily round of men in the fo'c'sle' Sunday Times

'Mr Newby proves himself to be a first-rate writer. Fifteen years have dulled nothing of the spirit of his first voyage; he gives exactly the feel of working a tall ship in hard conditions: he did not just see these things; he felt and can convey them; the crew of Moshulu live, move and are real human beings - and go on living when the book is closed' Times Literary Supplement